shark&minnow

199!

We are booked with alaska-whalewatching.com  I found them through Trip Advisor and then booked directly on their website. It seems like our price was about $60 pp less then the cruise ship's similar excursion

Valor out of Puerto Rico

Old San Juan

Vista out of Barcelona, 9/16

Red Frog Pub

Rhodes, Greece from the ship

Vista out of Barcelona

Brewery in Red Frog Pub

Marseille, France

Rome

Leaving Pompei

Carnival Freedom out of Galveston

River Raft in Jamaica

Carnival Freedom out of Galveston:

Guys burgers

our room

Private  food sampling of new menu items

Turtle farm, Grand Cayman

From our hotel window in Galveston

We have booked 2 NCL cruises because of the freebies, but we are very happy to be returning to Carnival next May. Our NCL cruises have been great--no such thing as a bad cruise in my book!

We definitely prefer Carnival and think Carnival has much better food, and is more fun. 

I really enjoy the salad bar at Moderno.  This may be weird, but I love the muesli on the breakfast buffet! NCL may not have the best food but I haven't been on any other cruise line with muesli 😄

Our last two ports were Acapulco and Cabo. We enjoyed these ports with some new friends we made on the ship. In Acapulco we took the boat trip to see the cliff divers. The boat was fun and the lunch was good, but the cliff divers were not that interesting.

Then it was back to Los Angeles. We spent a few days visiting family in California before we flew back to Dallas!

At our Guatemala stop we did the Antigua on your own excursion. This was probably my favorite stop. We visited the brewery and we wandered around the town. On the drive we saw some of the damage from the volcano that erupted recently.

Nicaragua: At this port we did the Flor de Cana rum tour. This was a beautiful facility and the story of the family that owns it was very interesting

Costa Rica:

We did the Forest Sky Walk & Tarcoles Eco - Cruise. It was pretty cool, probably a bit much with my sore leg! It was quite slippery in the rain forest and I was being very careful not to fall again. One of the ladies in our group did slip and fall.

The next day we went through the canal. We had watched a very good documentary about the building of the canal on American Experience, I recommend that. 

We got up early like everyone to watch as we entered the canal. Then something kind of bad happened. The cruise line had hosed all the decks down and I was wearing my cheap flip flops. When I stepped on the metal trim on the stairs my foot slipped and I ended up doing a full splits (and Cowboy cheerleader I am not) and I partially tore my ham string. I was in extreme pain but thankfully I was able to walk. The whole back of my leg eventually turned black. So I spent the entire day sitting on ice on our balcony.  But this actually turned out to be a good place to watch from and I could see our TV which was showing the view from the bow and we could here the commentator on the TV  At one of the locks they actually stopped and off loaded someone who was much worse of than me.

We took the ferry over to the old town area and wandered around on our own. 

Our first stop was Cartagena. The port area has a nice little jungle zoo area with a gift shop and a coffee shop.

The next day we ubered to the cruise port and boarded the ship. All went smoothly Miami is a beautiful city to see from the ship!.

I love reading reviews and they are an important part of my cruise planning, but it is always hard for me to get myself to do my own reviews. We did the Panama Canal on board the NCL Star, from Miami to LA on November 30, 2018. I am currently reading reviews for our next cruise and I'm feeling guilty that I never posted about our last one! So I am going to give it a go. I will use lots of pictures because I am not much of a writer.

The Star was recently out of dry dock and everything was in great shape. We got upgraded to a mini suite and it was great! I won't say much more about the ship since people go on all different ships for this itinerary but feel free to ask any questions you'd like.

We flew from Dallas to Miami the day before the cruise and we stayed at the Kimpton and ate dinner in the touristy area.

Let's see if these pictures work:

Sounds like you know what you need. We also carry very little on. Plus you can wear whatever you like to the dining room any night, except your bathing suit. They say no shorts, but people wear them anyway.

It's your cruise; wear what pleases you.

On our first cruise (10,000 years ago) I made the mistake of packing our passports in our luggage. They did let us on and we had to show the passports later, but that was pre 9/11 and that probably wouldn't fly today. So don't make that mistake either! 😅

Thank you for the link. I enjoyed her blog. She also has a page on Ketchikan.

WOW!!! Thank you

Did you book with the cruise line? I am assuming that they only offer this excursion during the whale shark season. Our cruise is in May so I wonder if we'll be too early this time. 

Thank you again for posting this.I am so glad you did it and that it worked out so well for you!

On 6/11/2019 at 9:33 PM, Nicagal said:

Everything I have read says to take a cheap cab ($4-8pp) to Doctors Cave Beach if you are wanting a great day at the beach.  After reading everything that is exactly what my hubby and I are doing - jumping in a cab and spending the day at a beautiful beach.  Yes you have to be aware of your surroundings, but you have that everywhere.... even at home.  Agree on a price ahead of time and only give that amount after getting out of the cab - (if you are worried).  I wouldn't stay on the ship and miss a great beach because of scare tactics.  Ask around and see if you can share a cab with others on your ship as well.  That's what we did at another island... ended up being cheaper too.  

That's what we're going to do too.

The last time we were there we did the bamboo raft down the river....it was probably our favorite excursion ever. 

I think the unfamiliar scares people, I have heard these fear stories for just about everywhere, but in my experience I find that most people everywhere are kind and helpful. When we were going to St. Kitts there was a thread of hysteria about monkeys being thrown at tourists (by photographers) and people were vowing to stay on the ship to avoid this monkey attack. I assure you we safely navigated our way through St. Kitts without one single monkey even touching us!😅

I too am interested in this. When do you go? I hope that you will report back if you do this excursion. I think it would be so incredible to see these. My concern is the length of travel and the $$ if there is a low chance of seeing them. Please share any info you find.

Thank you!