Celebrating 10 Years with a European Adventure

I can’t believe Nathan and I have been married for 10 years! We knew we wanted to celebrate this milestone with something special.

Originally we had planned on going to Australia as a lifetime dream of Nathan’s but it just didn’t work out this year. Instead we had a great opportunity to do a transatlantic cruise on NCL from Miami to London! Taking a 2.5 week vacation and visiting 4 places and countries we have never been to is a great alternative!

Table of Contents

• Traveling/Sea Days
  • Hotel
  • Life Onboard
  • Food
• Lisbon, Portugal
• Vigo, Spain
• Paris, France
• London, England

Traveling/Sea Days

Here is an overview of all our adventures traveling and onboard the cruise!

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Hotel

Our trip started off pretty normal – driving to Phoenix Sky Harbor followed by a full day of airports, flying, and ultimately landing in Miami very very late.

Miami is a tough one, it is never our favorite place to travel too and the ocean can be pretty rough leaving because it is such a busy port. We realized that it has been over 6 years since we have cruised out of Miami, usually opting for Fort Lauderdale or Tampa instead. Unfortunately, our dislike of Miami was reinforced with the hotel experience.

First, we chose a hotel with a shuttle for easy transport. No big deal, until we called around 10:30/11pm and they stopped offering the shuttle at 10pm. So an Uber later, and we are very ready to get some sleep after a full day of travel.

Being a Hilton Member we always check in online and get a digital key but we usually stop by the front desk for a physical key, just in case, and our free snack. It was a good thing we did, because apparently they didn’t have the room I checked into earlier. She proceeds to tell us that the only room they have available is a “Double”!

What hotel even offers a double sized bed?!? Apparently, this one does. 🤦‍♀️

Now, normally we sleep in a King as we both like our space while sleeping. We can do a Queen when we have to but we have tried a Double before and it doesn’t work. So I immediately start asking questions if there is a sofa bed or something else in the room so that we aren’t sharing a Full bed, and she says nope.

We were so tired and just wanted to be done so we said fine, fully expecting that I would sleep on the floor, but that we wanted to talk to a Manager in the morning.

Also, for context the Front Desk attendant was not good at her job. I don’t say that to be rude because even looking back now, it was a terrible experience. She barely spoke above a whisper, never apologized, and stared at us like we were the crazy ones being frustrated over the situation.

It was comical when we got to the snack portion and we asked for a Coke and cookies. She goes into the back and then slowly comes back out and says they are out of Coke and if a water would be ok.

So we make it up to our room and thank the stars, there are two beds!! Now clearly I misunderstood when she said all they had was a full bed, but I feel like I’m justified in that when I started asking about a sofa bed and she didn’t say anything!

We quickly get ready for bed and fall asleep immediately. The plan was to sleep in a bit since we had until 11am to arrive at the port. Did this hotel agree to that plan? Nope, it did not.

At 6:30am the fire alarm starts going off. Now for those who read about our adventures in Georgia we had something similar happen! So we check outside, no immediate concerns but it doesn’t stop so we get dressed and start to head downstairs.

That is when we realize that it is only our room! The same Front Desk attendant is there, so half asleep we tell her what is going on and she gets maintenance to take a look.

He comes up to our room, tries different batteries which doesn’t help so he just takes it off the wall and walks out! So now we don’t have a safety feature of our room and we were woken up early. The good news is that Nathan was able to get another hour or two of sleep (which he needed after not sleeping well before our trip).

Once we left the hotel, Management ended up calling me while we were going through check-in at the port. Even that was a disorganized mess though! 3 different people called me saying they would talk to Manager and get it sorted out. Thankfully the right person finally got involved and they gave me a full refund, which is why I won’t name the location or leave a bad review since they did correct the situation (sort of).

Life Onboard

Check-in with the cruise was pretty standard, though seemed to take a lot longer than normal. Thankfully we have Platinum status now and we were able to skip ahead once we got past security. That is where we quickly realized what the hold up was and why the security line was at a standstill.

The UK and EU have implemented new travel visas that require you to fill some out some information online and pay a fee before you can travel there. NCL had sent out an email before the cruise and we had everything done, but the registration page specifically said you wouldn’t need to show anything (I guess it was just associated with your passport?).

Unfortunately, NCL was not going with that explanation and they were requiring proof of the email confirmation that you had completed the Visa. It took a few minutes but it was relatively easy for us to prove but still a pain. In contrast this ship was FULL of old people, so I am sure this was causing major issues for check in with people who didn’t have this ready or couldn’t find it.

With that behind us we got onboard, enjoying the familiarity of a ship we had already been on (NCL Bliss).

Now, our trip originally consisted of 6 days at sea before we hit our first port. That is A LOT of downtime. While amazing, I am not going to break it down by day because there just wasn’t anything exciting to tell. Nathan had to work the first week of the trip (😢) since he had just started a new job and I just lounged around.

In the past (ABC Islands) we said we hated this many days at sea, but a few things have changed and I ended up loving it and could have kept going. For one, I am read a lot now so that took up plenty of my time; and two we got unlimited internet for Nathan to work and so we could entertain ourselves. This was the golden ticket to surviving this many days at sea. Nathan would have obviously preferred not to work that first week.

I also realized that this was a perfect way to structure the trip. We ended up having two trips in one, first was a week of pure relaxation and not thinking or dealing with work. The second was once we got to the cruise ports and then it was non-stop fun and excitement exploring new places.

So the first week Nan would work in the morning down in the internet cafe and I would join and read or play my own games. Then we would head back to the room and play Guild Wars 2 from there so we had better access to chargers.

With all that downtime in mind, we did run into a rather big complication right away. There was a massive storm in the Atlantic Ocean that made this one of the roughest trips we have ever taken. When we sailed to Bermuda we did ride the tail of a hurricane which was terrible, but I think this one ended up being worse because of the duration.

For reference to those who cruise often – They put out sick bags at the stairwells and didn’t remove them until we arrived in Portugal – 8 days later! You know it is bad when they come out, and the fact that they left them for so long is crazy.

We found a cool app with this trip called CruiseMapper that actually showed where we were at the entire trip and the weather so we could watch the progress. This was the first day of sailing and we were the orange arrow in the bottom left – the first photo is wave height and the second is wind speeds.

See the crazy blue arrow!? That would be the Queen Mary 2, also heading to England. One of our favorite cruise YouTubers, Emma Cruises, was on that ship at the same time we were sailing. She talks about going through the middle of that storm and I am so happy that we diverted around it! (Check out her experience here!)

Thankfully we had prescription motion sick patches and pills. I don’t know how we could have survived this trip without them. The pills didn’t really work for Nathan so he used the patches and I took pills for the first two days or so and then I was alright.

Travel Tip! OTC patches don’t work! You need to get the prescription and ideally the daily patch.

Sadly the time we needed to divert around the storm meant that that our stop in Azores, Portugal was cancelled. So our 6 days of sailing increased to 8! Thankfully we still got to go to Lisbon, Portugal so we didn’t miss the country altogether.

Food

As always Food is Life! (must be said with Ted Lasso ‘Football is Life’ enthusiasm). Most of stories around sailing really consisted around food, so it gets its own section. 😊

Unfortunately, this trip was challenging for me. I was still on the Low-FODMAP diet for digestive issues so no gluten, lactose, onion, garlic, and a bazillion other things. Once I got the hang of things we had a good routine and the ship was great with Gluten Free and Lactose Free options. It was nice that the ship became my ‘safe place’ for food when we got to the ports.

I also packed knowing that food would be difficult, so I brought my own bread, condiments, snacks, and even chocolate mix to ensure that could always eat something and had a few treats. Plus I am really good at making things my own, I just need to find the ingredients like a DIY Caprese salad or DIY Breakfast sandwich with an omelette.

The buffet is always fun to see what kind of weird themes they have. Nathan wasn’t as thrilled with this trips food offering but he was a good sport. the only time he really had an issue was the terrible Apple Pie they offered at the 24hr Pub.

The gelatin structure on the left was definitely NOT what he wanted. Thankfully the Carrot Cake made up for it a little. 😂

We were also able to go to a few of the speciality dining restaurants and had both good and crazy experiences there.

First was the Cagney’s Steakhouse. We used this as our anniversary celebration and they brought out a special dessert for us which was a nice touch.

The food itself was great! You really can’t go wrong with salad, steak and potatoes. Nathan was taken a little off guard with the Grilled Thick Cut Bacon. In our minds we were expecting candied bacon, but it was more like bacon fat. 😬

Our second speciality dining was a little more of an adventure. We made reservations for the French restaurant, Le Bistro. Originally it was booked for the first night but without meds we were miserable and rescheduled it for the end of our sea days.

Nathan ended up with a delicious meal of escargot and lamb.

Mine was a little more… odd.

To start off I had asked for a salad with only cheese, tomatoes and oil and vinegar for dressing. The staff who helped me pre-order said the Endive Salad would be good and they could make the modifications.

I did not know what Endive was, but oh boy did I learn.

As Nathan is getting his escargot, they deliver this to me. The more I stared at this the more problems came up!

First, they didn’t bring any oil and vinegar so I guess I was eating this plain. 😬

Second, no cheese only 3 slices of cherry tomato. Which fine, I can deal with no cheese but really those are the tomatoes.

Three, this just doesn’t look appetizing. It looks like the core of romaine lettuce, including all the white bits!

Four, the grand finale… I originally thought the ring at the bottom was the base of a head of lettuce and below it was the core. Nope! It was an onion ring. The one thing I always said was no gluten, lactose, onion or garlic. The other restrictions I will deal with by adjusting my order. 🤦‍♀️

Now I have a dilemma – I don’t want to eat this even if I could! So, I just leave it there while Nathan eats his, no big deal. The waiter comes by and sees that I am not eating so now I have to explain that I can’t eat it because of the onion. I tried to quickly add that I didn’t want a replacement, but of course he doesn’t listen.

So awhile later (they weren’t exactly fast) they bring the replacement. Once again, I just sit there staring trying to understand what I have been given to eat with no luck. 🤦‍♀️ Thankfully they gave me oil and vinegar this time so I drowned it and dug in!

🤣 I can’t stop laughing even as I write this. 🤣

Nathan, being the loving husband he is, was able to capture the moment I tasted the terrible and horrible lettuce that Endive is. No amount of toppings (not that I got any!) or dressing could mask that taste.

I choked down 2 bites and gave up and they finally took my plate away.

Now onto the main entree! I ordered steak and what I thought was mashed potatoes. The staff kept assuring me that there was no milk in these potatoes but I have never seen mashed potatoes without milk or sour cream so I was very skeptical.

When our plates arrived I was one again shocked and just started laughing. First plain endive lettuce and now a plain boiled potato was on my plate. 🤣

No butter or anything was delivered to the table so I figured this was their solution to mashed potatoes without any lactose.

At this point, I have given up on this meal and just had to laugh and be grateful that it was free as part of our status. No way would I have been ok if we had to pay $60+ per person.

As we start eating I notice that the table next to us also ordered the steak and fondant potatoes… and it looks the same as mine!

So I had to immediately google fondant potato because clearly I didn’t know what I was ordering, and I was 100% wrong. Fondant potato is basically boiled potato, that’s it.

Lesson learned – Shanda does not like French food and google what you are ordering! 🤣

All in all our time onboard was fine. Nathan had it worse with work and sea sickness but we made the best of our time. We do want to try Celebrity next time because NCL food standards seem to be lacking lately but we made it work and survived 8 days onboard!

Lisbon, Portugal

Click here to read all about our adventures in Lisbon.

Here is a sneak peek!

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Vigo, Spain

Click here to read all about our adventures in Vigo.

Here is a sneak peek!

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Paris, France,

Coming Soon! Click here to read all about our adventures in Paris.

Here is a sneak peek!

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London, England

Coming Soon! Click here to read all about our adventures in London.

Here is a sneak peek!

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Happy 10 year Anniversary!