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NCL Spirit Med Cruise Q&A

budgetfairytale
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mypleasure

mypleasure

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Thanks for the information. How does having a stop in turkey affect the cruise line keeping the passports. I read the Schen(sp) agreement and it talks about allowing people to cross borders without having through check points. I am guess I am not educated enough on this agreement to really understand this.

 

Turkey is a non Schengen country.

I live in the UK, I cannot travel by air, sea or tunnel to or from continental Europe without a passport as UK is a non Schengen country. Once I arrive in a European country I can go wherever I want in the Shengen zone as I have passed through immigration at my port of entry. I frequently travel to Belgium via France. The border between France and Belgium is a signpost on the road. Blink and you miss it. No guards, no checkpoint. That is the Schengen agreement in action.

 

When entering the Schengen area from a non Schengen area passport checks are usually required. This also applies when entering a non Schengen country from the Schengen area. When we arrived in Turkey last summer Istanbul came before Izmir. We were all given cards to fill out which had to be showed at the port, I cannot remember if we needed passports there as well. The problem came when the Greek Authorities wanted a face to face presentation.

 

If the cruiseline is taking the passports it has to do with entering Turkey at Izmir followed by Istanbul and then the port of re-entry to the Schengen zone at Mykonos

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CruisingGiants

CruisingGiants

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I wrote a little review of the Spirit on my blog and included a couple pics. You may find it helpful, or not at all helpful.

 

http://www.budgetfairytale.com/2013/05/all-aboard-norwegian-spirit.html

 

Thank you so much for this! Love the pics and review -- can't wait to read your day by day. Sounds like you and your husband had a great honeymoon despite the last minute changes :D

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Da-Painter

Da-Painter

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I wrote a little review of the Spirit on my blog and included a couple pics. You may find it helpful, or not at all helpful.

 

http://www.budgetfairytale.com/2013/05/all-aboard-norwegian-spirit.html

 

Loved your review, glad NCL took good care of you and your special occasion. We are quite partial to NCL, we also feel they do a great job, and just stay with them. Love your new banners when you arrived at your room, you deserve it. :):):)

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lpwnich

lpwnich

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Cruising giants:how are you? We are sailing on June 28. I think you might be on the same sailing! Have you gotten any notification of an itinerary change from Ephesus (Izmir) to arriving in Kusadaski instead . Has anyone else gotten that information. We're are you staying in Barcelona?

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budgetfairytale

budgetfairytale

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Thank you so much for this! Love the pics and review -- can't wait to read your day by day. Sounds like you and your husband had a great honeymoon despite the last minute changes :D

 

Thanks so much - just love it!! Can't wait until your day by day report!

 

Loved your review, glad NCL took good care of you and your special occasion. We are quite partial to NCL, we also feel they do a great job, and just stay with them. Love your new banners when you arrived at your room, you deserve it. :):):)

 

Thank you all for reading.

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Realitoes

Realitoes

Posted
Posted (edited)
Thanks for the information. How does having a stop in turkey affect the cruise line keeping the passports. I read the Schen(sp) agreement and it talks about allowing people to cross borders without having through check points. I am guess I am not educated enough on this agreement to really understand this.

 

Turkey is not a member of the agreement (the only country where we docked that wasn't), therefore, they will most likely conduct an immigration check at their borders. I'm supposing that cruise line did this behind the scenes by having our passport ahead of time. Kept us from having to process through a passport check in port. They did give us a Landing Card that was to be filled out and returned when we re-boarded the ship in Izmir.

Edited by Realitoes
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luv-2-travel

luv-2-travel

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Posted
Wow.

 

I'm working on 2015, your photos are making me wish I had done this route for 2014. LOL. Your shots are amazing. I'd have a hard time picking which ones to blow up & frame.

 

I took over 2000 shots and had great difficulty narrowing it down to what I posted

 

I will be adding a few more albums from our trip in the near future -

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luv-2-travel

luv-2-travel

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I wrote a little review of the Spirit on my blog and included a couple pics. You may find it helpful, or not at all helpful.

 

http://www.budgetfairytale.com/2013/05/all-aboard-norwegian-spirit.html

 

Great Blog Mindy - really enjoyed our time with you and Tim and hope we will meet on future vacations - we are interested in the Panama Canal as well - possible Castaway future cruise?

 

JoAnn

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rocklinmom

rocklinmom

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Posted

Love your pictures!! Thank you for posting the link to them. We will be on the Spirit next summer and your pictures make the wait even harder! Did you enjoy the cruise in general? I will have two teenagers and a 10 year-old, so am hoping that they will enjoy seeing Europe for the first time. I didn't know that the ship keeps our passports -- that is a good detail to know ahead of time. Not thrilled about handing it over (can't imagine having to replace it to be able to fly home to the USA!).

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luv-2-travel

luv-2-travel

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Love your pictures!! Thank you for posting the link to them. We will be on the Spirit next summer and your pictures make the wait even harder! Did you enjoy the cruise in general? I will have two teenagers and a 10 year-old, so am hoping that they will enjoy seeing Europe for the first time. I didn't know that the ship keeps our passports -- that is a good detail to know ahead of time. Not thrilled about handing it over (can't imagine having to replace it to be able to fly home to the USA!).

 

Thank you - I will be posting more - check back in a month

 

The cruise was amazing. Thanks to all our great new Sunshine Castaway and Spirit Cruiser friends that we meet along the way. We also booked this cruise last minute as Carnival cancelled ours three weeks prior to sailing -

 

We only took 3 tours (Cinque Terre, Naples/Almafi Coast and Izmir) and the balance of the cities we did on our own - (quite easy to do) might be worth considering as the tours can get very long especially in the hot summer - that way you can go back to the ship at your own leisure

I am sure the kids will enjoy Europe - so different than home

 

I did not have an issue with the cruise ship keeping our passports - we have done this before - we took a copy of the first two pages, had them laminated and carried them with us at all times for identification - we also kept a copy in the room safe

 

:):D - I'm still smiling when I talk about this trip

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woody73

woody73

Posted
Posted

 

. . . I'm still smiling when I talk about this trip

That's a sign of an excellent cruise!

 

Thank you to all for sharing your experiences on a Spirit Med cruise. We sail next month from Barcelona to Venice, and your posts have been very helpful (it's the stuff NCL doesn't tell you).

 

We sail in to Venice in the afternoon. Which side of the ship would be best for the sail in?

 

Woody

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kapitman

kapitman

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Posted
That's a sign of an excellent cruise!

 

Thank you to all for sharing your experiences on a Spirit Med cruise. We sail next month from Barcelona to Venice, and your posts have been very helpful (it's the stuff NCL doesn't tell you).

 

We sail in to Venice in the afternoon. Which side of the ship would be best for the sail in?

 

Woody

 

STARBOARD. We were so lucky with our balcony view!!! It was beautiful!

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Azure Moon

Azure Moon

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Posted
That's a sign of an excellent cruise!

 

Thank you to all for sharing your experiences on a Spirit Med cruise. We sail next month from Barcelona to Venice, and your posts have been very helpful (it's the stuff NCL doesn't tell you).

 

We sail in to Venice in the afternoon. Which side of the ship would be best for the sail in?

 

Woody

 

STARBOARD. We were so lucky with our balcony view!!! It was beautiful!

 

Hot Dog! That's the side our balcony is on! :cool:

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budgetfairytale

budgetfairytale

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Great Blog Mindy - really enjoyed our time with you and Tim and hope we will meet on future vacations - we are interested in the Panama Canal as well - possible Castaway future cruise?

 

JoAnn

 

It was so nice to hang out with you, JoAnn! Love the idea of a Castaway Canal Cruise!

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