Happy fool

Ruth C, I didn’t see your recommendation about land first before booking…don’t want you to think I was being flippant about cruise first. I figured that there are advantages to both. Like I said I’m super excited. 

Well, we are doing the cruise portion first. That will give us a chance to rest up from traveling from eastern USA. Any recommendations on restaurants on the land portion?  
 

I’m super excited about this, but feel I don’t have a great deal of information. We selected this because we had free airfare and my husband said he wanted to go to Alaska. Neither of us have ever been to Alaska. I wanted an itinerary that would allow us to see more that a cruise only itinerary would allow. 

Has anyone done a Holland America Cruise tour? Any hints or recommendations? It looks like a good chance to see both land and sea in Alaska. 

Best wishes. Enjoyed meeting both of you. 

We sailed on the Carnival Miracle from SanDiego to Hawaii in 2020 before Covid shut everything down. I don’t recall any rough seas. It was a great cruise. Carnival had some excellent sea day programs that were Hawaii related during the cruise. 

Love the pictures from the ports. What a great itinerary. I’m another fan of checking out the local grocery stores!

I had a Rueben on our recent cruise on the Star. I’m not sure what the meat in it was, but it not corned beef. It was not good. 

I hope NCL pays attention to cruise critic. They can do better. They do better on other ships. 

Great pictures. I’m loving the shore excursions descriptions. 

Sorry to hear that your cruise is not going well. Hope that NCL will take notice and fix these problems. We had a good meal at LeBistro, so I’m disappointed to hear that the Italian specialty restaurant was so bad!  
 

I didn’t feel that the Star was up to the standard I expect from NCL. I thought perhaps it was post Covid issues, but it sounds like your recent experience on the Jewel was quite different. 
 

Hope that you have some great port days coming up!  

On our recent sailing, we ate in the main dining room twice. It was not good either time. The only really good meal that I had was in Le Bistro.  The garden café was okay. I think that the food is not up to the standards that I have experienced on other NCL ships. 
 

love the botanical gardens in Akureyri!

Glad that you are onboard and that embarkation went well. Embarkation was a mess for us, but we are only silver latitudes and were staying in an oceanview cabin. Can’t wait to read the rest of your posts. This is so fun for me since we very recently got off the Star. Hope that your cold continues to improve. 

I’m enjoying reading about this Iceland trip. Have you tried the rye bread ice cream?  Delicious!  When we were there we ate happy marriage cake since it was our anniversary. It is a rhubarb cake and since we both like rhubarb we had to try it. It was very good. Guess you can tell that I have a sweet tooth. 

I love the comment about the horses looking like Fabio. I never thought of that but now that you said it, I can’t unsee it. 

You asked about my favorite stop. I love Akureyri. I see you mentioned revisiting the botanical gardens there. Always worthwhile IMHO. We took a private waterfall tour while we there this time. Another time in Akureyri we went to the public swimming pools (near the botanical garden). The public pools are huge and amazing. The hot tub (size of a small swimming pool) was hot and the jets were strong. The woman at the pool desk showed me on her computer map where the hot water is pumped in from.  
 

you mentioned ponies..we were quite firmly told, do not call them Icelandic ponies, they are are Icelandic horses. There are very strict rules about Icelandic horses. If they are shipped off the island, they can never return. 
 

Nuuk was an interesting stop. We did a ship excursion to visit a local family. An older, widowed lady hosted a small group in her home. Her son came over to assist her. She offered us a tasty snack. It was good to talk with some local people. Also, the museum in Nuuk is great. It is well curated and a don’t miss it you like museums. 
 

Reykjavik is very interesting, but on this latest cruise we only embarked and debarked there. We didn’t really spend any time there in this sailing. 

Look forward to your postings about this adventure. We recently sailed on the Star…Iceland/Greenland, so I want to hear your impressions. 

Appreciate the observations. I’m going to be in New Orleans this winter and thought I’d add on a cruise to soak up some sun. I’m on a Facebook group that has so many negative comments about cruising on the Glory that I’m second guessing my plans. The negative comments include theft and drug dealing!!  I don’t mind an older ship and appreciate that it is not as huge as some of the newer ships. 

I recently sailed on the Star on the Iceland/Greenland itinerary. I have never sailed on the Prima, so I can’t comment on that. I have sailed on NCL a couple of times before. I choose sailings based on itinerary not cruise line. Following are my opinions and your preferences may be completely different. 
 

Iceland is amazing. If you haven’t been, put this on your bucket list!  This was our second trip to Iceland. We didn’t really see anything in Reykjavik this time since we had been there before. We had NCL air and transfers and arrived very early the morning on embarkation. One unexpected thing that NCL did was take us to a hotel for an excellent buffet breakfast before taking us to the port. Kudos to NCL for that. However, once we got to the port embarkation was a mess with long, long lines. Some of the older passengers were having issues with being expected to stand for so long. 
 

Our Iceland stops were fabulous. In Akureyri we took a private waterfall tour and spent time just wandering around town and visiting the botanical gardens. This was definitely my favorite stop. Issafjorddur was still a tender port. I don’t feel that NCL managed the tender ports as well as they might have….lots of lines and waits and tickets were for later after arrival since we didn’t have status or ship excursions each time. 
 

We understandably missed the first Greenland stop due to heavy fog and numerous Icebergs. We walked around the small town at our second Greenland stop and toured the tiny museum. Had a nice dessert and coffee at the little coffee shop. Nuuk was my favorite Greenland stop. We were able to dock and that made things much easier. We saw a whale while we were in Nuuk. Friends saw a whale as we were sailing into Nuuk. We did a ship excursion to visit an Iceland family and it was great. There is a very well laid out and curated museum in Nuuk…a don’t miss IMHO. 

Cabin…we had an obstructed ocean view on the theory that it would be too cold to use a balcony. The bathroom was well laid out. The desk/mirror could have been a couple of inches smaller to allow for easier access to the bed. No need to set an alarm on tender days…launching the lifeboats will be your wake up call. 
 

Shows. The shows were good..especially the magician, White Magic. No issues with finding a seat. The production shows were fine, but the special effects were a frequent use of the smoke machine. Nothing against the smoke machine but it was used so much that it was distracting. The violin trio in the atrium was excellent. Great tribute to Queen in the theater. 
 

Activities…this is an area that could use some improvement. There were a couple of trivia games each day, but most of the activities seemed to be ads for paid services (spa treatments) or extra charge alcohol tastings/bingo. On a previous NCL cruise there was a ceremony when we crossed the attic circle and everyone got a card in the cabin documenting our crossing of the attic circle. Only mention this time….at the Q&A, someone asked the captain if we would be crossing the arctic circle. 
 

Debarkation was great. We carried our luggage and walked right out to the shuttle bus. 

This will be my first time to get the shareholder credit. I didn’t realize that its use was so restricted. I’m not a big spender on board. I have the “free” at sea package on my upcoming trip, so I don’t expect to have much on my account except gratuities. However, I can’t complain since the share price has increased. 

We have a 10 am flight. I called NCL Air about this and was told 3.5 hours was their minimum.  Guess I should be glad we have 4 hours. A big part of my reason for booking NCL transfers is at least I’ll have them to blame if it doesn’t work out. 

This thread has useful information. I’ve booked the NCL shuttle for airport transportation in Reykjavik because of the early departure flight time. I’m  feeling that this was a good decision. I’m amazed  that NCL air says three and half hours from docking to plane departure is enough time!  Guess we will see!

CalcDiva, how soon after docking is your flight?  I was told 3.5 hours was okay. That seems too short to me. 

Kind of difficult to request a change 75 days out since we didn’t get notification of what our flights were 75 days in advance. We are traveling with another couple and requested that we be on the same flights. That didn’t happen and it is inconvenient for us. The airport is an hour and a half away. We had planned to carpool and split parking charges. Guess that is not going to work. 

I’m interested in an annual medical/medical evacuation policy. I’m not so concerned about losing the cost of my trip. I would hate to lose the cost of a trip but it wouldn’t be financially devastating. On the other hand a medical emergency in a foreign country could be an unplanned, financially devastating event. 
 

any recommendations on how to evaluate such policies?

We have sailed on the Jade. It was a port intensive cruise. I’m more interested in where the ship is going than in the ship itself. For us, it was a good size, large enough for entertainment, but it didn’t have the feeling that we were dealing with huge crowds. I haven’t been on any of NCL’s large ships, but when I was on larger ships on other lines I didn’t care for the larger size. As for the elevators, I try to avoid taking them since walking up and down the stairs adds a little exercise to my day, ha, ha.