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Live From the Nose Art of the Seas (NCL SUN)

Kokomo_Man

By Kokomo_Man,
in Norwegian Cruise Line

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Sauer-kraut

Sauer-kraut

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Oh that's so disappointing to hear about the piano bar. I remember a really great guy on our SUN cruise last year, and the bar was really filled with people.

 

NCL has usually had much better music venues than CCL so I'm sorry that isn't your finding on this cruise. They did have a nice guitarist upstairs in Las Ramblas so mosey on up there and listen while you have a few tapas before dinner. ;)

 

Continue to keep the smile on your face, it makes everyone wonder what you're up to....

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OceanDreaming2

OceanDreaming2

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Oh that's so disappointing to hear about the piano bar. I remember a really great guy on our SUN cruise last year, and the bar was really filled with people.

 

NCL has usually had much better music venues than CCL so I'm sorry that isn't your finding on this cruise. They did have a nice guitarist upstairs in Las Ramblas so mosey on up there and listen while you have a few tapas before dinner. ;)

 

Continue to keep the smile on your face, it makes everyone wonder what you're up to....

 

If you're referring to Las Rambles, Kim Doolittle was the pianist when we were on the Sun in September/early October. We were not impressed but she was (with herself). :rolleyes:

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Kokomo_Man

Kokomo_Man

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Day 1

 

I'm still running behind a bit. Here's the stuff from this morning. I'll try to catch up tomorrow.

I’m coming to you this morning from the pool deck. “The Woman to Blame” and I established our tradition a long time ago of having our morning coffee (and smokes for her) out by the pool. I like doing this because it’s a nice time to chat, plan out the day, and watch all the people around the pool.

 

We ate breakfast this morning in the Il Adagio specialty restaurant where the suite passengers can go. Service was excellent and the food was good too. There’s not much you can do to a bowl of cold cereal, but you can over or under cook poached eggs. This time mine were done perfectly.

 

I’m a bit surprised by the demographics of the ship on this cruise. Usually on a cruise this time of year the average age is equal to “dust”. The last time I was on an October cruise they had valet parking around the pool for all of the walkers and “scooters”.

 

But this time it is a bit different. I would say the average age is probably forty-something. And more than once this morning I’ve had to stop writing and watch the “talent” from behind my dark sun glasses. It’s not like a spring break cruise, but there is a lot of “talent” here and my jaw is already sore from hitting the floor all morning. And in quite a few cases I have to say… my compliments to the surgeons.

 

(Shhhhh. Don’t tell on me. Oops too late. I know my daughters are all saying, “Daddy!!!! … and “The Woman to Blame is just rolling her eyes and saying, “Yea… right”.)

 

I guess I almost don’t need to mention the next item… it “goes with the territory. The chair hogs were out in force this morning. Even though today is quite overcast (but no rain yet) at least half of the deck chairs have been occupied by towels. NCL does no better in this respect than the other cruises I’ve been on.

 

I’ve called today “Day 1”. I always call the day you board the ship as “day 0” since it’s not a full 24 hour day. I also get to use the play on words… Day O…. Day-ayy-ayy-O… Get it? (Now everyone’s rolling their eyes.)

 

Since today’s a sea day, it’s a good day to be lazy and do as NCL says, “Whatever.” A few frozen concoctions to help us hang on… a dip in the pool… and later on an hour or two in the Gym. The first sea day is also a good chance to explore a ship I haven’t been on before. I’ll report anything interesting on the ship tonight.

 

I have a few odds an ends to tell you about. I’ll be dropping them in here and there as they come to me. The first is that NCL changes “ship’s time” during the night to match the time of the port or region for the next day. Some cruise lines don’t do this and you can end up an hour or two difference between “ship’s time” and port time. I mention this because it sometimes screws up folks when scheduling shore excursions.

 

Another thing I like is that NCL has real charcoal grilled hamburgers on the pool deck. They are really good. I’m not sure if these are just on Day-0 and sea days… or if they charcoal grill burgers every day. I’ll let you know. (I bet a bunch of you reading this just went Day-ayy-ayy-O to yourself didn’t you? LOL)

 

It seems that all of the cruise lines are going to offering some kind of “higher end” hamburgers… sort of a burger war. NCL with their char-broiled ones here, “Flowrider of the seas” with their on board “Johnny Rockets”, and now “Walmart of the Seas” has just announced that they will have “Guy Ferangi” (or something like that) burgers.

 

The last thing for now is to mention that the pools on NCL are salt water pools. That’s not a big deal to me one way or the other, but there are some people that care.

 

It’s starting to sprinkle a bit, so I’m going to dive for cover. More as the day goes on.

 

Bob

Memories of Naked Fanny

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Frankiesmom

Frankiesmom

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Love reading your review! I am thinking of booking this cruise for the end of Feb.

We have never sailed NCL before~ but I got an email w some great rates~ and any cruise is better than a day @ work :)

 

We have only saled RCL and Disney~ we have 2 boys, 10 and 7.

 

Are there kids areas ? My boys love to travel~ I just want them to enjoy their vaca too !

 

Have a great cruise :) and thanks in advance !!!

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youngestof9

youngestof9

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i love reading the Live from.....its fun! Of course now I'm singing DayOOOOOO over and over ;)

 

On the Gem there was a guitarist who sang contemporary songs - Leo - and we really enjoyed him. Not a pianist but it was nice to sit and listen to him.

 

Enjoying the read - keep it up :)

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Kokomo_Man

Kokomo_Man

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Hi all,

 

Thank you very much for the words of encouragement. As you can tell I'm getting more behind in my posts rather than catching up. I'm having way too much fun and not much down time.

 

I will try to answer everyone's questions and such when... if I get some down time. In the mean time... her's more from our first sea day.

I’ve been out and about the ship checking things out. There’s some good and some mediocre depending on which side of the various fences that you might be on.

There are no dedicated kid’s pools on the ship. As I said this could be good or bad depending on what you hope for on a cruise. I suspect there will be fewer kids on the ship even during the summer. That said, there are a few more kids on this cruise than I expected this time of year. (Why aren’t these kids in school?... Is “home schooling”… or in this case “cruise schooling” become that big? On every cruise I try to ask a few kids what they think of this cruising stuff and I’ll let you know what I find out.

As I cruised around the ship, I went by the sports bar. This reminds me that the TV is very limited on this ship. Carnival, Princess, and “Rockwall/Flowrider of the seas” all have many more choices than this ship. I know that this isn’t a big deal, but there are a few times I like to kick back and put my feet up and watch a little TV… while checking my eyelids for cracks. And if any of you are hoping to catch your favorite team… the baseball play-offs or World Series, then good luck. There was no standard sports channel or network sports coverage yesterday (Saturday). Not even ESPN.

Today they did have one of the morning CBS games (Buffalo vs. New York Giants) and the afternoon FOX game (Dallas vs. the Patriots). There were no extra channels in the sports bar. They had the one game that was available on all of the TVs. This isn’t a big deal to me and I only start to really pay attention to football when it’s play off time. I would like to have the option of watching the baseball play-offs though.

I did stop in the sports bar to watch a bit of one of the only football game that was on. All of the NFL teams are wearing something pink every game during October which reminds me that I should tell you a few times this cruise I’m going to change my signature to something else near and dear to my heart. I know there’s no advertising on this, but hopefully no one at CC will complain that I’m mentioning such a worthy clause.

Before I stop for now, I want to pass on another tidbit about something I have complained about on “Wal-Mart of the Seas”. The internet connection on this ship has been good. It’s still expensive… a rip-off at $100 for 250 minutes… and it is slow compared to land based high speed internet. But compared to what “Wal-Mart of the Seas” offers, this is blazingly fast and has yet to crash out or anything else like that. “Wal-Mart of the Seas” needs to quit making excuses and get what everyone else in the market place has.

Bob

Save the Taa-Taas

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Sauer-kraut

Sauer-kraut

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There IS a dedicated children's pool on the SUN. Deck 11 or 12 can't remember almost all the way forward on the Port side. It has whales and fish painted on the walls of that section. There is a short slide going around the kid's hot tub. I thought it was cute, but small.

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vols_159

vols_159

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Love your review!! Ive been on the sun once and booked for the same cruise in march! And get use to the time changing last cruise we changed 4 or 4 times.. A total set back of 2 hours to get on cozumel time.. and then we had to give it back coming home! I think its smart.. especially on sea days.. Safe travels!

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Kokomo_Man

Kokomo_Man

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This will be just a short post to finish up day 1.

It rained all of the afternoon and into the night. I don’t mean just a sprinkle or two… it rained hard and the seas were fairly rough. I’ve been in worse, but we were rockin’-n-rollin’. To give you an idea, they half emptied the pools and they were still sloshing out the top. Obviously they closed the pools, but the hot tubs were still open and people were still enjoying them.

We ate dinner in the main aft dining room tonight. The food was all very good. Amy was particularly happy with the salmon. She said it was the best she ever had. (Of course that could have been a result of the three rum drinks she had as appetizers. And as I did mention earlier, they don’t skimp on the booze.) The service was all very good. I’m usually a “traditional fixed time dining” person, and I prefer the Carnival atmosphere. But this was also very good and I would not choose one cruise over another based on the main dining room so far.

Tonight, the “night life” was much better. We went to the production show at 9:30. The performance was dancing and songs from Broadway musicals. The Sun Dancers were there along with four good singers. The red headed woman was very talented… she sung well too. My attempt at being “cute” aside, she is a very talented singer. (I think her name is Julie.) She sang the theme from Wicked. “The Woman to Blame” and I saw Wicked on Broadway and in my opinion, Julie is as good as the singer we saw on Broadway.

After the production show, we went to Dazzles. They had a live band and the theme there was 70’s music. Actually it was 70’s, 80’s and 90’s music. The band had the place hoppin’. There’s a dance floor in Dazzles and it was filled with folks having a great time. Of course there was the obligatory “Sweet Home Alabama”, and a round of Y-M-C-A. There was even some guy in an outrageous wild orange shirt with parrots all over it… doing Saturday Night Fever style dancin’ whenever the “Disco” music came on. He was pretty good too.

I would like to have stayed out later, be we are going diving in Cozumel tomorrow if the weather isn’t too bad, so we had to leave the party about 23:30.

More from Cozumel tomorrow…

Bob

Memories of Naked Fanny

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mickiemac

mickiemac

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"There was even some guy in an outrageous wild orange shirt with parrots all over it… doing Saturday Night Fever style dancin’ whenever the “Disco” music came on. He was pretty good too. "

I am assuming this was you in your parrot shirt..Glad you are having fun

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Kokomo_Man

Kokomo_Man

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Mickie... Shhhhhh... don't tell anybody who that guy in the parrot shirt was.:D

 

 

Day 2 - Cozumel

 

 

The heading says “Cozumel”, but as I write this we are already sailing away from Cozumel. Right off I have to tell you that we had a GREAT day. In the beginning it was looking like it was going to be a wash-out.

 

Early this morning the weather report on weather.com predicted “heavy rains” all day… “up to 2 inches or more.” Our original plan was to go SCUBA diving. But very dark skies and heavy seas don’t make for good SCUBA diving. Even though getting wet doesn’t matter (duh)… overcast skies limit the light that penetrates the water. And puking over the side of the little dive boats because of heavy seas is no fun.

 

By about 6:30 this morning the “heavy duty” storms had moved far enough north so that we broke out of the rain and bad stuff. It was still overcast, but the skies were clearing. There were still lots of nasty looking clouds around but it looked like we might get lucky. Off in the distance… out at the horizon… it looked like the skies were even lighter.

 

We ate breakfast and agonized over the decision. We had postponed buying the SCUBA tour tickets until the last minute. If we bought the tickets now, there would be no refund. The deadline for buying the tickets was 8:00 A.M.

 

At 7:45 A.M. the weather.com prediction was still the same… heavy rain. Then the Captain came on the loudspeaker and said that we could go ashore… he added that he was sorry that we would have heavy rains all day. But the sky was still clearing and it was not raining, So, with one more look at the sky we decided that we would try… do what we had come here to do… SCUBA dive. So at 8:00 A.M. we were standing at the tour desk… we “rolled the dice” and bought the tickets.

 

I told you at the start of this what a great day it was, so you already know how it all turned out. Not a drop of rain fell on us all day. The skies kept clearing… the seas stayed reasonably calm and by our second dive, the sun was peaking in and out of the clouds.

 

And the diving was great. The underwater visibility was down a little bit because the storm that had gone through had stirred things up a little bit. We had “only” about 100 feet of visibility. For those of you who don’t dive, most dive areas would kill for 60 feet of “vis”, let alone 100 feet. So even though the “vis” was down from the usual 150 feet + of Cozumel… it was still magnificent.

 

Most of the activities and tours in Cozumel… like most of the Caribbean… are water based tours. For those of you who don’t SCUBA dive, I highly recommend that you go on some kind of tour where you do some snorkeling. Or better yet, do the “Discover SCUBA” tour where they give you some short lessons, and your first experience SCUBA diving. If you’ve ever wanted to try it, this is as good of a place to do it as there is. The only requirement is that you are in reasonably good health. You can check out the health details at www.padi.com (PADI is the largest dive certification agency in the world.)

 

The only problem with the stop at Cozumel is that it was too short. You see… there’s a Margaritaville in Cozumel and it is ParrotHead Law… and probably Caribbean Cruise Law… if there is a Margaritaville at one of the stops, you MUST go there and have a frozen concoction to help you hang on. And if you haven’t had lunch, you must have a Cheeseburger in Paradise.

 

So, after the dives we hustled back to the ship, dropped off our dive gear and got into dry clothes. Then we hurried back off the ship and made our way to “Jimmy’s Place”… aka Margaritaville. “The Woman to Blame” law says that the first concoction must be a frozen strawberry Margarita. Zach sort of complained about having to get that, but… law is law. So soon the “proper” frozen concoction to help everyone hang on was served. I have to add to this that I figured that Zach would only drink sip or two of it, but his was the first glass to go empty.

 

After our food and drinks at “Jimmy’s place” we had only about 20 minutes for a quick “spin” around the “tourist trap” area… and to buy the mandatory T-shirts and refrigerator magnet. We got back to the ship right at the “all-aboard” time… maybe even a couple of minutes late. They pulled in the gang-plank about five minutes after we were back on board and now we’re off for Grand Cayman… my favorite island.

 

I’ll stop for now… it’s time to “cruise” around the ship and see what’s happening.

 

Bob

Memories of Naked Fanny

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Kokomo_Man

Kokomo_Man

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Day 3 – Grand Cayman

Before I tell you about yesterday evening, I have to tell you about the most astonishing thing that I just saw on a cruise ship. Today is sort of half a sea day. We don’t pull into Grand Cayman until noon. So when we came out on the pool deck for morning coffee about 10 A.M. I did a walk-around to see what “interesting” folks were around the pool. But what I did see was astonishing… no chair hogs! Some of the best, prime area deck chairs around the pool area were empty… completely devoid of towels, flip-flops or magazines. They almost looked lonely and un-cared for. In some ways it was kind of sad… poor unwanted deck chairs.

Maybe the vacant chairs had something to do with the older average age of the passengers on this cruise… or maybe it’s because everyone was getting ready for Grand Cayman. Or maybe it’s because everyone out by the pool had turned into red lobsters over the past few days.

Last night I pooped out early… all of us pooped out early. So there are only a couple of tid-bits still to pass on from yesterday.

We ate in the main dining room where the food and service was good. I’m one of the ones that like the atmosphere in Carnival’s main dining room. You know… the singing and wait staff dancing on the tables… and passengers dancin’ in the isles. I know there are a lot of people who don’t like that stuff and just want to eat dinner. But I kind of miss the festive atmosphere.

After dinner we took a look at some of the venues, but the ship wasn’t really rockin’ to the music like the night before. I guess everyone was tired out from Cozumel. Since the “Monday Night Football” game was on TV, we went back to the room to watch the Dolphins get their butt kicked. It was so sad that the Dolphins were self destructing and I fell asleep a little while into the fourth quarter.

As I sit here writing this on the pool deck this morning I do have a little “nit” to pick. About every 15 minutes… maybe even less… someone is coming on the loudspeaker trying to sell us something. I know they have to make their money, but they are over-doing it. All cruise lines do this but today it seems a little worse than usual.

As fast as I could write the last paragraph someone came on the loudspeaker selling something again. I think I’ve been a little too polite so I’ll tell it like it is… => puh-lease! Give me a break and give it a rest!

That’s all for now… Grand Cayman has just started to appear on the horizon. I’ve reserved a Wave-Runner trip to Sting Ray City and to Rum Point. I’ll tell you all about it tonight.

 

YABAAA – DABAAAA- DOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Bob

Save “Second Base”

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Obi1

Obi1

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Kokomo_Man~

 

Loving the review so far! I am especially interested to hear what you have to say about the waverunner trip to Sting Ray City and Rum Point as I have booked the exact same one for November!

 

Can't wait to see what you have to say!

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