ice cream – Page 5 – Wanderlist Vacations

Touring the Getaway

As mentioned, the Florida trip I’ve been writing about wasn’t for pleasure, we were down there in training for our CruiseOne franchise. I’ll cover that more in my next post, but back to the trip, the week ended with a tour of the Norwegian Getaway. We’d never done a ship tour like this before, so we weren’t sure what to expect, but I have to say that we really enjoyed it.

First, a ship tour gives you the high of getting on a cruise ship and the low of getting off all in the span of about 3 hours. It was surreal standing in the passenger boarding area waiting for our guide to come get us, and I admit to being jealous of all those who were about to get on and get out of town for a week. Here I was, standing there dressed in business casual, watching a whole bunch of people walking by in shorts and sandals. Made me want to book something right then and there.

Once our guide arrived and all of our people made it through security, we headed for the gangway. We were boarding shortly after the previous guests had disembarked, and right before new passengers started getting on board. With this in mind, they hustled us up pretty fast to The Haven, one of the areas I was interested in the most. We needed to get through the show cabins and off those floors fast, as those guests board first, and they obviously don’t want us trapsing through guest rooms as those guests are arriving. Now, my interest in seeing this area is because I’m somewhat skeptical of the “ship within a ship” concept that The Haven presents, especially as more lines move to similar models. I can see the pluses (no chair hogs, a quieter pool area) but I’m also not really the kind of guest that this model fits. I like being out and active and participating in the on board activities, so I’m not really sure I’d spend much time in this area, outside of when we’re in our room. I could very well be making poor assumptions about The Haven, so maybe it’s something you have to experience first hand. In any case, I admit to being impressed with the rooms we saw. The one thing that really intrigued me were the forward balconies, which provide an awesome view. It would seem you’d potentially get a ton of wind out there on some days, making the balcony less useful, but that’s only based on my experience on the forward outside areas on some Carnival ships. If anyone’s stayed in one of NCLs forward balconies and can comment, feel free to add your input. Anyway, here are a few shots from the rooms we saw on the Haven floors:

Moving on, after we finished in The Haven, we moved on to touring regular cabins. For the most part, they were pretty standard fare, with the exception of the spa cabins. Interesting location for the tub 🙂

Another set of cabins that stood out were the solo cabins, in an area aptly named the Studio. Solo cabins are somewhat rare on contemporary lines, so offering up a cabin where single cruisers only pay a single rate is a plus. Yes, the cabin’s noticeably smaller, but still, you’re not paying up to 200% of a single fare to cruise alone. The Studio also comes with access to a private lounge area, and frankly, the decor of the area is pretty well done, imo. I managed to get a shot of one of the rooms while we were in there:

After we finished our cabin tour, it was time for lunch. The Getaway has plenty of food options, and the one set up for our group that day was Taste. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but we’ve only been on NCL one other time, and were far from impressed with the MDR food. We were part of a large group on that sailing, and no one in the group liked it, especially the foodie. The specialty restaurants were good on that trip, but having to pay for decent food left a bad taste in our mouth (pun intended 😉 ). This was the other part of the tour I was really interested in, as I wanted to see first-hand just how much the food has changed. In short: I was pleasantly surprised. We had a full menu, 3 courses. I had the chicken nachos as my appetizer, meatball sub as my meal, and the peanut butter cup cheesecake for dessert. All delicious, except the fries. They were okay, but tasted like they’d been grabbed off the pool grill.

After lunch, we had an hour left to tour the ship on our own, all while guests who had boarded were also walking around, which gave us a sense of how crowded a ship this size might be. Things we found:

The ship is very family friendly, which didn’t come as much of a surprise. We chatted with the staff in the kids clubs, who all seemed like they were very good at what they did.
The spa staff was just as friendly, and not just to us, but to all of the actual guests they were talking to. This was a big departure from the experience we had with the spa staff on our last cruise on Celebrity, who weren’t friendly at all.
The ship is lloooonnngggg. We walked one floor of cabins from end to end, and frankly, it felt like we’d never get to the end.
Outside of the previous bullet, the ship never felt “too big” like I was afraid a ship that can hold 4000 passengers would. We walked around the buffet after the vast majority of boarding had taken place, but people seemed to be flowing pretty well. This held true in most other areas as well.
The decor is well done compared to other ships in class. Didn’t come off as the normal, classic cruise ship gaudy.
The staff, including our guide, were all super friendly. Yes, I get that wearing our guest badges gave them indication that we were likely in the travel business, and they may have stepped up their game, but I’d like to think they were being genuine, and seeing the way they interacted with the regular guests, I’m leaning towards that.

Honestly, after touring the Getaway, we’d be interested in trying it on an actual cruise. I realize that 3 hours on-board really isn’t enough to pass true judgement, but it was enough time to get me interested in trying NCL again after swearing them off 8 years ago. It was also enough time to make me miss being on a cruise 🙂

Here are a few more pics from our tour. Sorry some of these are blurry, we were constantly on the move, and I was doing my best not to get in the way of any their actual guests.

Another Trip to Florida, Part 3

I wanted to be sure to cover the food we had on the trip. Being that we were there for training, we only had to cover dinners for ourselves. Breakfast was covered by hotel vouchers, and lunch was catered at CruiseOne’s facility. One pitfall of travelling for me is that I take full advantage of being able to eat out. I love food, but that’s not to say I’m a foodie. Far from it. I’m very much a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and I don’t stray from that formula often. That combination, when travelling, often ends up in me consuming more calories than I should, which is never a good thing when I’m trying to keep off the 60+lbs I worked hard to drop a couple of years ago. You only live once, though, and I do like to try new places.

So what did we eat that was memorable? I’ll leave Tsunami off, since I covered it in part 1, and just move on to what we had in Ft Lauderdale:

1. Moonlite Diner. Interesting little place, with plenty of choices. This was within walking distance to our hotel, but we ended up driving since we had other errands to run. I had the Ultimate Grilled Cheese with hash browns, and that side lived up to my standards. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s soggy hash browns, and this place served them up crispy, as they should be. The sandwich was good as well. My wife had the veggie burger with hash browns, and she enjoyed her burger quite a bit. The service was fine, and while the guy who initially served us was nice, he seemed like he’d much rather be somewhere else. About half way through the dinner, a friendly waitress took over and took good care of us. It’s somewhere I’d eat again if we were in the area, but it wasn’t my favorite of all the places we went.

2. Carlucci’s Italian Ristorante. This is some of the best lasagna I’ve had in a while. Few places seem to use real ricotta these days, so tasting that in Carlucci’s was a nice change of pace. The garlic bread was pretty good too, but that garlic really had some kick to it. I accidentally dropped a chunk on my salad, and when I ate that bite, wow :). That reminds me, they have a really good balsamic vinaigrette, which is a dressing I normally don’t enjoy. I decided to give it a shot at our waiter’s recommendation, and was glad I did. My wife had the baked ziti, a dish she freuently judges italian restaurants by, and loved it. A definite winner of a choice in our opinion.

3. Umberto’s. Later in the week (Friday) we were looking for some pizza, and one of the people in our class from Florida recommended this place. My daughter had driven over from St Pete to hang out with us, and joined us for dinner here. She got some alfredo dish, which she really liked, and my wife and I split a pizza. Delicious, and well worth straying from the hotel. Afterwards, we went across the street to Alice’s Ice Cream Emporium for some gelato. Really good stuff, highly recommend stopping if you’re in the mood for a tasty treat.

Our last dinner in Ft Lauderdale was at a place along the water taxi route. We’d been given free tickets to ride it, and held on to them until Saturday night. It was fun to hang out on the boat and ride around the area, seeing some nice houses and yachts along the way.

When we finally got hungry, we got off at stop 4, 15th Street Fisheries. Having never been there, we weren’t sure what to expect, but looking over the menus, decided to eat upstairs overlooking the water. We ended up with an incredible sunset view to go along with the meal:

As far as the meal goes, it was spectacular. Staying true to my roots, I had meat and potatoes, or more specifically, the prime rib. I really wasn’t prepared for just how big that thing was. I wish I’d taken a picture, but it’s safe to say it was a very delicious monster that I wasn’t able to finish. My wife had the Ahi Tuna, and really enjoyed it and the mashed sweet potatoes that came with it. The service was stellar as well, and contributed to our decision to spend a little extra to share a couple of desserts. I chose the Ghirardelli chocolate brownie, which was spectacular. Cooked perfectly, and still gooey on the inside, we really enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

I think that about covers it. I did leave a couple of nights out, as one was a trade show night with catered snacks, and the other we just hit the local Longhorn, and I really didn’t feel it was necessary to talk about a national chain. My next post, covering our tour of the Norwegian Getaway, will include a review of the lunch we had on-board. Our one cruise on NCL, back in 2006, left a lot to be desired food-wise, so it was definitely nice to get a sampling of how their food quality has evolved.

Visiting Bermuda – Day 2

Our planned itinerary for day 2 meant taking the ferry to St George, and working back towards Hamilton from there:

Visit the Unfinished Church
Walk around St George
Visit the aquarium and zoo
Tour Crystal Caves
Visit Blue Hole Park

But, much like day 1, it didn’t quite go as planned. What hurt us the most was getting up late. I was up at my normal time, around 7am, but everyone else seemed to be moving in slow motion. We ate breakfast a bit late as a result, and got off the ship at 10:32am. I only know the exact time because I happened to look at my phone to see what time it was as the 10:30am St George ferry was pulling away. Those only run once an hour, so at that point we knew our schedule was blown since the next one wasn’t until 11:30. To kill time, we walked through some of the shops around the dock area, and just after 11am, joined the ever-growing line for the next ferry.

That next ferry was 100% full, and not everyone made it on. Fortunately, they had another one waiting in the wings to handle the overflow for those who didn’t make the first one. We did make it on though, and were on our way to St George. The ride is roughly 40min long, and while on board, members of the tourism office talked about the things to do in St George, answered questions, and handed out local maps to anyone who wanted one. This wasn’t a sales pitch, it was just the local tourism board being helpful, and it was a very nice touch.

Arriving at St George, we decided to walk around the dock area a bit before heading up to the unfinished church. A few shots from the dock area, including our ferry heading back to Kings Wharf:

After walking through a few shops, we headed up to the unfinished church, and yes, it’s definitely unfinished :). The tourism people on the ferry mentioned that a couple of weeks ago, some cruise passengers got married in it, but it wasn’t open when we were there, so we just had to enjoy it from the outside.

Our visit to the unfinished church complete, we headed to the nearest bus stop to make our way to the Crystal Caves. Once we got off the bus, we found something I’d read about a number of times before our cruise, the Swizzle Inn. Being that it was past lunch time by now, we decided to stop for a bite.

I had the Swizzle burger pizza, and it was absolutely delicious. I also tried a Rum Swizzle, a signature on the island, and while it was good, I’m not sure I get the “YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS!!!” hype people who’ve been there give off. Anyway, our stomachs full, we walked down the road to the Crystal Caves. There are actually two caves you can tour here, Crystal and Fantasy. We chose to stick with Crystal, but it did seem like a number of people were doing both. The tour of Crystal takes around 30 minutes, and is quite interesting. Our guide, while obviously very knowledgeable, was a bit overdramatic. It really seemed like his act was geared for a group of 1st graders, and not a bunch of grownups, but he was very friendly, and we learned quite a bit about the caves.

By the time our tour ended, it was too late to get in to the aquarium and zoo, so we headed back up the road to get some ice cream. Right across the street from Swizzle Inn is Bailey’s Ice Cream, and it’s definitely worth stopping here for a delicious treat

Once we were done, we decided to hop on the next bus to Hamilton, and catch the ferry back to Kings Wharf. Getting up late really limited what we could get done, but it also left us with more to see the next time we come to Bermuda. The bus ride from the caves back to Hamilton was very scenic, and gave us some time to relax and cool off. Upon arriving in Hamilton, we hit a couple of shops, then hopped on the next ferry back to the dock. We walked around the shops at the dock a little more as well, and my wife and I decided to stop at the water activity stand and get some info on the jet ski tours. The only thing we had on tap for day 3 was the beach, so we figured if the jet ski tours looked interesting, we’d slip that in too. After talking to the woman at the stand, we were hooked, and decided to book two doubles for the next morning.

With that set, and all of us being hot and tired, we headed back to the ship to get ready for dinner. Day 2 on the island was complete!

The Journey Begins…

I figured I’d start my blog off with a recap of our last trip, a cruise to Bermuda. The cruise was a high school graduation present to our daughter, and our way of having one last family vacation before she heads off to college. This trip was slightly different from past ones, however, we had to stop and pick up her boyfriend along the way, as he was coming with us. That’s where this post comes in, talking about the Inn we stayed at near his house in Annapolis.

We headed up the Thursday before the cruise, for a two day stay, with reservations at Gibson’s Lodgings of Annapolis. This place is right next to the Naval Academy, in a cool little part of Annapolis. It’s the first time we’ve ever stayed at anything resembling a B&B, so we were very much looking forward to it. A couple of days prior, they’d emailed us to let us know the power would be out Saturday morning from 2am until 10am at the latest. They’d gotten last minute notice from the power company of some required work in the area, and offered to let us cancel without penalty for the inconvenience. We were planning on leaving for NYC pretty Saturday morning anyway, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to us, and we chose to stay. They credited us $50 and upgraded us to a king suite.

We got to Annapolis mid-afternoon and stopped to check in and drop our bags. The place is kinda cool, and the people working there were very friendly. The woman who checked us in showed us around, pointed out the snacks, where the breakfast items would be, and pointed us to our room. The room itself was nice, and had one of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in. Thanks to the great location, right in the harbor area, there’s plenty to see and do, as well. After dropping our daughter off at her boyfriend’s house, my wife and I came back and walked around the shops for a bit, before heading back over to their house for dinner. Afterwards, we made our way back to the waterfront and hit up Storm Bros for some delicious ice cream. Stomachs full, we headed back to the room for a good night’s sleep.

Friday morning, we got up and went downstairs for something to eat. Note that this isn’t a traditional B&B (which they’re perfectly clear on), and as a result don’t provide a hot breakfast. They do provide plenty of other stuff though, very much like a continental breakfast at any normal hotel, which was just fine with us. After breakfast, we headed out for her boyfriend’s graduation, followed by a trip to Pusser’s on the waterfront for a post-graduation lunch. Yummy stuff. My wife and I followed that up with some more shopping in the area, and some more ice cream as well, this time at Annapolis Ice Cream Company, which was excellent. When we returned to the room, we found the staff had put flashlights on everyone’s doors for us to use in case we needed to get up while the power was out. Nice touch!

Friday night was the one part of the stay that really sucked, to put it bluntly. That power outage Gibson’s warned us about? Well, it was because 6 power poles on their street had to be replaced overnight. About 11:00pm the crews rolled in, and they weren’t quiet at all. I’d guess that between the yelling, and general work noise, I got maybe 3 hours of sleep before our alarm went off at 6am. Nice of the crews from the local power company to be as loud as possible all night.

Regardless of the power company issues, we enjoyed the Inn, and would stay there again (sans-power crews, of course :)). I’d definitely recommend it for anyone staying in the area, as it’s in a perfect spot near the waterfront.

Next up, a recap of our cruise on the Celebrity Summit. In the meantime, enjoy a few pictures from the waterfront area of Annapolis!

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