The Traveling Man

I'm sure it's that darn AI doing its thing by autocorrecting your spelling, but I just have to ask, did the porter enjoy his breakfast bagels?

One person's waste of money is another person's ace in the hole. My wife and I each had careers which sometimes called on us, especially her, to drop what we were doing at work, jet off to a client's office, and take care of business. That frequently meant overseas travel at the drop of a hat. Maintaining a current passport was essential. We frequently were able to take a few vacation days either before or after the work assignment to travel in foreign countries and receive the benefits of having someone else (our employers) pay for our travel. Frequently when one of us had a work assignment in a foreign country, the other one of us could tag along. The "plus one" had to pay for their own airfare and some meals, but the hotel was covered. We were fortunate to have flexible schedules to permit this. Sometimes we even booked a last minute cruise after the work assignment. The cost of a passport works out to just over one dollar per month, so for us, and for maybe many others, the flexibility of having a current passport is well worth its minimal expense. Naturally, the one time that I did not renew my passport in time to keep it current was the time my wife traveled to Japan on short notice and I wasn't able to join her. Lesson learned.

I agree that Westbound TAs are more relaxed, with their 25 hour days, than Eastbound, with their 23 hour days. OTOH, losing one hour of sleep each night for six or seven days is a lot less stressful for me than losing an entire night's sleep (I never have been able to sleep on a plane) and trying to stay awake for 34 or 35 straight hours. I can manage the flight back from Europe. We get home in time for a late dinner, then it's straight to bed after being awake for about 21 or 22 hours.

The best steak I ever had on a ship was in La Cucina on the Epic. The steaks in Cagney's are OK, I suppose, and those in Le Bistro are spectacular, especially when they still had the Five Pepper Steak on the menu (Boeuf au Cinque Poivre), but that steak in La Cucina topped them all.

My wife used to travel for business. A lot. She is quite the adventurous gourmand, so no room service meals in the hotel room for her. Sometimes she would meet up with colleagues for dinner, but since many of them fell into the rut of Dunkin for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch, and KFC for dinner, she frequently would dine alone. Take a book, ignore the stares, and savor the flavors. Bon appetite!

Good advice.

First, it's always good to inform your stateroom attendant that you will be continuing on your travels for the next leg of the cruise, but that you will be changing rooms. Forewarned is forearmed. I usually turn in a bag of laundry the day before turnaround day. We tag it with our new stateroom number. That clears out some space in our luggage, so we don't have to worry about cramming in everything else. Your laundry will be returned to you in your new room, usually in a day or two. The morning of turnaround, we pack our bags and leave them inside our room, with luggage tags indicating our stateroom number for the second half of our B2B. The stateroom attendant will see to it that the bags get delivered to the new room. Depending upon which port will serve as your turnaround, you may be required to leave your room, you may have to leave the ship, or you may even have to leave and stay off the ship until a certain time later that day. We usually take a tour to fill the hours, but sometimes we just sit in the cruise terminal and take advantage of their free internet connection. As you probably already know, once you return to board the ship, you bypass the check-in line and treat it just like any other intermediate port of call. NCL usually will give you a tag to wear which indicates that you are a returning or continuing passenger. I've never done a B2B where we were allowed to stay on board, but I have read that others have. We have changed rooms on about four different B2Bs and have never had a problem.

My personal preference is for East Walk Off. You don't have to conform to a set departure time, so you can set your own schedule. Unless we have a close connection, as you do for this trip, we usually enjoy a leisurely breakfast, go back to our room to wash up and gather our things, then stroll off the ship among the stragglers. Our primary luggage has wheels, we try to pack light (although my wife's bag usually tops 40 pounds), and our backpacks / camera bags / her purse are fairly light. We don't like to leave our bags in the hallway the night before departure, so we finish packing after breakfast on departure day. Just our preference, YMMV. The baggage claim area in Manhattan is huge and not well lit. It could be an issue finding your bags. Not saying that it will be a problem, just that it could be. The cruise terminal has both escalators and elevators, so you should not have any trouble hauling your bag up or down stairs. Assuming your ship arrives on the advertised schedule and there are no snags clearing Customs, you should have no trouble making it to the curb by 11:00. Bon voyage.

We never have sailed into Miami following a trans Atlantic cruise, but we have sailed there after a closed-loop Caribbean trip. We were on a small ship, the Sky. Even though we have Global Entry cards, which really speed things up when passing through Customs at airports, it took us more than 90 minutes to get from the ship to the curb. I would suggest planning for delays during debarkation.

Ketchikan brags about being the rainiest place in North American, typically about 150 inches or so per year.

We were on the Joy in Alaska on 4 July 2019, the 60th anniversary of statehood. Funny thing - nothing was ever said about the anniversary, there were no celebrations on board and I don't recall anything special going on in any of the ports. We did have well over 3000 passengers on board who had never sailed with NCL before. At the other end of the spectrum, there were no Ambassador Latitudes members, there wasn't a Diamond Level then, we were the only two Platinum Plus (as Sapphire was known at the time), there were a few Platinum, enough Gold and Silver to barely justify a small venue for the Latitudes party, and a handful of Bronze. It was the most newbie cruise I've ever taken.

No, I experienced it this past October when I hosted the CC M&G on the Dawn. I'm not sure about how it works on ships with a Haven restaurant, but you probably are correct about that.

When you log into your NCL account, select the "Explore & Plan" option for your booking. Then click on the "Dining" option. Follow the links to "Specialty Dining Package" for full information and to sign up.

They may not be able to add seats to a bus, but sometimes the Shorex staff can communicate with the local tour provider to schedule an additional bus or to swap out a larger bus for a smaller one than they had planned to use. Out of 40+ cruises and more than 100 excursions that we planned to book through the cruise line, we have booked fewer than a dozen in advance. When we waited until we were on board before booking, sometimes we were put on a wait list before being confirmed, but we only have been shut out of our preferred choice twice. We were able each of those times to book an acceptable alternate tour. If there is a bucket list tour on your itinerary, book it as soon as possible. If you are flexible and would be happy with any of several tours that are offered, however, you should be fine waiting until you are on board before booking.

The issue is less about when the ship will let you disembark and more about when the local authorities come on duty at the port terminal. You will need to go through passport control before leaving for the airport, and those border patrol / customs agents may not be available to check your documents in time for you to get to your 10:00 AM flight. If you can possibly fit it into your schedule, you may want to take the suggestion from @Ellis1138 and spend an extra day in Iceland.

That's true. The General Manager also sometimes will give out VIP status just because he takes a shine to you.

Asawi is correct. I have used it successfully on several NCL ships.

So roughly 1/4 of the passengers are Platinum or above. Sounds about right for a TA.

While it's true that the menu usually doesn't change, it does feature several different appetizers, main courses, and desserts. If you're an omnivore, you should be able to enough options for several nights. As others have mentioned, many, perhaps most, Haven guests have prepaid access to specialty restaurants for more than half the nights during a typical cruise. That means those Haven guests only "have" to eat dinner in the Haven three or four times. I can only assume that NCL believes that the fixed Haven menu is adequate. The few times we have sailed in the Haven, including a 14 day cruise in 2016, the Haven menu was fine, although it did get repetitive by the end of the trip.

I haven't bothered to check every time I have cruised, but every time I have checked the Haven was fully booked, even on cruises just after the COVID shutdown when many ships were sailing at half their overall capacity. I've only sailed in the Haven a few times, so I can't really say how many of the bar stools were occupied at any given time.

That really is very slow.

That's faster on the download than my service at home, but the upload side is less than one-fourth my home connection.

Well, sheep! How will life go on?

We took the Gatun tour the last time we sailed with NCL to Panama. It allowed us a couple of hours in the information center that overlooks the locks. That was very informative. The train trip across the isthmus was a lot of fun. The bus ride back was a bit of a yawner, but overall it was a day well spent. On an Alaskan cruise several years ago, we wanted to ride the White Pass & Yukon Railway in Skagway. NCL offered a trip which was exclusive to NCL, but it was powered by Diesel locomotives. We wanted to ride behind the steam engine. HAL had a ship in port the same day as us and they had chartered both a Diesel powered excursion and the steam train for their guests. Fortunately, the steam train excursion, which cost a bit more, was not fully booked by HAL, so we were able to purchase tickets directly from the WP&Y office and join the HAL passengers. Well, not exactly join their guests. We were like the red-headed stepchildren. They had five first class coaches with all-you-can-consume snacks and spirits included. We rode in a separate car where snacks and beverages were available for purchase. Our car, however, was placed right behind the locomotive, so we got a much more entertaining ride, being so close to the sounds of the engine as it strained to climb the hill.

@Beezo Thank you very much for posting this. Interesting that while they mentioned that the docks could handle two BA+ class ships, they illustrated it with a rendering of one of NCL's smallest ships, the Sun, which rarely makes its way to GSC.