Turtles06

The Gem installs a wave pool I'm not sure why the pools weren't closed when this was going on, but at least no one was foolish enough to get in IMG_1979.mp4

You're welcome. If you haven't already seen it, the City Tour is on their web site, at the link below. We customized it to exclude the beach. They're very flexible, it's your tour. 🙂 https://marysoltours.net/puerto-plata-city-beach-2/

Have a great trip, Pete! Looks like you won’t be doing a walk to the Fortaleza in Puerto Plata, though. Hope all the itinerary stuff works out.

Same here. Things happen. Unexpected things. Even tripping in your cabin two hours after embarking on a cruise, breaking your wrist, spending two more hours being evaluated and treated in the ship’s medical center and then being medically disembarked (surgery followed at home). Insurance covered the entire cruise fare.

or her, even

Yes, it was $60pp. There were two of us. I think if you had more people, the cost might go down. Enjoy!

Exactly. Even worse with the beverage packages.

Same here. I don't see the number in Chrome on my Windows 10 laptop in full screen, but I just minimized the screen and the 035 appeared. I also see the 035 on my iPhone, in both landscape and portrait orientations. Right now, I don't see the number on my iPad in either orientation, but I'm pretty sure i did this morning. (I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time.)

Yes, just ate there on the Gem a few weeks ago. My favorite dish has always been the steak and shrimp, and the steak is now New York strip. It was really tough; hard to cut and pretty difficult to chew. A real disappointment.

Port of Call -- Puerto Limón, Costa Rica x 2 Our first visit Although we’ve been to the Pacific side of Costa Rica on prior Panama Canal cruises, our two visits to Puerto Limón on this B2B were our first to that country on the Atlantic side. On leg 1 (Feb. 4), we took an NCL excursion called Tortuguero Canals and River Cruise. Having really enjoyed a boat ride down the Tarcoles River on a tour out of Puntarenas, and seen amazing wildlife, we were hoping for something similar here. Unfortunately, with the Gem not arriving in Puerto Limón until 11am, the shore excursion did not leave until after lunch, in the heat of the day. By that time in the tropics, most critters with half a brain are off somewhere taking a nap. Still, thanks to our guide and boat driver, we managed to see a sloth (sleeping in a tree, I can’t recall how many toes 😂), a couple of small crocodiles, a cormorant, several yellow-crowned night herons, a tiny poison dart frog, and a huge iguana. The boat ride evoked Disney’s Jungle Cruise, except that our boat had tiny molded plastic bucket seats that were extremely uncomfortable and really diminished our enjoyment of the ride. After the boat ride, we made a stop at a big souvenir store. By this point, I just wanted to get back on the ship. But even that turned out to be a hassle, since the Gem had only one gangway open, and with numerous excursions returning at the same time, it was a bit of a wait in a single line to get back on board. We did have a beautiful evening sky and a full moon for our sailaway though.

Sea Days After our run of five ports in a row on leg 1, we finally had a sea day (on Feb. 3). My wife and I both love seas days (one of the reasons why we love transatlantic cruises). On the Gem, we typically worked out in the morning; I absolutely love walking laps around a true promenade deck, while my wife hit the Fitness Center; sometimes we swam. After that, we’d do the usual things many people do on sea days (except sit out in the sun). We’d generally have lunch on the pool deck or at the Great Outdoors, and often just hang out there reading or watching the water for hours. Sometimes we’d sit out on our balcony, or wander down to the Atrium for trivia. We never find sea days boring. In fact, you just never know what might happen. On one of our sea days, the Gem was pummeled by very strong winds hitting her portside, just aft of the bow, causing a great deal of rolling. The Nav Channel showed the apparent wind speed to be 51 kts. 😲 Apart from the winds, it was a sunny and beautiful day. But because of the winds and the rolling of the ship, the pools had been drained and netted over. The hot tubs on the starboard side were closed, but not drained. This led to some great entertainment, as we watched the winds blow the water out of the hot tubs, and produce mini-waterfalls down the steps. This went on for quite some time, and repeatedly flooded that part of the pool deck. Crew members were constantly squeegee-ing the water. I'm not sure why they didn't just drain the hot tubs. IMG_1956.mp4 IMG_1965.mp4 Never a dull sea day.

Speaking of fish -- I had the Dover sole twice on Le Bistro during our very recent B2B cruises on the Gem, and it was excellent both times.

Aruba, our second visit (Feb. 10) On our second call to Oranjestad, we did not dock until 11am, which we decided was a bit late to head to what were likely already very crowded beaches. Also, it was an extremely windy day, which often does not make for good swimming or even just sitting out and perhaps being blasted by sand. (For those who did go to a beach, I hope we were wrong!) We decided to spend some of the day exploring Oranjestad, and to have lunch ashore. We thought it would be good to have a destination for our walk, and so we picked the Queen Wilhelmina Park, and headed out. The nearby streets were filled with shops, restaurants, and souvenir stalls, and the blowing palm trees showed just how windy it was. In the center of Queen Wilhelmina Park there is, not surprisingly, a statue of the Queen herself. And there is also one of Anne Frank. (Unfortunately, the direction of the sun was not kind for photographing the statues.) A Also in the Park was a family of iguanas, having evolved in their coloration to blend in with the landscape. When they stood still (as they did whenever they heard anyone), it was almost impossible to see them from afar. We decided to have lunch outdoors at a Mexican restaurant we’d passed on our way to the Park. This turned out to be an excellent choice. Good food and drinks, and friendly servers. The AIDAbella had been docked in front of us all day. She sailed away first, in the lovely evening light.

Port of Call: Oranjestad, Aruba x 2 Our first visit (Feb. 2) Oranjestad, Aruba, was the fifth of our five port calls in a row on leg 1 of our B2B. We decided to make it a “ship day,” since we’d just had a great beach day on Isla Catalina, and since we’d been to Aruba about a year before, when we took an island tour, something we didn’t see the need to repeat now. We had a nice, relaxing day aboard the Gem, enjoying our favorite outdoor spaces. Also, there was an interesting collection of ships docked in front of us: Most obvious, of course, was the Carnival Magic, and we did some research to learn about the two smaller vessels whose names we could see, both of which were far more interesting than the Magic. Closest to us was the grey naval vessel HNLMS Pelikaan (A804), which, according to Wikipedia, is “a logistic support vessel of the Royal Netherlands Navy. The ship was built and designed specially for the Caribbean Sea, and is permanently based in Curaçao.” Docked behind the Pelikaan (in the photo above) was the MV Freewinds. Wow, this one was pretty (in)famous. It’s a former cruise ship now owned by a company controlled by the Church of Scientology. The ship serves as the headquarters of “Sea Org,” which Scientology calls a religious order but critics consider to be something far less benign. Since this is my fun review of a cruise, there’s no need to go into more here, but if you’re interested, there’s plenty of information about the Freewinds and Sea Org to be found on line. We certainly weren’t expecting to see this ship, that’s for sure. (I’ve also included below a photo of the Freewinds that I took during our return visit to Aruba on leg 2, so you can see it better.) The Magic left several hours before we did. Just before our own sailaway, we had a beautiful sunset, a lovely end to the day.

That was not our experience on the Gem. We ate twice at Le Bistro on the B2B, the first time using the FAS Specialty Dining, and the second time using our Sapphire Lats voucher. With the SDP, we were allowed to have soup AND a salad, but with the Lats voucher, the server said we could only have soup OR a salad, and no app.

I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. We were not in the Haven, we were in a non-Haven suite. But putting that aside, and while I feel very blessed to have been able to sail in a suite, I think it's a real stretch to characterize my (in-progress) review as being from a "Haven perspective." I've never spoken about suite-specific things like boarding in NY, or suite dining for breakfast and lunch (which we rarely took advantage of, btw), or having a butler, or anything like that. My comments have focused on food throughout the ship -- in venues open to everyone -- on the entertainment -- open to everyone -- on what we did in the ports, choices anyone could make, and to things we did on sea days, once again choices anyone could make.

Just back from the Gem. We deliberately used a Latitudes voucher at Teppanyaki because the entire meal is covered; there are no courses to choose from. Save the FAS Specialty Dining for venues like Cagney’s and Le Bistro. BTW, the service at Cagney’s on the Gem was fabulous. (Wish that had been the case at Le Bistro.) We ate at Cagney’s 4 times during our 23 day B2B.

Port: Isla Catalina, Dominican Republic After leaving Puerto Plata on January 31, the Gem sailed around the coast of the Dominican Republic, calling early the next morning at Isla Catalina, an uninhabited island off the southern coast of the DR. This was the most “unknown” of all of our ports, as there’s not much information about it on the internet, and the shore excursions sold by NCL mostly seemed to take place on the “mainland.” (I’ve used that word in quotes since the DR itself is on an island.) As best we could tell, there would be a beach and free lounge chairs. Oh, and palm trees. 😊 As things turned out, the beach was lovely, and we enjoyed our time ashore. Not surprisingly, Catalina Island is a tender port, and we took an early tender ashore. This is a fairly infrequent stop for NCL, and we noticed the tender driver looking carefully at a map before he headed to the island. 😊 As we got close, we could see that there were hundreds of empty lounge chairs, and that we’d have no problem finding a good spot along the water’s edge. The beach was beautiful, but when we arrived, the tide was out, and there was a very visible and steep drop off go to get into the water. I’m pretty short, and I knew from prior beach experience that this could pose a real problem for me getting out of the water. We carefully chose a spot where the drop off seemed to have the least slope. After our first swim, I needed a little help to get out. As the tide came in, I watched some folks coming out of the water along a careful, uphill diagonal; I was okay after that. We had some great swims and even saw a few fish hanging around rocks near the shore. The water was gorgeously clear but surprisingly chilly, and you really had to keep moving to stay warm. Weren't we in the tropics? 😂 Around 9am, small power boats began pulling up to the beach, dropping off locals working in the little retail stalls, as well as people who set up free umbrellas (please tip them). There were so many tall palm trees that we didn’t even need an umbrella until much later. my happy feet One thing we did not know in advance was that there would be no food or water (or any other drinks) available on the island, a real shortcoming for a controlled-access beach, although there were clearly facilities there for a big buffet meal, the sort of thing you’d find on a private island. (There was a tiny line in the Freestyle Daily stating that folks could pick up a boxed lunch that morning in the buffet, but no statement that no other food, and no water, would be available.) As I understand it, the DR controls the island, so I have no idea how much blame can be placed on NCL for the lack of food and drink ashore. I would think a cruise line could have negotiated better arrangements. We’d brought our own water, and did not let any food or beverage issues spoil our enjoyment of the day. With the last tender scheduled for 2pm, we made sure we headed back a bit earlier, to avoid standing in line in the sun waiting for a tender. Definitely a nice day at the beach.

Which is why taking a photo of the test result seems the best way to go. For whatever reason, Celebrity has chosen an honor system.

If this is your first visit, may I ask why you are only doing a morning tour? With a full day in Reykjavik, you could do a Golden Circle tour or even a South Coast tour (if you’re in port long enough). Iceland is really about the beautiful country . . .

You're very welcome. 🙂 Well, since this was our first visit, I don't have anything to compare it to, I don't know what it looked like originally. 🙂 But there was work going on behind construction walls, with a sort of "coming soon" signage.

Hi Pete, thanks for your kind words. Out of curiosity -- what shorex did NCL cancel? Yes, the fort is within walking distance of the ship. (According to Google, but please check that, it's about 1.5km from the cruise port.) A few things to keep in mind: 1) it's very hot; 2) you will be accosted by people wanting to take you in their cabs, as well as by fairly aggressive vendors wanting you to buy things; and, most important, 3) from what I've read, robbery (including bag-snatchings by people on motor scooters [of which there are many in Puerto Plata]) is not uncommon in the DR, although I don't know the situation in Puerto Plata, and there were "tourist police" in some locations. We did not walk into town or to the fort, as I said, so I can't comment personally on the experience, but as I'm sure you would be most anywhere, please be alert as to how you are carrying your camera gear (and any other valuables), and try to minimize their visibility. Enjoy your visit!

Hi Peggy! I'm glad you were able to answer that question. (I usually just turned on my International Day Pass when we were in port. 😂) Hope you had a safe and easy journey home.

Seen around the ship . . . At some point during the B2B, the ship ran out of little cartons of skimmed milk. In Panama, we took on little cartons of whole milk, which I noticed had some interesting nutritional advice on them about breast milk ("la leche materna").

As others have said, it's usually 30 minutes before sailing. Be sure to reconfirm the all-aboard time in the Freestyle Daily, and at the gangway as you are walking off the ship.