In the middle of the night, around 3:30am, I woke up and decided to take one last tour of the ship before I had to say goodbye.  This may be a good time to mention something I left out of the Day 7 blog post. When SP and I were touring The Haven ship-within-a-ship suites area, the Hotel Director’s Secretary, Pamela took us out into The Vibe sundeck. While there, she offered us...

By day 7, SP and I were feeling a bit of cruise fatigue. I didn’t want the cruise to end, but at the same time, I missed my bed. On the other hand, I don’t have a balcony with a view of the ocean at home. When I gave SP the outline of what I wanted to do in Nassau, he balked at the amount of walking, so we decided to have a very slow day on the ship...

Earlier in the week, the Hotel Director, Jovo Sekulovic, invited me and SP to have dinner at The Haven Restaurant which is part of the ship-within-a-ship concept Norwegian has developed. Because we had reservations at Teppanyaki the evening of Day 6 and Cagney’s on Day 7, I asked the Hotel Director’s Secretary, Pamela, if we could dine at The Haven Restaurant for lunch instead...

Our day started off with an announcement from the captain that due to a passenger’s worsening illness, we would need to divert to Cozumel, Mexico for emergency medical treatment. This would mean we would not be able to call on Great Stirrup Cay on Day 6 and instead would proceed...

SP and I had not yet had breakfast in the main dining room, so we decided to start our day in Taste (one of the three main dining rooms on Escape) with a sit-down breakfast rather than the buffet.  This prepped us for a day of exploration on shore and then activities back on-board...

On day 3 I woke up this morning not feeling so great. Not sure if it’s something specific that I ate or just a consequence of so much indulgence, but I really did not want to do much. I went up to the Garden Cafe buffet, picked out some of SP’s favorites plus some chocolate milk and peach yogurt for myself, and brought SP some breakfast in bed...

Day two started out like most, with breakfast but after that we packed a lot in.  Read about our meals, the entertainment (tease - we loved it!), and more on the Norwegian Escape, and reach out in the comments if you have any questions.  Now, off to breakfast...

With such a busy week, I hadn’t packed a thing yet. I had set aside some items in a Rubbermaid tote that I knew I wanted to take with me, then last night, I went to see Lady Gaga in concert at the Amelie Arena. Pretty fantastic show. Once I was back home, I started packing. Once I was done packing at around 12:45am, I went to print out my documents for the cruise. Surprisingly, because it was now December 2nd, the day of the cruise, my documents were no longer available to print. I knew this wouldn’t cause much of a problem at the port, but I would have liked to have something in hand just in case.  I got about four hours of sleep before waking up to drive down to Miami to start the Escape...

It's almost December, so I can take some time off and plan some vacations, and with the hurricanes bearing down on the Caribbean at the end of last summer, I think not many people wanted to book cruises. Whether they were concerned about ports being operational or unsure if there would be more storms late in the season, I’m not sure. But their hesitancy is my gain. With the reduced public interest in cruising and an already quiet time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was able to book a balcony cabin on NCL Epic for a crazy low price. Then prices kept coming down, so I invited a friend of mine to join me on NCL Escape to share a balcony cabin. You read this right… I’m taking two cruises in December on NCL, and for your entertainment, and Billy’s envy, I’ll be live-blogging them here on CruiseHabit.com...