Every time I saw the words “Port of Miami” listed on a sign from the taxi cab I sat in intended to take us there, I could only imagine it being said in the gruff voice of Rick Ross, followed by a low rolling “BOSS”. Miami has just become a center of cool in America in recent years, just looking from the windows of a yellow Crown Vic, it appears exotic in ways I simply never remembered it being as a kid. There was no time to experience anything about the city and its culture; this just a journey on the way to a destination.
The line of boats in the port ended with the Norwegian Pearl, our home away from home for the next week. NCL only really had one line into the cruise terminal for customs, something I wish had been changed to accommodate suite passengers such as myself. Once in the building though, we got to head to a special check in area and were quickly whisked onto the ship. We took some brief walks to inspect its interior and to drop off valuables in our safe before heading up to lunch at Cagney’s.
We took part in precious few activities on board, and the day of disembarkation would be little different. We enjoyed the view of our ship departing the port from the balcony, sat in the room, sat on the balcony, sat in the room, walked around and gawked at stuff, unpacked – the usual sorts of opening day cruise things. We went to the opening night show, which featured the generic assortment of things – short set by the comedian, songs from the larger production shows, promotion of shopping talks, anyone who’s cruised knows the drill. What surprised us was the cruise director – our first repeat in this category. Matt Sole, who was our cruise director with Royal Caribbean when we sailed the coast or Norway, was now our cruise director on Norwegian as we sailed the Caribbean. We’d get a chance the next day to briefly shake hands with him and tell him our story – we were informed he has just signed up with NCL 6 weeks prior and this was his last cruise as a cruise director before becoming the Epic’s head of entertainment. We all agreed that it was quite a thing.
Dinner came early this evening with the only stop inside an upcharge restaurant – the soon to be departed Mambos. The food was quite decent, and the bonus of a free margarita to go with it can’t necessarily be easily criticized (even if it was on the weak side). We had considered heading downstairs to the Russian themed Summer Palace for dinner, but we were hungry, and we liked the menu, and there was nobody there. We retired early for the evening, expecting an early rise.
The next morning, we did something we rarely do – we skipped showering. Heading up to Cagney’s in bathing suits to eat our daily breakfast there, we didn’t look entirely out of place either. From there, it was an impromptu backstage tour to the tendering area on Deck 4 for our line cut of everyone else to get onto Great Stirrup Cay, NCL’s private island. Norwegian basically invented the idea of the cruise ship private island with their purchase of Great Stirrup Cay back in the 1970s, and it presently is undergoing heavy renovation to make it more accommodating for the number of passengers getting dropped off there. Much like Princess Cays, there are two separate beach areas – one a quiet “adults only”, the other a general area that has children. What was unbeknownst to us as those kind of people who rent clam shells is that irregardless of what the map says, there are in fact clam shells in the adults only area. By the time we discovered this fact, it was too late, and we were going to have to deal with families, in particular small children, making sand castles less than 5 feet from us. Privacy – clearly not at a premium there.
We ventured into the clear water, but didn’t necessarily stay too long or even snorkel as we had planned. The area where swimming took place was actually comparatively small. The beach is conical, in that the sand curves around, and the beach stretches out into a somewhat pointed space where swimming is allowed. While the island that NCL has is much larger than Princess Cays, our other experience with private islands, it seems like it gets mighty filled up fast. Lots of bodies in that water. Oh, and it was cold. I know, its January, this is the Bahamas. But still, it was cold, even to us.
Away from the “sanctuary” of the clam shell, we walked around some of the island. There’s a ton of empty space and clearly some folk, much more adventurous than we were, had determined to take the lounge chairs and put them in areas they wanted, far the hell away from screaming kids and the Hippo Waterslide (which, I should note, is not shaped like a hippo at all). There are strange bodies of water, scraggly trees, and a ton of construction is going on. Tons. If we were going back, we’d be out there lugging the chairs some distance just to get away. That, or we’d pack some hiking shoes, grab some water and go walk around the island, or at least far enough to come back for lunch. Back at the clamshell, we also thought briefly about going back in the water only to discover that yes, we aren’t crazy, it really is cold. Also there was a sighting of toplessness with a guest who was apparently unaware as to the customs in this part of the world. Not complaining, necessarily, but they were more like middle aged Russian woman breasts than something I would have been really excited to see.
Lunch on private islands is a markedly suspect affair. Food is generally generic “BBQ style” cuisine such as hot dogs and hamburgers, and long lines are involved because, hey, 3000 people all eating simultaneously in a short period of time. Unlike Princess Cays, which had two different buildings serving food (the one by the adults only area being completely not packed), NCL has one. And since this is a cruise consisting largely of Brazilians and Europeans, the buffet line resembles a riot. Throw in a healthy number of flies attracted to grilled meat, and you have a not-all-that-appetizing situation. We ate, but we hardly stuffed ourselves. We’d save that for the boat. Hell, its the same food there as here, isn’t it?
We took a fairly early tender boat out, with a sense of some disappointment. Whereas we came away from Roatan drunk and happy and Princess Cays just thinking “not so bad” there’s the feeling from us that Great Stirrup Cay has a long ways to go. Where we were, it was packed and loud. This wasn’t a tropical getaway as much as it was a stereotypical mass of humanity on an overdeveloped beach. Who wants that? Having sat on a beach only months prior with no one in sight for perhaps a quarter mile or more in either direction, this wasn’t exactly what we wanted any more.
Dinner was, again, somewhat random in choosing. We contacted our butler at around 8:30PM or so to order dinner from the menu downstairs for delivery in the suite, but apparently he was getting worked out very hard. Not exactly the happiest dude in the world to take that order. I understand you have 18 rooms to work with, but we did give you an hour to work with. The food from down in Summer Palace that was brought to us was very good. There was also a show that we saw in the main area where I think old standards were sung and danced to, but that didn’t feature any sort of really cool set pieces or anything like that. In other words, it was totally forgettable. Still, we were on our cruise and enjoying ourselves with the best stuff still to come.
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