vacation – Page 11 – Wanderlist Vacations

MSC Divina: Day 4 Recap

Today was all about getting off the boat and having some fun in St Thomas. After two days at sea, we were ready for a change. We booked an excursion on our own for this stop, one that Jen and I did last month on the Escape, the BOSS Underwater Excursion. We had a blast last time, and couldn’t wait to do it again, this time with Bayley. Note that normally they require cruise ship passengers to book through the line they’re coming in on, but MSC doesn’t contract with this company, so we were free to book it on our own.

Being that we arrived in port after their first trip of the day left, we booked the noon trip. Arriving in St Thomas at 9am, that gave us a couple of hours to walk around the port area. After doing a bit of shopping, we decided to grab some lunch at Shipwreck Tavern, just outside the port area, and we were glad we did. Everyone was extremely friendly, and the food was pretty good. The girls had burgers, and I had a Philly cheesesteak to go along with my rum punch. Definitely a good stop, we’d eat there again.

Just before noon, we headed back through port security to meet up with the excursion contact right outside of our ship. Just like last time, she escorted us to the end of the dock, where we hopped on the boat and headed out to Buck Island. One quick note here, there were only 13 of us on this trip (the three of us, and 10 from the Norwegian Spirit). Last month, the same boat had 49 people. The number of people wasn’t a problem at all last month, but having a smaller number was really cool, as we got twice the amount of time in the underwater scooters because of it. Apparently there were 34 people from the Carnival Valor that were supposed to be on the trip, but their ship was an hour or so late to port, and the BOSS folks couldn’t wait. Sorry guys, but we had fun without you :).

If you’ve never seen an excursion like this before, check out the video I put together from last month’s trip:

Honestly, this is one of the best excursions I’ve done to date, and would highly recommend that anyone coming in to St Thomas check it out. Well worth it, and I can’t say enough about the crew, they’re awesome!

We got back to the dock around 3:30 and decided to head up to the infinity pool at the back of the ship to hang out for a bit. Turns out, the infinity pool isn’t so infinity in port, as the water level is lowered to cover only the regular pool area. Kinda lame, as was the fact that they only had the water slide open from 10am-1pm today. Huh? When we were in port here last month, the Escape’s Aqua Racer was open the whole time, allowing us to give it a go after we got back from our excursion. Oh well.

After getting cleaned up, we headed to dinner. It was another good dinner in the MDR tonight both from a food and service aspect, so we seem to finally be on a roll here! I started with the chilled pineapple pina colada soup, followed by one of the entrees as my second course, the Surimi mac and cheese. Both were good, but it was my main course I was really looking forward to, the prime rib. Mmmmm. This was also the first night that any of us had a steak-based dish where they asked how we wanted it cooked. I ordered mine medium, and was not disappointed. I finished the meal off with the sugar free bread pudding with vanilla ice cream, which was also delicious.

We got through dinner by 7pm, so we decided to hit the early show instead of waiting for our normal seating. Tonight’s show was Treasure Island, complete with pirates, acrobatics, hand balancers, and even an illusion thrown in for good measure (and some other cool stuff I’m sure I’m leaving out). Definitely an awesome show, and one that you shouldn’t miss when sailing the Divina.

After the show and another round of bingo, we headed up to the F1 simulator so that Bayley and I could give it a go. That thing is definitely harder than it looks, but it’s an absolute blast! I was trying to be fully technical with it, focusing on shift points, corner apex, etc, and just kept missing corners and spinning. Bayley drove around the track in 7th gear one lap and easily beat my best time. Grrr…. It’s really fun though 🙂

Not much else for tonight. With an 8am arrival in San Juan on tap, we all wanted to get some sleep, so we didn’t make it to the White Party. There are a couple of annoyances I wanted to call out though:

We’ve walked through the buffet during normal dinner hours a couple of times now, and each time it’s been pretty much only pizza and a few dessert items. Now don’t get me wrong, I could eat the pizza every night if we skipped the MDR, but the lack of overall selection is a bit odd to me. We’ve skipped MDR dinners on other lines before for various reasons, and never had an issue with lack of buffet selection.
If you book on deck 5, mid-ship, just note that you’re likely going to have a lot of extra foot traffic from people heading to the lobby. There’s no way to get to the lobby if you come down the aft elevators other than to walk down the corridors in front of passenger cabins.

Nothing major, just things to be aware of. All in all it’s been a great trip so far, and we’re glad that we have the chance to finally try out MSC!

We don’t have anything planned for San Juan, we’re just going to get off the boat and see where the day takes us. From here in St Thomas, good night!

MSC Divina: Day 3 Recap

Today started off much better (no headaches), but slightly later due to the time change overnight, having moved our clocks forward. I think we got up around 9:30 and had to rush to get ready for the first item on our agenda, the foosball tournament that Bayley wanted to take part in.
It took a while for people to show up, and after her first round victory, she decided to skip the rest, as playing on a moving ship was making her a little dizzy (the heat and humidity in Le Sirene weren’t helping either). She and Jen also wanted to make Christmas bookmarks, which was at the same time, so we headed to the La Cantina Bacco for that, where they ended up making Christmas signs and covering themselves in glitter 🙂

Next on tap was Scattergories in the Golden Jazz Bar, and we had an absolute blast. Jaime is an excellent host for this stuff and really keeps it lively. We lost, but not by too much.

For lunch today, we headed to the buffet. By this time it was raining out, so we expected it to be packed, but since everyone seemed to eat breakfast late, the lunch lines weren’t too bad. I once again had pizza, along with a small piece of bratwurst, which was really good.

After relaxing in the room for a bit, we headed down for bingo. This was definitely the most entertaining bingo session we’ve seen on a ship, as they had the “bingo boys” on stage; five members of the entertainment staff joking around, and doing a different countdown every time a number in the “B” column was called. We didn’t win, but still, definitely worth attending.
Next on the list was another round of trivia. The trivia host, Jaime (same guy from Scattergories) is really good at his job, and makes these events really fun. While we came in a close second, I did notice my previous statement regarding them not giving any trinkets to the winners was wrong. The winning team was seated next to us this round, and they got MSC t-shirts. They had an extra, which they very kindly gave to Bayley :).

After a quick jaunt up to the 14th deck to get ice cream cones, we sat in on Taboo, also hosted by Jaime. Again, quite fun, but no prizes (we were on the winning team, too 😦 ). We had a great afternoon, even with a bout of rain arriving.

On a side note, people need to relax when it comes to trivia on a ship. After Taboo, some guy came up to Jaime telling him he was wrong on one of the earlier questions, and that this guy was on back to back sailings and would be at all trivia events both weeks making sure Jaime got everything right. Wow. It’s all in good fun, so relax and enjoy yourself. Somehow there’s always a know-it-all on board ready to suck the fun out of these events.

Stepping down off my soapbox, we move on to dinner. Tonight was Italian night, which brought with it some excellent food in the MDR. Definitely the best full dinner we’ve had in here yet, in my opinion. I started off with the Antipasto Italiano, with a Caesar salad following, and the Trenette Alla Portofino for my entrée. It really was some of the best pasta I’ve had yet. Shortly before dessert, the waiters paraded tiramisu through the dining room, which they automatically served to everyone. I’m normally not a fan of it, as the espresso (which I don’t like) normally overpowers the rest of it, but this was excellent and I ate my entire piece. We all did add another dessert from the menu too, the nutella ice cream sundae. Also delicious :). If your sailing on the Divina any time soon, Italian night in the MDR is not to be missed!

Our bellies full, we headed to the lobby ~~so the crew could attempt to sell everyone clothes~~ for a fashion show. I was stunned at how packed all levels of the lobby were for it, and credit to the staff, they really seemed to enjoy performing for everyone.

The show tonight was titled Simply Italiano, and was limited to singing and dancing, no acrobatics, unfortunately. These type of shows really aren’t my cup of tea, but to be fair, the singers are some of the best we’ve seen on a ship. Near the end, in a nod to their American passengers, the four singers came out and sang the Star Spangled Banner.

That’s about it for day 3. We’ve had a blast the past two sea days, but are definitely looking forward to some shore time.
On tap for day 4: On to St Thomas! We’ve got the BOSS Underwater Scooters booked again, but not until noon this time, so we’ll probably walk around the port area and do a little shopping before it’s time to meet up with them. Can’t wait!

MSC Divina: Day 1 Recap

Embarkation is a love/hate thing with me. I love that I’m getting on a ship, but I hate the wait and crowds associated with it. We consider it another sea day, so we like to board as early as possible. While I’ve read others state that boarding’s not so smooth with MSC, we found it to be one of the easiest we’ve had.

Ignoring the 2pm time on our boarding passes, we pulled in to the garage at the port at 11:30. From that point, we dropped our luggage with a porter, went through security, and were at the desk checking in by 11:50. Not too shabby. They gave us a boarding card with the number 6 on it, designating our boarding zone, and we headed over to some empty seats to sit. This is where it got amusing.

Shortly after noon they started boarding. One little issue, however; passengers here seemed to be far more pushy than any past boarding I recall. A large group of people were huddled up by the boarding entrance, similar to what you see at an airport gate, and just like those situations, most of them had later boarding numbers. They made multiple announcements to try and get people to move, and sent a guy over to try and force people to make a hole. It only partially worked. You can see the crowd on the left side of this shot.

Regardless, our number was finally called, and we headed up. As I was entering the line, some lady about ran us over with her suitcase as she pushed past, only to stop at the top of the escalator to let us all go so she could wait for someone who was way back in line. Seriously people, you’ll all get on, relax.

Once on board, we walked around a little, checking out the Divina’s beautiful lobby before heading to the buffet for some food. The eats on the buffet were hit or miss. The pizza is outstanding, and easily the best I’ve had on a ship. The burgers and hotdogs were barely warm, fairly bland, and for some reason the burgers had mayonnaise already on them. I look forward to giving the buffet another run when it’s in full swing on a sea day to see if that was a fluke. I definitely look forward to more pizza, too 🙂

After a bit more exploring, we headed back to our rooms to unpack. Jen and I have a balcony on 9 that’s rather small, and has me missing our balcony on the Escape:

Bayley had an interior on 12 that has a better layout and more storage than our room:

Moving on, after an amusing 5pm muster drill that saw most people wearing their life vests when we were told we only had to carry them, we headed to dinner. We have early seating, which is earlier than we’re used to (5:45pm).

Being the first night, I’ll reserve overall judgement, but the service wasn’t the best, and the food was hit or miss. Bayley and I ordered fettuccine Alfredo as our main course, which was really good, but the portion we got was that of a side, not a meal. For dessert, toffee cheesecake and the cannoli. The cannoli was amazing, one of the best I’ve ever had. The cheesecake was just okay.

With dinner over, we headed to the welcome aboard show. The singers were really good, but the song choice seemed to target an older demographic, and we all agreed it was a bit boring. Being that the acrobatics weren’t a part of this one, we’re looking forward to the shows that do include it.

One quick note, this is one of the most beautiful theaters we’ve seen on a ship. There don’t appear to be any obstructed views, and the seats are comfortable, save for the lack of legroom. The seats also appear to be staggered in a way that attempts to avoid your view being blocked by the person in front of you.

After a little stint in the (smoke free!) casino, we hit the 10:30 trivia, which was an absolute blast, before heading off to bed. The entertainment staff on the ship has been great so far, so we’re really looking forward to the sea day activities.

All in all, a good embark day. With two sea days ahead of us, we’re looking forward to exploring the ship, playing some more trivia, and relaxing :).

Feel free to follow us on Twitter or Instagram to see pics of the ship and our stops along the way!

Opinion: Tipping on Cruises

This has been a hot-button issue as long as I can remember, and while I don’t expect my small voice here to change anything, I read something the other day that really made my blood boil, and I felt the need to vent about it.

We’re headed out on the MSC Divina for a Christmas cruise this coming Saturday, so I spent last week following Scott Sanfilippo‘s blog posts covering his time on the Divina. We know little about the ship, or even the line, so it was nice reading about his experience and seeing the pictures he was posting along the way. While reading his day 6 wrap up, this part stuck out:

(Side note: As I’m sitting here writing this, a couple is telling another couple that they removed their gratuities from their account over the missed port call in Great Stirrup Cay. Shameful and quite frankly selfish. The gratuities that are added to each passengers shipboard account daily are divided among the entire ships crew – from people you see every day, to those you don’t see working behind the scenes. The gratuity is what makes up the majority of the salary the crew members make, to pull that away from them over a missed port due to no fault of the crew or cruise line, is just unthinkable. Then to go and tell others to do the same? Ugh. I want to scream!)

Yea, me too, and I’m not even there. To recap: They had to head back to San Juan about 4 hours after they left the dock due to a medical emergency. This forced them to miss the next stop in Great Stirrup Cay, which apparently warrants removal of the gratuities for people who had absolutely nothing to do with the decision. Again, this all happened so the ship could rush someone with a medial emergency back to a hospital, which meant whatever happened was more than the doctor on board was equipped to handle.

That kind of reaction is unconscionable to me. Was it an inconvenience to their vacation? Sure, but how would they have felt if it was a loved one of theirs? I’m sure they’d have been more than happy to see the ship turn around and head back in that case. I know I would. Someone’s health was at risk, sorry you missed your port and had to “suffer” with more sea time and a short stop in Nassau. The Horror!

In my humble opinion, I have yet to hear a valid reason to remove gratuities from my bill. As numerous posts (such as this one and this one) have stated, it’s not just the crew you see that get a cut of your tips, it’s also the ones behind the scenes that helped make your cruise what it was. Other excuses I despise:

“The cruise lines should pay their employees a living wage and not make them depend on tips”: Okay, that’s true (I’d say the same for wait staff on land as well), but you removing your tips to “protest” it (example here) does nothing but hurt the people who worked hard for you on your cruise. No one upstairs cares, because it does’t negatively impact them directly. You want to change things? Write the CEO. Get the word out in the media. Do something productive that doesn’t involve shorting the staff of their income.

“Tipping isn’t a thing in my country”: Neat. It is here. Do the right thing and take care of the people who took care of you instead of thumbing your nose at the practice and refusing to tip. If you don’t want to tip, don’t travel to a region where it’s standard practice.

“I just tip the cabin steward and waiters directly and remove the automatic gratuities so I can make sure the money gets to the people who actually took care of me”: Well, in doing so, you shorted the people you don’t see who also worked hard to make your vacation a good one.

“My <waiter / cabin steward / whoever> didn’t do a good job, so I removed the gratuities”: Yea, sometimes bad service from a crew member happens for whatever reason. I’m not punishing the rest of the staff for one person’s bad day/week (we all have them), I’ll leave the tips in place and contact the cruise line later to pass along the issues I had with that one crew member. That’s just me, though.

Those are probably the most common reasons I hear for people to remove tips, so I’ll get off my soapbox now. All I ask is that anyone considering removing their tips take a step back and put serious thought into the impact it will have. A lot of people on these ships work hard to give their passengers a great vacation every week.

Five Delicious Eateries on the Norwegian Escape

The Norwegian Escape boasts 28 possible places to fill your belly as part of their whole Freestyle cruising setup. Being that there was no standard MDR with assigned dining times, we decided to give a few specialty restaurants a try, and pre-purchased the 3 meal dining package. Prior to this, I think we’ve only eaten in two or three specialties on all of our past cruises, so this was a big change for us. When it was all over, we hit 12 different restaurants over the course of this trip, including the free options and Supper Club.

We spent a bit of time trying to decide where to eat on the dining package, and after some back and forth finally settled on Teppanyaki, Moderno Churrascaria, and La Cucina. We set up reservations for all three ahead of time out of concern for seating availability once we got on board, as we only had certain nights available due to our conference schedule.

So how was the food? Honestly, it was all really good, which I wasn’t expecting. This is all going probably to come off sounding like I’m trying to suck up to NCL, but I mean every word of it. If we didn’t like something, I’d be more than happy to call it out, like I keep doing with the Supper Club. I truly left the ship amazed at how good these five restaurants were. Let’s take a quick look at the pay restaurants we ate at, in the order we dined there:

Teppanyaki: We love Japanese steakhouses. The ones we usually eat at are mostly chains (Kabutos, Nakato, Benihana), with our favorite being Kabutos. This blew those away. Absolutely delicious from start to finish. Service was great, the food was great, and our chef did an outstanding job. It really set the bar for the rest of the cruise in all apsects, as it was the first real meal we had on board. I had the filet and green tea cake. The fruit pic is my wife’s dessert, which the menu claimed to be exotic fruits. She liked it, but didn’t really feel it was all that exotic. Regardless, we left quite happy. One thing to note here, you never run out of rice. They cook enough for everyone to have at least two servings, so you can ask the chef at any time for more, as it’s sitting there on the grill staying warm throughout your meal. Another thing on the rice, they grill it up with garlic and butter, something we’ve never seen in this food genre. As my wife put it: I didn’t think fried rice could be improved, but I was wrong. The rice is amazing!

Food Republic: We decided to eat here on a whim on night three. We hadn’t planned to pay for any food above the three we’d already booked, but it was well worth it. You order everything on an iPad at your table instead of the traditional server-based ordering, and the food itself was outstanding. Jen had chicken skewers and sushi (don’t recall specifics on that, unfortunately) and she really liked it. I had the 18oz Wagyu bone-in rib eye and it was some of the best meat I had all week, and was perfect with the chimichurri sauce that came on the side, although it stood on its own just fine too. As shown in the picture (which I wish was better quality), it arrived pre-cut, and every piece was perfectly cooked. If you only eat at one specialty on the Escape, this one should be at the top of your list. As shown, we had a window seat and ate as the sun set, which made the experience that much better.

Cagney’s Steakhouse: Again, not on our original list, but we totally backed in to this one. Some friends or ours, also fellow agents, had been invited here by one of the NCL execs, Alex Pinelo, and they were able to invite two other couples along, with us being one of them, which we appreciated very much. We can’t thank him enough for the hospitality, and I have to say that the food, wine, and service was excellent! One of the best ship-board steakhouses we’ve eaten at, with our filet being perfectly cooked all the way through. Didn’t hurt that this happened on my birthday, so added bonus for me! We both had the baked potato soup and the 8oz filet. I had mac and cheese as my side (that was just okay) and the yummy chocolate cake for dessert, while Jen had the apple crisp. I think my only issue is how long it all took. Start to finish, I think we were there for more than two and a half hours, possibly three. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth though, it was an excellent evening.

Moderno Churrascaria: I love a good Brazilian steakhouse, so this was mostly my choice. Any place where people keep coming by my table with meat is good by me. I don’t remember a lot about the salad bar, other than there being plenty of choices, so I’ll go straight to the meat. My favorite was probably the signature steak, which if I recall was some sort of flank cut. Really, really good. The sausage was also a favorite of mine. Mmmmm. In addition to the signature, my wife’s other favorite was the grilled pineapple, which was also popular with both tables around us. The only filet I had was the well done one as it turned out, but by the time I realized it I was too full to try the medium version unfortunately. That was the only issue I had all night, and only an issue because I wasn’t paying attention when he said it was well done. All in all a really good night, and as usual I left the green button up way too long :). The plate of meat you see was shot right after I realized that and flipped the card to red. The dessert is a delicious cake they brought me for my birthday, which could easily have been shared with three to four people.

La Cucina: We ate here on our last night, and scored a table outside. If the weather is right, this is definitely the way to go, the ambiance outside is outstanding. Eating a good meal out on a nice quiet deck at night? Yes please! We both had the meat lasagna, and agreed it was excellent. There’s a place near us (Arooji’s Wine Room) that has some of the best lasagna I’ve ever eaten, and La Cucina beat that. Hard to do, in my opinion. I’d definitely eat here again, especially if we could sit outside. We both had the beef carpaccio in addition to the aforementioned lasagna. I had the chocolate torte for dessert, while Jen had the lemon curd ricotta cheesecake. That chocolate torte was super rich, but I powered through and finished it 🙂

That about covers the pay restaurants we ate at. As mentioned in the last post, all of the other restaurants we ate at (Taste, Savor, Margaritaville, Manhattan Room, O’Sheehan’s, Garden Cafe buffet) were good too, with the notable exception of the disappointing food in the Supper Club for the Brat Pack show. We were very happy to see that Norwegian’s put some effort into improving the quality of the food on board, it’s definitely paying off. If anyone has specific questions on any of the dining venues we ate at, feel free to ask in the comments!

Full disclosure: I’m very much a meat and potatoes guy, and in no way claim to be a foodie, so YMMV 🙂

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