Bermuda NCL Spirit Notes
Saturday, May 16th
I woke up a few times during the night, just out of random "strange place" feelings - the rooms were quiet, the seas were very smooth. Finally about 8am we woke up for real and Bob went up to fetch some breakfast for me. He was a bad doobie and went up barefoot, and of course they sent him right back down again to put on some shoes. He brought me melons and fruits and some tea, and Bill brought his family some food, then Bob and Bill went up for some food on their own. He had the pancakes and french toast and scrambled eggs and such. He found the eggs very watery but the other items good.
Once we were fed we headed up to Henry's pub for the 10am Cruise Critics meeting. We had 52 people registered with CruiseCritics for our cruise. Only a few of them - maybe 6 to 8 - were going to be busy this morning with special at-sea meetings for a separate group. However we only got maybe 12 people total who showed up for the meet and greet! The ship had laid out orange juice, croissants and other treats for us. We got to meet the chef, the hotel director, the food and beverage director, and many other crew members. It was really lovely to talk with the crew and to meet other people we had been talking with the whole time on the forums. I finally had my beads and leis on hand to wear to this meeting! Jenn had even brought name tags for us all. We had a lot of fun talking and getting to know each other.
A key crewmember I wanted to talk with at this stage was the Executive Chef - I am a member of the Chaine des Rotisseurs, which is a culinary organization, and so is the chef here. I wrote up my notes with him separately, which will be sent along to the Chaine for their membership magazine.
Soon it was 11am and time for me to track down a spot to get to the wireless connection - I hadn't gotten online since boarding the ship and was going into withdrawl!
First we went through the lobby and Bob spotted - again - the promo for buying 6 bottles of wine for on-board consumption at 20% off. The problem is they want you to choose all 6 bottles ahead of time. We generally like to pair our wine with our food. That is, if we're having a steak, we're probably going to have a red wine, not a white wine. However, they don't let you do that. You have to choose specifically what 6 bottles you want right now. So if you choose 3 reds and 3 whites, if you get to day 4 and you want your fourth red meat meal in a row (just by chance) then now you're stuck with 3 whites waiting for you to drink. It's a little odd. Why do you have to choose the wines at the start, when you haven't seen all the menus yet? In any case, we were resistant at first because of that - but now we were weakening. It's likely between the two of us that we'll drink a bottle a day anyway, and 20% off is a good savings. We have until 9pm tonight to decide to take the deal.
So after Bob got delayed discussing that with the woman there - and helping her realize that they had forgotten to put a Chateau St Michelle on the list that they were avidly displaying in all their"bottle collections" - we went up to the sushi restaurant. Luckily the bench outside the door DOES get internet receiption so while we waited the scant 10 minutes before the sushi and sake tasting began I got to super-quickly upload all my photos and notes, leap onto CruiseCritics and post in the review I'd written, download my mail files from my various mail servers and let Bob quick-check his gmail account. Then it was 11:30 and we headed in.
I have a TON of notes for the sake and sushi tasting. I won't embed them all into this main review as that would quadruple its length, but I will write them up separately for anyone who wants to hear about it. It was a lot of fum. I made origami cranes for the 5 staff members who ran it. It was supposed to only last an hour, but it ran an hour and a half, so it was now 1pm which was time for the Latitudes party. Which meant we were now sprinting upstairs to the 12th floor to go to the Galaxy of Stars area.
This is a very large nightclub area - but the line from it went all the way out to the main pool room! The weather was slightly overcast, and some people felt that everyone who normally would be in lounge chairs sunning themselves would now be in the line for the free drinks. Sure enough, even when we got to the front door there was still a huge line behind us, and almost every single chair in this large area was full. You got to shake hands with the captain, hotel director and many other crew members, and were offered free Champagne. Bob got a glass of merlot for himself which was quite tasty. He gave me his Champagne which meant I had 2 glasses. There were appetizers circulating but as we had to find seats in the "outer ring" (against the windows) none of the appetizers ever made it out to us. We did see Jake and Ann from the Cruise Critics group there!
The captain welcomed us and introduced everyone in a very pleasant way. He explained that the NCL Spirit used to be the Superstar Leo and when it was first launched it had the most crew ever on a NCL ship. At the time it was about 1352 crew members and one entire floor was a casino. Now they have about 1000 crew members and a smaller casino :). He mentioned during introductions that the Spirit is an 80,000 horsepower vehicle. They did a raffle drawing of everyone's entry tickets. Bob won a pair of gambling tournament entries, and someone won a free dinner, and a few other small prizes were offered. Then they told a few jokes and it was over - no hard sell, all very fun. I do want to note that when they announced prizes they would say the person's name and room number. I imagine that's in case there are two "Bob Smiths" on the ship - but it stood out because in all other situations they are so careful about room number privacy. It's not on your key card, it's not announced generally.
Bob was now starving since I'd had sushi and sake but he hadn't eaten at the demonstration. It was 1:45pm. We went up to Raffles. He got a variety of food - pasta, eggplant, meat and more - and enjoyed it all. I made myself a lovely salad which was quite tasty. We made our way back down to our room.
It was now about 3pm and he was feeling tired. Bill, Sarah and Liam were next door and Liam was not quite sleepy yet. There was a note on our door's white-board (which we'd brought and stuck on the door with magnets) saying Bill & family wanted to go to Cagney's. I called Cagney's and was told the only times they had left were 8:45 and 9. I told them I'd call them back. I went over and checked with Bill and Sarah and was told those were fine times. I went back to our room and called again. They'd already sold out of the 8:45 and now only had 9pm available! Those specialty restaurants sell out very quickly :) So we grabbed the reservation.
I offered to take Sarah up to the spa, and up we went. I thought it might be busy with it being a sea day and overcast, but it was really very empty. That being said, they had NO locker keys available! Very odd. We just put our clothes and such on a chair by the sauna. The sauna and steam room are female-only (they have a side for men). There's a nice bench area between the two, again still female-only, that lets you sit and look out at the ocean. We went in the sauna first, and it is a fairly good size, maybe 8-10 people comfortably. Another pair of women came in while we were there and we talked a bit about snorkeling. Then we headed over to the steam room. There was one woman in the steam room. It was very steamy and I only lasted maybe 5 minutes before being toast :)
We took quick showers to rinse off, then walked over to the aquaswim pools. To get there you have to go out of the "women's only" area, past the front desk of the spa. This isn't exactly public, but it is open to the main hallway, so you want to wear a towel or cover-up here. Then you go through the gym area with the treadmills and yoga area and over to the two aquaswim pools. They are separated by a glass wall from the main big pool outside area. There was nobody here at all, so we put our things down on the chair and went over. They were cold!! At least after the sauna and such they seemed very cold. Still, we each jumped into one. The current was amazingly strong. I could "crawl" and stay even but if I tried to do a breaststroke it pushed me back. We had some fun racing against the current, and going to the back of the pool area and trying to swim forward and reach the other end against the current. It was a lot of fun and a good workout without seeming like work at all. Before we knew it it was almost 4pm. We went back into the women-only area, changed back into our clothes. Note that all of this is free - only the actual "yoga classes" and massages and such cost money.
We got back to the rooms and all three men - Bob, Bill and Liam - were asleep. Sarah woke up Bill and they prepared to head down for the Bingo tournament at 4:30. I brought my laptop into their room to keep an eye on sleeping Liam while I typed in all my notes. Bob slept :) The radio doesn't quite seem to be working, I heard it buzz just about 5:30 and answered it, but shortly after that the phone rang and Bill checked in. I was worried the phone might wake up Liam, but he slept through it. He even slept through the rather noisy sound of vacuuming coming from in the hallway about this time!
About 6 Bill and Sarah got back, and I headed into my room to shower. I like to dress up for dinner, so I took a shower and so on. About 6:30 we headed up into the main lobby, to talk with someone about the wine bottle pre-purchase deal. We asked at the restaurant desk and was sent to the reservation desk. We asked at the reservation desk and were sent to "any bar". We went over to the coffee bar at the other side of the lobby area, and were told that the Chateau Ste Michelle that was on all the display tables and that we'd specifically asked about was not really on the list. Odd! Since we'd really wanted that one, and since we'd been told by two different people that it was definitely part of the offering, they said we could have it at the 20% rate. We chose our six bottles and were given six coupons, one for each bottle. It was now time to head over to the Captain's cocktail party.
When we got to the art gallery they weren't quite set yet so Bob went to take some photos of the sunset. While he was gone, the doors opened so I headed in. We got to shake hands with the Captain and other senior officers, and were handed Champagne. The shore excursion person, Jorge, came over to chat and it turns out he was on the NCL Pride of America when we were, during the horrific hurricane! We have tons of photos and videos of that - I was blogging almost hourly during that cruise :) That hurricane day when the ship snapped 8 lines in a row and had to flee the dock was his very first day on the ship. In fact he said that the captain of the Pride of America during that time is now also the "alternate captain" for this NCL Spirit! He's "off" right now, but if we take a different NCL Spirit cruise we might end up with him again. Very neat!
Bob came in, we all talked some more, and Bob got some options for golfing on Monday. Eventually it was time to go so I handed around a few origami cranes and we headed downstairs to the coffee bar again. We turned in four of our tickets and got four bottles of wine to take back to our room. The fifth we were going to drink that night in Cagney's, no reason to hand carry it right now. The sixth was Champagne for having with sushi later in the week, and we wanted that kept cold.
So we meandered back through the ship with our four bottles of wine, and had several offers to help drink them. We tucked them into our room and then lugged the laptop upstairs to check in on email and make some posts. I really, really don't like this leaving-the-room-for-internet stuff. Then it was time for dinner. We headed over to Cagney's and a short while later Bill, Sarah and Liam showed up. We were early at 8:45pm for our 9pm dinner time but they were able to seat us right away.
The room is certainly lovely, and they were very attentive to us and to Liam. They brought him over apple juice and mashed potatoes, which he liked greatly. Poor Sarah was feeling really poorly with seasickness and they said that the place was nearly out of the bracelets and such, that a lot of people have been needing them. We wondered if the overcast skies were driving people inside where they were more sensitive to the problems. I ordered the salmon, expecting the thin slices, but actually they brought a 'chunk' which was tasty. The lobster bisque was lovely but had no chunks in it, it was a smooth puree. For the main dish I had filet mignon. They have a variety of sauces available for the meats and they brought little dishes of each one so I could mix and match. I has asparagus and creamed spinach with it. It was all very tasty. The wine we had chosen for this meal - I'll have to look it up, a cab-merlot blend - was very nice with it, spicy and flavorful. For dessert I had the apple pie with ice cream which was nice. Bill commented that his au jus was salty and seemed to be cornstarched, but was good.
By now it was 11pm so we took a walk along the deck for a while, then went down to our rooms. I offered to babysit if they wanted to go out again, but apparently everyone was worn down, because it seems that all of us were asleep fairly quickly!
Sake and Sushi Tasting Notes
Chaine de Rotisseurs / Executive Chef Peter
NCL Spirit Photos from Saturday - 83 in total
NCL Spirit Photos - no captions, all on one page
NCL Spirit Photos - from Bob's camera - no captions, all on one page
Bermuda NCL Spirit Travelogue