Analog187

It's called expressing an opinion which in this case is based upon a lot of anecdotal data. Did I say everyone? Did I say you? Did I say these people are monsters? No. There's nothing forcing you to read through this thread if you have an issue with me.

100%. Luckily we can afford to go on a lot of trips but I had to point out the good and the bad because for someone else, this might be a dream vacation that they saved up for. Perhaps someone like that might think about going for a similar cruise with a different line that is much cheaper? That was kind of where I was coming from.

How about this. I can get a Jack and Coke as part of the drink package but I can't get the exact same drink made without the Jack. That's an upcharge! But they can give me a can of coke as part of my drink package. A can of water is part of the drink package but the can bottle with like 4 extra ounces in it or whatever is not. They do some weird things.

LCS was a dual venue with BBK. LCS is gone so it is just BBK now. They said there was nothing they could do. As I've said, there were a number of things I didn't get into where their attitude was "tough luck". My guess is that they turn the AC off at night but since a lot of older people like it warm, no one really complaints. Just a guess. During the day our room was fine. Right around midnight, it would feel like a sauna. That would last until about 8am and then the AC would work again.

I'm 44, my wife is 47. I probably would have liked HAL more in 2016. I'm a travel blogger so I have a lot of contacts in the cruise industry. I've been told by all of them that most lines are trying to slash costs every which way they can. I think the HAL of today is probably different than pre-2020 HAL. We went on NCL in Feb of 2020 and then we went on 3 NCL cruises in 2022. I could really notice the difference. Food went way downhill at least in my opinion. Drinks were pretty bad too. Food is very subjective though but I could really notice where they went with cheap product like the chicken in the MDR. I don't see how you can call the quality. Perhaps some of the more fancy stuff I don't eat like the duck was better.

Day 12 - Embarkation, Copenhagen and final thoughts Getting off the ship was really easy. There was no line. However, once we got to where our bag were it was chaos as most of the ship seemed to be getting a taxi. It was hard to determine where the line even ended and none of the people at the port were helping. No one from HAL was present to direct anyone. Luckily everyone remained calm and no one tried to cut in line at least from what I saw. Took an hour to get to the start of the line and get in the taxi. Taxi was about $60 for a half hour ride. Got to our hotel, Ibis Styles, and dropped the bags off. We are right by a metro station so we took the train into the city. What a busy city. Everyone seems like they are in a rush. We went to the main touristy area and that was mobbed. We then went to one of the castles. We bought a combo ticket for that and the other castle. This was good but not nearly as amazing as the castles we saw yesterday. I wasn't that impressed. We were then going to walk over to the fort but halfway there we realized that our feet weren't going to cooperate so we had lunch at this burger place in a gas station. It's very popular. Took a half hour to get our food and it was good, but not worth the wait. Then we went to the other castle and this place was amazing. Guess they keep all the good stuff here including the crown jewels and the thrones. The amount of stuff in this castle is just mind blowing. Thousands of objects. I know this because they are numbered. Heck, in one small room there had to be several hundred objects. There's just so much stuff and so much wealth. Much more than the two castles yesterday. Everything is over the top. Really amazing to see. After that we were really running out of steam but on the way back to the hotel we wanted to stop at Christiania which I've seen on TV. Really interesting place. Not the type of place I'd want to hang out at but it was cool to walk through. It's kind of like it's own little city/country. After that it was back to the hotel. The metro is very easy to use and it trains come every few minutes. We don't have it in us to go out and get anything so I'm thankful we found a really good bakery earlier. Dinner might just be pastries and bread. =Final Thoughts The itinerary was absolutely amazing. We really wore ourselves out and my feet feel horrible but it was worth it. If we go back to some of these ports again, I would set up some more excursions because it seems like there are some fjords to check out that the ship doesn't go through. I was hoping we'd see more places like Flam and Eidfjord. But now we know what to do if we get back this way. The ship was hit and miss for me. I liked the Dutch Cafe. They had some good stuff there. The NY Deli and Dive In were good too. The app was annoying because sometimes you had to only use it, sometimes it didn't work and then you can't order everything through the app. Only certain things. I don't understand that at all. I liked that the sauna is free since most ships require you to pay for that. The inside pool area was nice but didn't really like that movies were shown in there. Would have rather just relaxed. It's too bad they took out Lincoln Center Stage. The Rolling Stone Rock Room was good. Never did get a chance to really check out the dueling pianos but it seemed more like two people playing the piano than a Howl at the Moon thing. The entertainment they brought on board was amazing but the regular entertainment is not our thing so I can't really judge that. We didn't like the MDR at all. The food quality was not good, the choices weren't good and we didn't like that you had to go at 5pm to get a table for 2 unless you wanted to wait a long time. All of the reservations were booked and I had no idea that we had to make them ahead of time or else this would have been an issue. The buffet food was better at dinner than breakfast. At least all the food was usually hot. Last two NCL cruises the food was cold most of the time at the buffet. The room had a nice shower and a nice balcony. But the bed is horrible and the cabin gets insanely hot at night. My wife is the type that is always cold so if she's complaining about the cabin being hot, you know it's hot. I had to take a ton of melatonin each night just to get some sleep. She barely slept the entire time so I think she's going to sleep all weekend. We could overlook a lot of things but I think this is the biggest issue for us and will prevent us from sailing on HAL again unless we can't duplicate the itinerary with another line of they throw a huge discount at us. I don't think I'd do 11 days though. Too much without good sleep. Specialty restaurants - the ones we went to were really bad. Canaletto is hardly Italian. Pinnacle is a joke. Every other SR on others lines we've been on were way better. Crew - everyone was nice but I felt like this was everyone's first cruise. There were a lot of mistakes, a lot of questions the crew didn't know the answer to and no one ever really thought to try to get the answer. Do they have more beer? Who knows, were not going to ask anyone. Do they have more luggage tags? No one knows and we won't get back to you with an answer. Oh your drink was made wrong? Sucks to be you by. Oh you want a drink, you'll have to work really hard to flag us down to get one. I could keep going but you get the point. Since a few of you don't get this, I'll spell it out. Did this in anyway ruin our cruise or our mood? Not even in the slightest. I mention it because it is abnormal to me in my experience of being on many cruises over many years and I've been on NCL, Carnival, Celebrity, Princess and RC. I usually experience great service across all those other lines. If I put down a plate, it's magically taken away in seconds. On this cruise, plates piled up high while they sat there for at least a half hour. Again, I could keep going. Perhaps these types of issues will be important to someone when they decide which cruise to take. Perhaps not. Same with the rude passengers. Didn't ruin my cruise. The only guy that impacted me was dealt with very quickly. Other than that, I just felt bad for the crew because there's no reason to treat people like that. Putting the bed and food issues aside since some people will have different opinions on that, I would not recommend HAL for someone that is looking to splurge a little on a more premium experience. I would instead suggest Celebrity or perhaps Virgin which I've yet to check out but I've heard amazing things from friends. If HAL was about the same price as NCL, I would suggest HAL over NCL. As I've said before, I could have done a similar cruise on Carnival and saved $2000. So did I get $2000 worth of value on this cruise? I just don't see it. $500. Sure. Maybe even $800 but not $2000. But I'm not HAL's demographic as we were younger than 80% of the people there so maybe my opinion is not relevant. I have no reason to make things up and I am not partial to one line or another. It's just one opinion of many on the internet so take it for what you will. If you disagree, great, but there's no need to get triggered because someone had a different opinion. We had at amazing time and I'm looking forward to our next cruise.

People just aren't embarrassed anymore. Glad my parents raised me better.

These days, I mainly go by itinerary and HAL has some really good ones but if there's another line with something similar, I'll probably choose that one. Although I may have gambled enough for HAL to send me some discounts so we'll see where that goes. Carnival gave me a free cruise which we are doing in September which is really nice Spain and Portugal itinerary so we're looking forward to that. I'll have my final thoughts on everything tomorrow. I assume the rude people are just a coincidence for this cruise. Other than the horrible person having a conversation in the middle of a concert, none of them impacted me at all. It was just an observation that really struck me because I've never seen older people act like children before. I really thought that lady on the bus the other day was gonna get into a fist fight. She was acting like a teenager. Crazy stuff.

Day 11 - Aarhus We got into port and it was very foggy so I was a little concerned that the weather wasn't going to be that great today. We had a 10:40 tour booked through the ship called Rosenholm Castle and Gammel Estrup Manor. Once again, someone went off on one of the excursion staff employees. This employee actually stood up for herself and told the passenger that she was rude. I asked her if this is normal and she said it's not normally this bad at all. Not sure why these people are so angry on this cruise. We boarded the bus and were introduced to our tour guide who talked to us the entire time which is nice. She told us about just about everything as we drove by it and when there wasn't much besides a farm, she told us about Denmark. I've been on other tours where the guide stops talking for a while but she was full of information so that was nice. It took us about an hour to get to our first stop, the Gammel Estrup Manor. Wow, this place is just amazing from the moment you get there. In most other countries this would be called a castle. In Denmark, it's only a castle if royalty lived there at some point. In my opinion, this is basically a castle and it even has a moat. Really incredible. The guide said we could either stick with her or we could wander around by ourselves. We stuck with her for about 5 minutes and then quickly realized that we weren't going to be able to see everything if we did that so we went off by ourselves. The place is massive and we didn't even get to see everything in the hours that we were there. You could really spend most of the day there if you wanted. Although no lunch is served on this tour, we were given cake and coffee which was great. The primary cake they offered was rhubarb. Normally not my thing but it was really good. I didn't think I'd like it so I got the chocolate. My wife got the rhubarb and we shared both. We then wandered around the grounds and there was just so much to see. We got to see the old machinery but we didn't get to see the other museum, the old blacksmith shop and a few other areas as we just ran out of time. The highlight though is the house and we got some amazing pictures in all of the rooms. Really incredible and we've been to some awesome castles. This is right up there with the best of them. We got back on the bus and the next stop wasn't that far away. Maybe 15 minutes. Rosenholm Castle is an actual castle and has been owned by the same family for over 500 years. They actually still live there so this is a residence not a museum. As a result, we could not wander off on our own but we had a guide from the castle take us around. Once again, amazing but I actually prefer the manor house if I had to pick one. But to see two castles in the same day is just incredible. This was one of the best ship tours I've ever been on. Back at port we were too wiped to really walk around anymore so we just went back to the ship. There was a bit of a line, maybe 40 or 50 people but it moves quick. Keeping with the theme of this cruise, some guy just cut in front of everyone. All you can do is laugh. We went to the Dutch Cafe and got mini pancakes and fries. Both were incredible. They were still out of Blue Moon and they won't have anymore until they load the provisions for the next cruise. Very poor planning on HAL's part. I've never seen that before. They did have green luggage tags though so someone figured that out. After that we hung out in the cabin and packed. We were gonna sit out on the balcony but there was a horrible sewage smell from one of the buildings right where we docked. Like really, really bad. Not sure what's up with that. Once we sailed away we enjoyed our balcony. Once again we skipped the MDR so we went to the buffet for dinner. We opted for a chill night so we can relax as we have a full day of walking around in Copenhagen tomorrow. Had two different types of steak and both were pretty good for a buffet. Also had this awesome cream puff thing. There's also these really great dinner rolls that I've been eating for most of the cruise. I could eat a million of those. Also had some pasta that was OK. We didn't want to bother with the show since it was singing and dancing. We heard a few seconds of it as we walked around and yeah, probably wasn't gonna be our thing. We finally got to watch the rock band and they were good but they sounded better on other nights. Guess it just depends on the set they are playing but it's a nice change of pace for a cruise. I went with the wife to trivia and Jose was awesome as always. Even if you have no interest in whatever is going on, I suggest you go because he will make it really funny. We hit up the casino and didn't do so well but it looks like we are still up about $40 for the cruise so that works for me. The goal tomorrow is to get off the ship as late as possible so we can let the crowd dissipate. We'll then take a very expensive taxi ride to the hotel to drop the bags off. It's near a metro station so we can go to Copenhagen and walk around. Final report tomorrow.

We asked for more pillows but they were all bad. Perhaps if we had a suite the bedding would be better. Looking forward to getting a good night's sleep in my own bed.

Seems to be a mix of Americans and others. No real pattern.

Just now a guest was giving one of the excursion staff a problem and she called her rude. The staff member said "actually I think you're the one being rude". I asked her and the other guy if this normal or just this cruise. They indicated that people have been extra rude this cruise. So this isn't just my opinion. Since some of you don't understand my reviews, I need to emphasize that these people in no way impact my cruise. I'm just really surprised that people on this cruise are so angry. So glad my mother (similar demographic) is the complete opposite of these people. She's been on 7 cruises this year already and is having an amazing time.

I never said our cruise wasn't enjoyable but I'm gonna call it as I see it. I could have gone on a very similar cruise with Carnival for about $2000 less. So am I getting $2000 worth out of this cruise? I don't see it. I'm sure the food is better but I don't think it's $2000 worth. The bed feels like an army cot. I've been on almost 40 cruises so I know what to expect. Maybe our bed is the one on the ship that is horrendous? No idea. But none of this really feels premium to me and we were just on two small NCL ships last fall. While the food and drinks are pretty bad, everything else was great and I'm not even a NCL fan. There's been other things I haven't even mentioned. My wife asked for a Miami Vice. It had just a little strawberry on the top. I explained it should be half and half. The waiter said "well that's how he made it" and walked away. So is that me being difficult or should I expect drinks to be made the right wait and for wait staff to correct mistakes? I'm sure different people will have different experiences but I just don't think I fit HALs demographic.

I think it was $45 each which is pretty much the same price. I'm glad you enjoy it!

It's a cashless society so credit card is accepted everywhere

Day 10 - Kristiansand We got off the ship with a rough idea as to what we wanted to do but nothing really planned out. This is a cool little town. As soon as you get out of the port area there's just flowers everywhere. It's really nice. If you head to the right there's a bunch of old wooden boats that are part of a museum there. We didn't bother to go into the museum or even check if was open as we just liked checking out the boats. From there we went to McDonalds! It's a McDonald's in an old bank so its supposed to be one of the fanciest McDonalds in the world but they are working on the fancy part so we didn't get to go inside. We then checked out the cathedral and walked through the old town. Like several of the towns we've visited on this trip, there's a section of town with really old wooden houses. Once again, it was great to walk through this area which was a pretty good size. We then took the bus to Lillesand which is about a half hour away. Unlike the towns that have a historic area, this whole town on the water is a historic area. Tons of old wooden houses, almost all of them painted white with awesome flowers everywhere. The smell is awesome. A number of the houses are from the 1700s and 1800s. It's clearly a well to do area as most people seemed to have a Mercedes or an Audi. I think we were the only tourists in the area but wow, it was a great place. Can't recommend it enough. We took the bus back and then we walked by the fortress and headed back to the ship. At this point we walked over 6 miles for the day so we were wiped out. Nothing at the MDR really excited us so we opted for the buffet again. It was better than other nights and not nearly as crowded. I had the steak which is supposed to be the same as in the MDR. It had a nice flavor so I was surprised. We then went to the Crows Nest to have some drinks and watch the view until it was time to go to the show. Here's another example of rudeness on this cruise. This older couple behind us had this really wacky argument about the busiest shipping channels in the world. The guy was wrong the woman went off on him, yelling at him, cursing at him, etc. This went on for over 20 minutes. It was was really crazy and inappropriate. On the way to the show we stopped by the Dutch Cafe for a beer. They ran out of the beer I wanted and had no idea if they had any more. We then went next door to get luggage tags and they ran out of all the luggage tags except the earliest ones. I really feel like things are not being run right on this ship. I've never heard of anything like this in 30 years of cruising. We want to get off the ship late so I don't know what we are going to do. Guess we'll figure that out later. The show tonight was the Pianist with the Hair again. He was even better than his first show. This is one of the best shows I've ever seen on a cruise. He's incredibly talented and he should be very famous. Can't say enough about how amazing he is. The rudeness continued of course. The couple next to us was on their phones the entire time. They were pretty old too as the guy had a hearing aid. As if that wasn't bad enough, he took a phone call and had a loud conversation with someone. We gave it 30 seconds to make sure it wasn't some quick thing but nope, he was planning on having an entire conversation during the show. Since he has a hearing aid, his phone is super loud so despite him being 6 feet away, I heard the person on the other line like she was yelling in my ear. We yelled at him to get out of here with that and he never came back. Again, 30 years of cruising and I've never encountered this. Not sure if HAL just attracts a certain type or what but this is pretty incredible. Anyway, we went to the casino and we did very well. Well my wife was the one that really did great. Probably brought us back to even or maybe even a little ahead. So really fun day. One more full day left.

It is walkable. That's why I don't recommend if you are docked right there. Since we weren't, it was the best option for us.

Thanks, I'm glad some people get it. Not sure why others don't but that's the internet for you. We had to get to the theater at 8:10. Boarded the bus at 8:30. Got into town right around 9am.

You book the hop on, hop off bus right through HAL. And yes, goes to Stavanger and then does a loop. HAL will add more excursions at the last minute. Very annoying.

Day 9 - Stavanger We had tickets to the hop on, hop off bus so we had to get up early. I was a little concerned at first because Google Maps said everything was closed on Monday. I thought I was going crazy because I surely looked all this up already and I would have seen that. Thankfully Google Maps was wrong (they don't update their hours) and almost everything that would normally be open was except the City Museum. No big deal there. There are other things to see like the Royal Residence that are closed seasonally which includes now. Not sure when they are actually open. If we were docked in Stavanger I would not suggest you do this bus but we were docked in Sandness. There are three ways to get there, that I saw anyway. You can either take a shuttle and have less than 3 hours, walk, take a train and then walk some more or take this bus. Glad we opted for the bus because it gave us more time. Keeping with the rudeness theme, some lady on our tour was going off on one of the crew as we were boarding the bus. I continue to be amazed at people like this that go on vacation just to get all upset. Most of them are older too. I'm pretty chill for my 40s so I hope I'm even better when I'm older. Anyway. The bus ride there was uneventful, about a half hour. We then started the route. Since everything doesn't open until 10am, we decided to do the entire route which takes about 50 minutes. It gave us a good layout of what there is to see including things like the Royal Residence that we wouldn't have walked to. There was this really nice neighborhood we went through over there as well. By the time we completed the route it was about 9:50. The driver wasn't going to go anywhere again for 20 minutes so we walked over to the Petroleum Museum. Seemed pretty busy for just opening so maybe it opened earlier? It was pretty interesting and not normally the first thing I would have chosen. Norway was a rather poor country for most of its history until it found oil in the North Sea. That finding dramatically changed the country as the government has made an absolute fortune from oil. I had no idea. There were also some interactive exhibits like being able to go down an escape chute. If you go, I suggest skipping the film. It's really weird. With that ticket, we got half off the other city-run museums. This is a really cool city and it was a much better stop than yesterday. There's a really nice harbor which functions as a city center. A cruise ship was docked there which is why we weren't. There's a ton of shops and restaurants. It's only a few minutes between there and the Petroleum Museum but the neighborhood you walk through is really cool. Very funky with buildings painted all different colors. If you saw my pictures, there's a few of them from this neighborhood. Walked the opposite way from the city center and up a flight of stairs brings you to Gamle Stavanger or the Old Town. This was really cool. Literally just steps away from the busy harbor is this neighborhood that time forgot. Perfectly restored wooden houses from the 1800s line cobblestone streets. Windows are decorated with antiques and flower pots. It's a fantastic place to spend some time. Although there's a couple shops and a cafe, it does not feel touristy. It's very authentic because people actually live there. It's not a gimmick. The main street was a little busy with tourists but there were several side streets to explore that had no one on them. Again, if you saw my pictures you can see how awesome this place is although pictures don't do it justice. Right there is the canning and printing museum. This is one of the museums that you can get in for half price with that other ticket. The museums are connected so you can walk right from one to the other. The Printing Museum was OK but it didn't really interest us much. The Cannin Museum was actually pretty cool. Never really knew much about sardines but Norway was once the biggest producer of sardines so this is how this section of the country made money. It was really cool to learn all about how they did that in the early 1900s. With that ticket, we were then able to get in for free to the Maritime Museum which is down the block near where the bus pick up is. The first floor was a little boring but then we went upstairs. There were several rooms that we set up for what the rooms in a shipping company would have looked like in the 1800s. We love stuff like that and it was very well done. None of these museums would have probably been worth the price of admission by themselves, but all three for half price was worth it. By the time we were done, it was almost 1pm which is when the bus is gonna bring us back. So yeah, 4 hours flew by. It was probably the right amount of time for us but if more was open I would have wanted more time. I was going to check out this tower but then I saw all the steps (see pictures) and said nope. Back on the ship we had a late lunch and I finally got to try one of those sandwiches at the deli. It was ok, but it would have probably been better without the turkey. After that we took a nap. Not sure why we are so tired this cruise. Lack of sea days maybe. We left the dock around 5pm so we went up to the Crows Nest to watch us sail away. Not exactly the sail out from Flam but it was still nice. Very busy and hard to find a seat. Luckily we got there just as someone was leaving. Since we had a late lunch we didn't want to go to the MDR so early but we knew that if we went around 6, we wouldn't get a table for 2. My wife was bummed about that but we just don't like eating with other people so we went to the buffet. Glad we did because they had dutch food including dutch mini pancakes. They were amazing but there was a little bit of a line since they were scooped up almost as soon as they were done. Best thing we've had so far. They also had what seemed like zeppoles but they had raisins in them. Would have been perfect without raisins. The show tonight was Musicology by the dance company. It was pretty good. For the most part, it was a dance associated with a musical instrument. Most of it was good and this one modern dance part towards the end was amazing. There was one dance part that was really weird and didn't fit the theme at all. Not sure what was up with that. Once again there was over 20 people standing. Not sure why people can't get there on time but I highly suggest getting there at least 10 minutes early if you want a seat. Right when that ended we had to rush over to music trivia. This is normally my wife's thing and not mine but Jose does such a good job he made this a ton of fun. It was the officers vs the passengers so they had about 30 officers there from different departments. They must not get to do stuff like this often as they were really ready to go. It was more like a party than a trivia especially when Jose went through the answers. So much fun. He's a star. The Orange Party was right after that but we weren't interested so we went up the casino to lose more money. Our luck from earlier in the weeks really died out. We'll try again tomorrow. Really great day. Two random observations. A lot of people have hiking sticks instead of canes. I've never seen that before. We were on 3 cruises last year and we didn't see any of that and now a lot of people have that. So that's interesting. The other observation is that a lot more people are coughing as the cruise goes on. Some people sound really bad. Can't believe we have 3 more days. When we get home I'm gonna sleep all weekend.

Of course it's nothing good. It's just the point that we never win.

Day 8 - Haugesund We got off the ship without too much of a plan but the wife wanted to go to the Viking village. Research indicated that this was probably not going to happen and we were right. Tourist office said that it was only open for ship tours so if we took the bus and then walked the very long walk there, we wouldn't be able to get in. There was really not much being offered in terms of tours right there so we decided to walk over to town. You can take a shuttle bus, a fake train thing or you can walk. I heard those first two options are expensive for what is a 5 minute ride so we walked. Gotta walk off these pounds. It's about a 10 to 15 minute walk mostly over this big bridge. Since it was a Sunday, almost nothing at all was open. We walked over to the main street and we found this really wacky shop full of weird things. Hard to even describe but it was fun to check out. It was also one of the only things open. We also stopped in two tourist shops which weren't that impressive. We took a few pictures and walked back to the ship as there was literally nothing else to do and our feet were killing us from all the walking we've been doing. Much like Molde, no complaints though because we need breaks from walking 5 to 6 miles a day. We did over 6 yesterday. So after lunch it was back to the pool area to relax. Despite it being about 48 outside, they opened the roof a little, then a lot, then a little again. Not sure what they were doing but it got pretty cold out by the pool from them keeping the roof open. I alternated between the pool and the sauna. You can always tell when the port isn't exciting by how many people are on the ship. The pool area was pretty busy and after an hour or so it got full. After a few hours of that it was time to nap again. I've never taken so many naps in my life but we keep wearing ourselves out. We then went to get some dinner but we stopped at the pool area first because they were giving away a bunch of prizes. Despite them giving away about 10 of them, we won nothing. We literally never win. On our last cruise we finally thought we were going to win something at the jewelry raffle because there was no one else there! The only question was, would it be me or my wife? Wouldn't you know that another couple came at the very last second and yup, they won. Not only that, it was the second time that cruise that the woman won. Oh well, we keep trying. There was nothing in the MDR we wanted so we went to the buffet to grab a few things. Glad we did too because they had a section that had foods from Norway. Now maybe that was mentioned somewhere but I didn't see it so if it wasn't they should have said that because I'm sure a bunch of people missed it. The goat cheese was really good although I didn't like the brown goat cheese that is so famous here. My wife really liked it thought. Maybe I just couldn't get over the color. Then we went upstairs to get pizzas which were again pretty good. I completely forgot that they also make sandwiches so I'll have to try one of those at some point. Everyday at 7 is a raffle at jewelry store and we've tried to go to all of them. And yes, we lost again. There was no real show tonight but there was the City at Sea presentation that is being shown on other HAL ships. I've been to other "behind the scenes" presentations and I really like them but this one didn't do it for me. It's kind of a weird thing. It's created by corporate so its the same show on every ship. Half of it are a series of quick videos, pictures or diagrams on the screen and the other half is scripted narration on behalf of the cruise director and a few others. It doesn't feel authentic probably because they are just reading the teleprompter and the videos are really short and some are repetitive. I'd rather have a Q&A thing or I'd rather just want a 20 minute video followed by some discussion. But maybe that's just me. My wife produced theater and she agrees and wanted to add that it felt stilted. If you've never been to one of these things, you probably found it interesting. If you've been to others, perhaps you'd agree with me. I should add, this was probably the most popular thing that has been on this ship as there wasn't an empty seat available. About 50+ people were standing. Pretty crazy. Probably because there was only one showing as the 9:30 slot is Deal or no Deal. After that we went to guest services because we were charged for Pinnacle Grill when that was part of our package. Gotta check those statements. I really don't know how those GS employees handle these passengers. One guy held up the line because his jacket was missing and we was convinced that someone stole it and was freaking out. So when I got up there I said "someone stole my jacket, where is my jacket!!!". I made her laugh so hard so hopefully she appreciated that. We went to the casino for a bit and had mixed results. We've played a bunch and we are only down about $25 so that's a win for me. Although I really like watching Deal or No Deal on cruises, we have to get up early to get on the hop on, hop off bus. We stopped by the store so my wife could get a scarf she's been wanting. We've been looking in the stores and they don't have this exact one and they are pretty expensive so the price was about on par with what you'd get in a shop. We have the on board credit to spend so why not? Another nice relaxing day and probably our last until we get home. Oh, and the internet was finally fixed so the app works again!

Thanks, I would say somewhat. Some seem to be happy, others are just sort of there. It's very hit or miss. This morning one of the crew at the buffet filled our drinks twice and asked at least two other times if we needed anything. Other mornings, no one came up to us at all and there was a massive pile of dirty plates on the tables near us. No one ever got them. Inconsistency seems to be a theme this cruise. Same with getting a drink. Some areas will have more waitstaff asking if you need a drink, other areas you won't see anyone. I'm not really an NCL fan but you would have thought those people got commission for giving you drinks. They were always right there asking everywhere you were. Not the case here. Drinks aren't perfect on this ship but they are way better than NCL so you take the good with the bad.

If we had time we would but we don't have the time. Trust me, I want nothing to do with that place in the morning.

Bergen is Norway's second largest city but it's still a scenic port to be in so we enjoyed waking up to that. We went to the NY Deli again for breakfast. It's just such a better experience than the chaos one level down. Food is better too. We got off the ship with no real plan but we got a map from the hop on, hop off bus company. Much like the other day, there's no real reason to buy this since you can walk to almost everything. The map however is handy since it helps you figure out what you should do. Even though I had my phone, we liked having this paper map as well. We walked through the fish market which was really interesting. They had some very unique things like whale, these giant scallops and fish I've never seen before. I wasn't brave enough to try whale but it was cool to look at. We then walked over to the fortress which looked cool but based on the Google reviews, we didn't bother paying to go in. There's some really cool architecture here including these old wooden buildings that you can walk through. Several contain shops but we just liked walking all around them. Then we go to the funicular and debated whether we should do it. The line looked really long but it moved pretty fast. The one line was actually to buy tickets but you could buy them online which we did right there. That got us to go in front of about 40 people which saved some time. The funicular holds a lot of people and like many others we've been on, there's two. So there's one every few minutes. Roundtrip tickets were $8. We got on in just a few minutes and got a great view from the front. It's only a few minutes ride to the top. The top of the mountain has amazing views of Bergen including the ship. It was about 10 degrees colder up there so I'm glad I brought a light jacket. We then walked to a lake and then headed back down. We walked through the fish market again and came upon some type of parade. It looked like a ROTC type thing. No real idea what was going on but it was cool to see. We also stopped at a bakery to get this really good cinnamon roll that was more like a type of bread. Still good though. Not that we walked about 6 miles, we got back on the ship. We didn't really eat lunch so we went to the Dutch cafe to grab some food. We finally got the giant cream puff thing which was good. It's like an eclair the size of a softball. The two of us almost finished it. We also had an order of fries. These were steak fries so different from the others you get elsewhere. Kind of interesting that the ship serves three different types of fries. They were really good. They also made us a good iced coffee. We figured out that one person makes it better than the other people so we make sure to order it from her. After a nap we went to dinner at the MDR. There was a pretty good line at 5pm this time. Still can't get over that compared to other cruises. I wasn't that hungry so I just got the prime rib. It was good. Not amazing but good. The baked potato is weird. It's really small and the inside is dark. Not sure what type of potato that is but it's not my favorite. After dinner I learned how the slot tournament worked. Turns out I had it all wrong. All the signs say you need 300 points, which I have, but you need to earn them all in one day. Not sure how you're supposed to know that. So I didn't qualify. Although there are times for the slot tournament listed on the app, you can just do it whenever. It lasts just one minute. Seeing as some people have tens of thousands of points, I'm never going to be able to compete with them anyway. We then went downstairs for are you smarter than a 5th grader trivia. We got almost all of the answers right but none of this is stuff I learned in 5th grade or any grade for that matter. The show tonight was the Pianist with the Hair. Had no idea what that was so I had to google it. Turns out it's a really cool guy that plays all over the world with a very unique twist on classical piano. Several people showed up late and had to stand. The guy looks like a younger Howard Stern which is even referenced. He's incredibly talented and this was a really unique show for a cruise ship. He plays a song and then he talks in-between so it's not just someone playing piano for 45 minutes straight. He's funny so it's very entertaining. One of my issues with HAL is that the timing of things doesn't really mesh well. The show started at 7:30 and went on about 50 minutes. Problem is, there was a game show at 8:15 that a lot of people wanted to see. If you stay for the show, you won't get to the game show until about 8:25. So you'd miss 10 minutes of the show and you wouldn't get a good seat, or any seat for that matter. I left a few minutes early since I knew it was almost over to get us seats. It seems like the crew figured a lot of people were still in the show so they delayed the start by several minutes. Thus, I didn't really accomplish much. They should space things out better. I've been on dozens of other ships where it was very easy to go from one thing to the next without having to leave early. Not sure why they don't do this here. Anyway, the show itself was really good. It was a To Tell the Truth type of game. Jose was one of the contestants and he really is such a talent. He makes anything really good. Can't say enough about him. After that we went to the casino for a little bit and we didn't do that great so we called it a night pretty early. The app hasn't worked for most of the day and as a result, we haven't had internet on our phones. For some reason it works on my computer. Not sure why there's a difference but there is. While the internet may not be important for everyone, it makes a lot of the app impossible to use as you can't buy an excursion, chat with other people, order food, etc. Not sure what's going on or when it will get fixed as no one has said anything about it. Another fun day.