Norwegian Sky 4-night Miami to Bahamas
Written: Nov 01 '09 (Updated Nov 01 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful beaches/scenery, not crowded!
Cons: 4 nights just aren't enough to experience it all.
The Bottom Line: NCL is a good cruiseline (though I prefer Carnival), the Bahamas are beautiful, do your research before taking the trip so you have no regrets!
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| vr4jen's Full Review: Norwegian Sky |
We recently booked this trip for our honeymoon (after the swine flu cancelled our Mexico plans) and I must say, thank you Swine Flu, Cancun can never compare to the Bahamas!
We went at the end of May, so your experience may be different based on the time of year.
Pre-trip advice: If you've cruised before, you know how expensive alcohol can be. I know it's not legal to bring it on board with you... but people have been known to get away with transporting it in a soda bottle inside your suitcase. They may confiscate it, they may not, it's up to you to take that risk. Otherwise, be prepared to pay.
Obviously, make sure to bring cash on your trip for all of the small things that come along. Always good to have in a foreign country.
Boarding the boat: It took a good hour or so of waiting in line to board the boat. We boarded in the morning, several hours before the ship was scheduled to depart at 5pm. There wasn't much to do during that time, and if you've cruised before you know you can't access your room until a certain time. We opted to not blow all of our wedding money on drinks so we just walked around and snapped pictures during this time. We had a standard ocean view room with a porthole. Room size was fine, bed was fairly comfy, bathroom was small though... smaller than I remember it being on Carnival.Then there's the safety drill... we waited until the very last call to come out of our rooms and do the drill, which was a good call as it can get pretty claustrophobic waiting in the crowd for several minutes.
Food/Entertainment: They have 4 free restaurants, and a few paid restaurants. We stuck to the free restaurants... I'm not a picky eater. The poolside buffet style indoor/outdoor restaurant was pretty nice... we liked sitting out on the back deck. I did not care for the desserts at all though. Drinks are expensive, comes to like $11 each after auto gratuity. We only bought 3 the entire trip, just not worth it to us! The only free non alcoholic bevs are water and iced tea. On our last night we ate at the Crossings dining room. Even though Norwegian claims "freestyle cruising"... no shorts are allowed in this particular restaurant. We had to wait 30 minutes to get in when it was empty. The food was great though, we each ordered 2 apps and 2 entrees (serving sizes are tiny!) We didn't partake in any of the shows though... guess we just enjoyed being in our room more! There was a few that looked kind of fun though. One night they were also giving out free bailey's irish creme shots in front of the internet area. Check that out!
There was scheduled entertainment, and maybe we just went during a slow time, but overall the boat seemed pretty quiet at night. We weren't really interested in the shows so we ended up walking around watching the thunderstorms over the ocean, now those were great!
Now for our experience...
Grand Bahama Island: You either need to book an activity or rent a car to do anything here. After much research on cruisecritic.com, we decided to rent a car right away. It is very confusing after you get off the boat... no one seems to really know what to do. You're just dropped off in this area with locked up little buildings and a parking lot. Nothing opens until after 9am. The locals don't really seem to know what's going on either. We were redirected about 7 times until we found the ONE car rental office. We waited until 9am for it to open, and got a car. It was right hand drive and this country follows the British standards of left side of the road driving. We forgot this a couple times, but we survived.
Maybe it was just the day or time of month/year we were here, but the entire island seemed pretty much deserted. Our first top was Taino Beach. We backtracked for about an hour trying to look for Taino Beach Resort... and could NOT for the life of us find the dang place. The locals were like "oh it's just right here.... go down this road..." and it never was. So good luck finding it. Instead we ended up at Junkanoo Beach Resort, which wasn't open yet, but it was beautiful. Seemed like it'd be a very fun place when it got busy. Had a really nice pier and beach setting. Just to the left of it was the famous Tony Macaroni's Conch Stand, but it was only open Thurs-Sun. Bummer. We just stuck around to take a few pics and went on our way.
Next stop was Fortune Bay. Nothing really to see here... seems like every stretch of beach is about the same (except for the next..)
We drove for what seemed like forever to Gold Rock Beach. There are no signs or anything letting you know you're still going in the right direction. It's a road in the middle of the island, in the middle of nowhere, and finally we saw a charter bus on the left with a little parking lot. We pulled in and sure enough, it was Lucaya National Park. They charge $3 pp to park and hand you a map with caves on one side of the road and the beach on the other. This was by far the best place we visited on the island (It was my husbands favorite place on the entire trip). The bat caves are pretty interesting, but the beach..... wow... straight out of a movie. I just layed in the shallow water and never wanted to leave. There was only maybe 10 other people within miles of us on each side so we felt save leaving our belongings on the shore.
We made our way back to Port Lucaya. There were some great shops/bars/restaurants here. We settled on Rum Runners bar, right in the middle of the square. I had conch for the first time (yum!) and we had some amazing drinks. Unfortunately my husband left his wallet sitting on the bar when we left, and by the time we realized it and came back 10 minutes later, it was long gone. The bartender (or someon else) had to have stolen it... Ugh. Just be careful in these areas with your belongings. So that put a damper on the whole trip unfortunately, as we had a lot of wedding money in there.
Next Port...
Nassau: We opted for the beach day at Blue Lagoon on this one. The taxi's here are just buses. You get in line, they wait for as many people as they can, and shove you all in a taxi, $4pp. Once we got there, while waiting for our boat to leave, we walked around the boat dock across the street at Atlantis... some amazing multi million dollar yachts there. Kind of makes you depressed. So anyway, the boat trip over there was beautiful. The most amazing waters you could ask for. Blue Lagoon itself is nice too, a lot smaller than I thought. The wading pool/swimming area was WAY smaller than I thought... they had it blocked off so you couldn't go past a certain point. Kind of disappointing. Oh yeah, the water is NOT warm. It's even chilly at first... then just cool. The water nowhere on these islands is "warm" like I had been hearing. You just get used to it after a while. We were able to go over to the Dolphin/sea lion area and watch though. Not much else to say about the island. If I went back to Nassau, I wouldn't come back here (not that it was bad, just not a lot to see). We came back on the earlier boat and they said they would take us back to the cruise port for free! That was nice to avoid another $10 taxi ride. The main street along the ship port is fun. We walked around to different shops/restaurants. Senior Frogs is on the very end and was PACKED... it was like highschool graduation or something going on. We didn't stay there long.
Next Port,
Great Stirrup Cay: I was honestly least looking forward to this after hearing some of the cruise critic reviews, but it ended up being my most favorite port. It was kind of like the beach day at Blue Lagoon but way better. We took off on our own and explored parts of the east end of the island... so many interesting sea creatures and shells... so much fun. I swam in the water for hours, I never wanted to leave. Great music playing... Kinda crowded but you can just swim out further and not be bothered. I really enjoyed their bbq too. I cut my feet a few times on the rocks though so just be careful. Tip: if you have goggles or even snorkeling gear, BRING IT. They charge way too much for this stuff and when you are there, all you want to do is snorkel or at least have goggles for swimming. The water is crystal clear and there are tons of tropical fish. It was pretty unforgettable for me.
Other tidbit I will mention... if the forecast call for clouds/rain (at least in the summertime) don't be sad! It is so HOT and humid there, we were praying for clouds and some sprinkles to cool us down. Plus, every night we stayed up and watched these amazing lightning storms over the ocean that we never get to see in California. That was much more exciting than the boat's entertainment, for us.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Couples
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Epinions.com ID:
vr4jen
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Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 0 members
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