Travel plan idea blog

NCL Alaska cruise experience day 2

Well here I am on day 2 of the NCL cruise to Alaska. First let me explain what I said at the end of my blog entry yesterday about the internet being annoying. While we were waiting to get into our rooms after boarding the Norwegian Pearl yesterday we had very little to do after we ate lunch. So we found a couple of lounge chairs, and I tried to get online to blog a bit.

Fist they say $4 activation fee. OK. Then they say pick a plan. The cheapest one is 40 cents/minute with a $100 minimum (no refund for unused minutes). OK. I'm thinking that having a travel blog is a little expensive at this point (I also pay a bunch for hosting) but it did get me VIP treatment on this cruise. That basically meant a bottle of wine (we don't drink though), a special concierge number (at least I assume it's special), and an invitation to have drinks with the captain (which I'll be doing in an hour or so).

Anyway, I pay my $104, get online, and start blogging. I write a bunch, click save, and then find out I had been disconnected. Of course that means yesterday's blog entry should have been much longer but I lost almost everything. I log back on, write a few more words and then when it's time to go to the rooms I click publish. The poor internet connection times out. Anyway, on the third try I finally published my abridged blog entry.

So basically I'm saying the wifi here wasn't all that good on day 1 but I did learn a lesson. I am writing this blog entry offline. I'll log on when I'm ready to publish it.

So what have I experienced so far on the cruise? The food has been great. We tried one of the specialty restaurants, or at least my wife did. She liked the sushi and sashimi but she ate alone because there was a $15 cover charge. I don't eat sushi and the place was empty but they still wanted $15 to let me sit next to her. Not a huge deal. I found a seat not too far away and read my book while she ate.

I ate at Mambo's, a TexMex kind of place. I really liked it. A more complete review with pictures should follow one day. We also ate at the big buffet place a couple of times (lunch yesterday, snack yesterday, breakfast today) where almost everything has been good. The French toast was pretty sad this morning though as they barely used any egg. Today it was lunch in the Blue Lagoon comfort food restaurant. We plan to go back for the tomato soup. The chicken sandwich and the salad was also good but the french fries (which I didn't order but whatever) were pretty bad.

Not that we did nothing but eat. I've been to the gym 4 times so far. Yesterday at around 5:00 and 9:00 it was pretty empty. Today at 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM it was packed. I love having a gym open 24 hours and the new equipment, but as you know I do like to criticize whenever possible (even though I really am having a good time!) so let me just say that they need more in the gym. They have lots of dumbbells but no barbells. And too few strength training machines. And the area by the dumbbells is just too small with only three benches and not much space in between. I couldn't even put my dumbbells back where I got them if someone was using the bench on front of the rack there. It's also hard to get a key for the lockers (and impossible after 10:00) so I just head to the gym and back to the room in my workout clothes. Yesterday I ended up carrying my clothes around the weights...

And of course there was some expensive shopping. Columbian Emeralds had some stuff off 50% today only until 1:00 or something. Now my wife has a new necklace and ring and we have 90 days to pay.

Well anyway, everything has been fun so far. Naturally I'll have more to say soon!

Posted by James Trotta at July 8, 2008 9:46 AM | TrackBack