NCL Star Setting Sail

A quick 20 minute, $20 cab ride helps us escape from the nightmare into the daylight as we check-in at the NCL Star. Process includes ID photos, credit establishment, and mini-health questionnaire (any diarrhea or vomiting in the last 48 hours?). We explore the ship for several hours and enjoy our first lunch while our stateroom is readied at 2 p.m. More exploring before a pool BBQ and back to our room to watch the Saints trounce Arizona.

An important activity while cruising is people watching – also known as people critiquing. I wasn’t aware that people could get that fat or that skin could stretch that far. Couldn’t believe the number of really fat people, I mean fat. God help you if you got behind them; you’d be there forever watching this flesh slosh and ripple and undulate.

Since the passengers’ average age must be over 80, it’s amazing how many still have hairdos from the 50’s. And the definition of Resort Casual escapes most. If this is dress-up, I’d hate to see sloppy.

Home for many of the passengers is Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Latinos, Asians, and Sweden, plus the usual U.S. traveler. And since most old people look alike, you couldn’t tell their origin until they opened their mouths to speak. The crew of 1,100 represents 56 countries, 2/3 from the Philippines.

At the end of the first day we give permission to ourselves: Relax. Enjoy.

Today is our first full day at sea. Last night we sailed from Miami and went thru the passage between Haiti and Cuba. The ship established a Haitian donation fund. We mainly roam and familiarize ourselves with this ship; it is 965’ long and has at least 10 decks open to explore.

Our first talk on the next port is disappointing. The ‘talk’ is 50 minutes on how to buy Colombian emeralds and 10 minutes on the port. Cartegena is a beautiful port city. It deserves more than 10 minutes, but they want to sell their tours and have the passengers buy emeralds. We were looking for an educational lecture on Cartegena and we got bling.

The food at Aqua is very good. We shared a table with other people, nice people we never saw again, so we never shared again. We preferred our own company. Sharing tables is the only way NCL promotes meeting other people.

Everyday we have breakfast and lunch in the Market Café buffet. The food is well prepared, fresh and of a good variety. Finding seating can be a challenge; people sit and stay. And some stay for dinner too even though the two-included restaurants (Aqua & Versailles), have excellent food. All we can figure is that they want to eat a lot (and it shows), they don’t want to get dressed (no shorts or tank tops etc allowed), or they feel comfortable in a buffet. Who knows?

Every day we spend several hours in the Spinnaker Lounge working our way thru the ship’s daily crossword, sudokus and progressive trivia. This comfy lounge at the bow of the ship is an excellent place to sit and allow the passing sea to mesmerize us. This is a good place to watch the horizon for pirates and icebergs.

And the horizon is always just sky and water. The sea just goes on and on. It’s vast and deep.

At 10 a.m. the captain’s voice comes over the loudspeaker with daily log entries. His strong Swedish accent can make it hard to understand him sometimes, but we get the idea.

After lunch we can relax on our balcony, lose a few bucks in the casino, hit a few golf balls, toss a basketball, stroll the decks, or have our daily ice cream cone. We skipped playing goofy golf, but it was fun to watch. (Goofy golf is playing golf the stairs.)