NYC - Florida - Private Island - Nassau - NYC
December 2010
Here we go again writing about yet another cruise! That's right, we have become "cruise addicts" for sure and being retired has given us the opportunity to chase some incredibly LOW prices. We just happened to click the "Hot Deals" button on NCL's website a mere three weeks before departure and couldn't resist the price. In this case, $330/ea which is far LESS than what we've spent on a WEEKEND photography workshop! These ships are simply AMAZING and we have a new experience every time we board one.....
This cruise began and ended in New York City at the passenger terminal located along Manhattan's west side. Per usual, we took the Bieber Bus from Kutztown PA to the Port Authority in New York and took a short cab ride from there to the terminal. Everything went without a hitch. NCL does a great job with the embarkation process and in short order we were aboard having lunch in the main dining room, "Tsar's Palace".
This was our 4th cruise and was the first one where we booked an INSIDE cabin. Balcony cabins with their wall-wall, floor-ceiling windows are VERY nice but it's amazing how much money can be saved by booking an inside cabin. We figured the possibility of cold winter weather would preclude using the balcony much anyway so why not try an inside this time around. The cabin was small but we had plenty of closet/shelf space for our clothes, enough space in the bathroom/shower for our needs, and the bed was plenty comfortable for a good nights sleep. Another way to look at it, the cabin was far more comfortable than what we had on our 31' sailboat! Here are some pictures.....
We departed New York with the captain warning that our first night at sea would be a little bumpy which it was. We won't soon forget the young lady we met at dinner that first night who took one look at her dinner plate and ran off to her cabin. It was the worst we had seen on a cruise ship but as fate would have it, the worse was yet to come. The second afternoon and evening was significantly worse with 18-20 foot seas and 60+ knot winds. Deck 7's Promenade deck was closed forcing everyone to stay inside making it difficult to find a quiet place to simply sit and read our Kindles but life on a cruise ship continued. It was business as usual at all of the food and entertainment venues. Fortunately, conditions were much more pleasurable for the remainder of the cruise.
We did two other NCL cruises, Dawn thru Canada / New England in September 2009 and a Dawn "Repositioning" cruise this past October so this was our chance to see what another ship in the fleet is like. "Jewel" is structurally similar to "Dawn" so we found our way around pretty quickly. Differences turned out to be mostly in decor but some "functional" differences were noted as well. For instance, both ships have a 24 hour snack bar called "Blue Lagoon". On Dawn it's located along an aisle where you order what you want, get your own drinks, and take a seat. On Jewel it's located off the beaten path but it's a little more formal as evidenced by the "Please Wait To Be Seated" sign that you are confronted with when you arrive. Different but we enjoyed eating there none the less. Here are some pictures we took aboard the ship.....
A three image panorama
This time around we also went on a "Behind The Scenes" tour of the ship. The tour took us to the Kitchen, Supply Storage, Environmental Engineering, Laundry, and up to the Bridge. Jewel carries 2300 passengers (2800 on this cruise) who are serviced by 1000 crew. That's a LOT of meals, baking, sheets, towels, etc.!! Click on these thumbnails for a larger view and some notes about what we saw...
There were three ports of call scheduled for this cruise....
The first was Port Canaveral Florida. Florida weather was running cooler than normal and we arrived to find sunny skies but temperatures hovering around 50 degrees. Not the best for beach lovers but perfect for spending hours touring the Kennedy Space Center with camera in hand. Touring KSC was pre-arranged thru fellow passengers, Monte and Susan, that I met online in the Cruise Critic Roll Call for this particular cruise. My interest in the space program goes back to my college days when America was in a race to the moon and I like to tell people how I was so intently watching TV as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon that I stepped into a roller pan of paint. It was a month before our wedding and we were painting our first apartment. Anyway, I heard that Monte had worked at the time on the Apollo guidance computer so we decided to spend the afternoon touring the place together. Monte's wife, Susan, came along and seemed to reach her limit 2-3 hours into it. Kathy knew she would reach her limit even sooner and decided to stay behind and enjoy the ship. Here are some of the images I took and clicking on the image will give you a larger view and some information....
Our second port of call was Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas. It turns out that NCL pioneered the private island concept that all of the cruise companies have these days. GSC is NCL's private island beach which is reached by tender from the anchored ship. Temperatures were in the low 60's so we went ashore with no intention of getting wet. At best we had hoped to find a sunny lounge chair to sit in and read our Kindles for a couple hours. It just didn't happen. While it was sunny, the breeze was very cool so we spent a couple hours taking pictures and headed back aboard for lunch. A few souls did linger on the beach and go in the water but we were not the only ones who returned to the ship early. We did, however, put on our bathing suits with intentions of using the onboard pool but we had enough of that idea when we got our feet wet. Here are some images from Great Stirrup Cay.....
Our third and final port of call was Nassau in the Bahamas. This was our second time in Nassau so we decided to skip jewelry shopping and explore the place. I brought my GPS with me and had it loaded with some geocaches. Geocaching is a kind of scavenger hunt in which you use your GPS to locate various points of interest some of which have a container of trinkets and a log book while others simply ask you to answer specific questions to verify that you were there. We have found that the process gets us seeing areas that we would otherwise miss. This time around we walked 4-5 miles and visited a government building, the water tower, the Queens Staircase, Fort Fincastle, Fort Charlotte and stopped for coffee at a Dunkin Donuts. Weather wise, this was the best we encountered on the cruise, sunny skies with temperatures in the low 70's. Here are some of our images....
I should also mention that this was the second cruise in which we participated in a Cruise Critic Roll Call. For those unfamiliar, the "Roll Call" is an online message board focused on a specific cruise. The exchange of pre-cruise information is very beneficial and I was always amazed at how much people know about the cruise lines, ships, the officers, and the ports of call. There was always someone who could answer questions. In addition, some onboard activities were organized starting with a Meet & Greet during which we got to meet each other and some of the ship's officers.
For the photographers among you: Recently I have been carrying my P&S camera to save weight and space but this time I decided to take my DSLR. I knew that some additional lenses (especially the Tokina 10-17mm Fisheye) and image controls would be handy when visiting the Kennedy Space Center. I was very happy with the decision to take it along. I brought along a Zip Shot Tripod for those times when a camera support comes in handy. The Zip Shot is VERY portable and wasn't very solid under the weight on my DSLR but it was usable. It certainly was better than nothing. In addition, we also geotagged our images with a Sony GPS-CS3KA.
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