Repositioning Cruise to Canada
This Spring we had the opportunity to sail on the Norwegian Bliss as it repositioned from their winter Mexico cruising, up to Canada for summer Alaska trips. It was a pretty simple trip, but we were still excited about our very first visit to Canada!
While our sightseeing was limited to Victoria and Vancouver, we still had plenty of adventures, and you can check out the highlights below.
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Table of Contents
General Experience
Cruising out of Los Angeles, CA is one of the best options for us living in Phoenix, AZ. It’s about a 6-hour drive (7-8 hrs with electric charging) so it is easily doable on a Friday afternoon, or in the case of this trip we took our time and spent all day Saturday driving.
We like to stay at the Hilton Long Beach with the Park and Go rate, which is much cheaper than trying to leave our car at the port. While we do have to take an Uber to the Norwegian Port (they offer a shuttle to the Carnival one), it’s still cheaper and it’s a good hotel.
After resting at the hotel for the evening, it was time to board our cruise on Sunday. While normally embarkation is quick and easy, we started this trip with a speed bump. After dropping our bags off with the porter, we made our way over to the security tent. After 15 minutes or so of a slow moving line, it came to a stop and didn’t move again for over an hour.
During this time, we caught little tidbits that the cruise was undergoing one of its two required inspections by the Coast Guard, which are unscheduled to provide the most authentic experience. This made for a very long day as normal things like having rooms ready were significantly delayed.
You can see how long the line ended up being, well after we had finally got onboard.
When we finally got onboard around 1pm (we arrived at 11am), we did our normal lunch routine and spent a little more time than normal exploring the ship since we couldn’t go to our rooms. Unfortunately, crowds continued to grow and grow as more a more people checked in. It was one of the few cruises we have had that we felt how big the ship truly was (up to 4,000 passengers!) because everyone was in the public areas.
Finally, at 5pm they opened the rooms for us and our bags were delivered minutes after arriving to the room. Thankfully, we didn’t make any dining room reservations, so we were able to get dinner before our show.
After embarkation, it was a pretty simple trip and there isn’t too much to report on. Our first full day was at sea, so we slept in and enjoyed our almost pitch black room (we opted for a balcony on this trip). We grabbed lunch at the buffet and then ‘ran our errands’ for the week.
As amusing as that sounds on a vacation, we had a number of stops we wanted to make to ensure we were set up for the rest of the week, such as booking our shore excursion for Victoria, scheduling a couple’s massage, and booking our next trip in September using CruiseNext.
It’s no surprise that we completed those pretty quickly, and then it was finding a nice spot to relax.
While finding a place to relax was easy, finding somewhere warm was more of a challenge. We knew going into this cruise was the very different weather than what we would traditionally expect on a cruise. Forecasts said it would be anywhere from 45* to 60* F, depending on the location. Add in a sea breeze and this constant fog that followed us, and it was cold!
We found that the Mojito Bar on Deck 8 Mid-Ship was a perfect hangout to avoid loud crowds, cold weather, and very little ship movement.
Beyond that, we did enjoy the full Starbucks available onboard. Normally there is a fancy coffee bar, but they truly had a full Starbucks experience for you!
Sadly, it was not included in our drink package (it may have been if you paid extra for the Premium version), so we tried to limit our Starbucks runs when we were extra bored and needed something fun to do.
One of the things we don’t normally try is the Specialty Dining. It’s not worth the cost for us, and dealing with reservations is never fun.
This time we actually got a free Specialty Dining with our booking, so we decided on New Republic. It is a fusion tapas style restaurant, which I don’t believe we have seen on any other NCL ships. While you could eat there à la carte, we were able to choose 4 items per person as part of our specialty dining offer (which was plenty of food!).
All the food looked so good, we actually got distracted with a few of the dishes and forget to grab pictures, but it was all delicious! The only thing that was a little sad was the street fries, and that was just because we wanted more carnitas and cheese, but otherwise they hit the mark.
Our selections: Rock Shrimp Roll, Edamame, Elote Mexicano, Tijana Street Fries, Tuna Poke Nachos, Ramen with BBQ Pork Belly, Pork Belly & Scallions Dumplings. (Technically there was supposed to be 8, but we cannot for the life of us remember what else we would have gotten.)
Last on the adventures for this ‘relaxation’ trip was the spa! We selected a hot stone couple’s massage, which has been a favorite in the past, and it was pretty good on this ship as well. The massage experience will always vary a bit by the individual person delivering it, so they were not our favorite, but it won’t deter us from future treatments.
While we definitely had some great experiences on this ship and tried new things, this was not our favorite. It was cold, there were a lot of people, and this trip helped solidify that the cruise is no longer our destination. We want to cruise to get to ports, but the cruise to nowhere or tons of sea days are not what we are after.
Victoria, British Columbia
Click here to read all about our adventures in Victoria!
Here is a sneak peek from our adventures!
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Vancouver, British Columbia
Click here to read all about our adventures in Vancouver!
Here is a sneak peek from our adventures!
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Ultimately, this cruise was another successful vacation that we look back fondly on! Canada is beautiful, and we look forward to many more visits to the west side, as well as throughout the entire country.
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