Norwegian Star Out of Venice Report

Having just returned from a wonderful holiday on board the NCL Star, I thought I would share my thoughts with everyone. There were six of us in our party, my DW, my brother Rob & his wife Dawne, and my niece Carly & her girlfriend Natalie. We decided to have 3 nights in Lake Garda, and a night in Venice, prior to our cruise leaving Venice on Sunday 9th August. The trip got off to a great start, with a fully relaxed 3 hours in the Escape lounge at Manchester Airport before our flight with Monarch into Verona.. Plenty to eat & drink,in the lounge, which would set the tone for the next 10 days!! We stayed at a lovely little hotel, the BelSito in Peschiera, which was a great base for touring the beautiful lake Garda. The hotel had a lovely pool, which we would have liked to use more, but we had busy days visiting the local beauty spots all around the lake.

Our plan was to travel right up to the top end of the lake & work our way down using the ferry service, but the threatened thunder storms encouraged us to stay a little more local, so we visited Sirmione on our first full day, and then Bardolino& Garda the next day. This was a truly wonderful few days, and a great way to start our big adventure. All the places we visited were very picturesque, and we also had some great food and a few small drinks to wash it down!!

So on the Saturday morning, we moved on to Venice. We took the train, with the station was very handily placed close to our hotel into Mestre, on the outskirts of Venice. We had booked the Hotel Tritone, mainly for the ease of pulling our ample luggage around, and this proved to be a great choice. The hotel was right outside the railway station, so we dropped our bags off, and bought our Vaporetto / bus passes for 20 Euro’s each, then caught the bus right outside the hotel for the10 minute journey into Venice. My niece & Natalie had not been to Venice before, so it was a real eye opener for them. We took in the grand canal & St Marks square & walked through the many back alleys, before taking the Vaporetto for a trip to the beautiful Burano.

We all loved this place, with its array of coloured houses. As we travelled back towards the Rialto bridge, we passed a cruise ship making its way out of Venice, which really got our adrenalin pumping, knowing that we would be doing that ourselves in just a few short hours. After a few drinks, people watching & taking in the scenery, we headed back to our hotel for a few hours rest.

We had booked a transfer from the hotel to the ship, and we had arranged with the hotel to let us drop our bags back off there on our return,as we had another full day to come in Venice, but I’ll cover that later. Our transfer worked perfectly, dropping us right next to the bag drop area at around 10-45am, and the embarkation process was so quick that we were enjoying the first of our many, many cocktails before11-15am!!

We set up base on the sun beds in front of the Bier Garten, and were greeted by the wonderful bar manager Melvyn, who promised to look after us during our stay, and he was true to his word. We were able to take in the Jacuzzi and enjoy the pool in comfort before the majority of passengers arrived, and we enjoyed a lovely lunch in the buffet.

I think the announcement was made at around 2pm that our cabins were ready, butwe were quite happy taking in the sun and sampling every variety of cocktailknown to man!! Unfortunately we had totake a break at around 5pm for the compulsory safety briefing, which is alwaysa bit of a pain, but to be fair this one wasn’t as bad as others we had had,because we didn’t need to take our life jackets. Once it was over, we were back to our sunbeds ready for the Sail away.

To be continued

Great review, looking forward to reading more. We were onboard July

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Which Pier did the Star leave from? We just booked for next July and am looking forward to reading more of your review.

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I always say the same thing about the drill, I know it is necessary but...I am also one of those that does not pay much attention to the airplane safety briefing.

Please continue OP - We are also thinking of cruising from Venice and love hearing of peoples experiences, thoughts and tips!

To be honest, I do not have many complaints about NCL Star, but the one thing that really disappointed me was the sail away parties. The first one out of Venice was OK, if a little too brief, but after that there wasn’t another sail away party as such,at any of the ports.

The band that just played jazz on most afternoons also got a little annoying, when we really wanted to be listening to up-beat party /holiday type music as we lazed around the pool. This is just my opinion, but I think this could be improved. Indeed, the best entertainment we had around the pool was when the pool attendant called Irene got up & belted out a few numbers. She was really good and got everyone in party mood! The animation team in general were a little disappointing and not as “visible” as others that we had experienced but Cruise Director Lorena was very good. They tried hard but just lacked that real quality. The sail away itself was every bit as spectacular as I had been told it would be, passing by the grand canal & getting a great view of all the sights we had visited in Venice.

We had a late dinner reservation on the first night in the Versaille MDR, so we had time to laze in the sun before unpacking & getting ready for our meal. We had booked an inside cabin, the first time we have had one after having balconies on all our previous cruises. We had thought that we would be spending so little time in the cabin due to there being a group of us & the hot weather, that we could save the extra money to have the few days in Lake Garda. This proved to be a good choice,as we literally slept & changed in the room and very little else. We were on deck 9 room 9063, which was in an excellent spot, close to the lift straight up to the pool area. These lifts were much less busy than the ones in mid ships, and we never had to wait more than a couple of minutes. The room was as we expected really, smallish but not too tight to get around, and the shower cubicle was quite spacious, so overall we were well pleased. Our room attendantwas called Denzil & he did a great job, answering all our needs and producing us a different towel animal each night.

So happy to see a current review! We do this trip next summer so will be reading faithfully! Which itinerary was this, out of curiosity?

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We had pre-booked meals between the Versaille & the Aqua MDR’s at 8-30pm each night, but as we didn’t get out of the restaurant until after 10pm, we decided this was too late, so would change to an earlier time for the rest of the cruise. The restaurant, the food and the service was everything we wanted it to be and we really enjoyed it, but we were so full and it was quite late, so it was hard to get back into drinking & enjoying the rest of the entertainment. We went into the Spinnaker bar and enjoyed a few dances though, before heading off to bed at around 1am.

Our cruise Itinery had changed from when we originally booked it, which we described as a “Brucie Bonus” though this was to be a poor choice of words as we heard of Bruce Forsyths death during our cruise, and this was one of his catch phrases. But the “Brucie” was evident on day two, which was originally a sea day, but would now see us visit Kotor (Montenegro). We were not due to dock until 2pm so were up early for breakfast & to get prime position sunbeds. After a morning of wonderful sunshine & cocktails, we entered the amazing scenery on the approach to Kotor.

To say this was spectacular would be an understatement. It was absolutely beautiful and lasted around 2 hours. It was amazing to sit eating lunch in the buffet, surrounded by such stunning scenery. I have not yet visited the fjords, but I am told this is very similar, so I will look forward to visiting them in the future, as this was nothing short of amazing.

We docked right in the port, which was lucky as other ships were docked at sea & tendering in. To be honest, the town itself was very quaint and worth a look around, but unless you made the climb up the hill to the old monastery & beyond (far too energetic for me!!) you could easily do it in a couple of hours, so we were soon back on board taking in the sun and increasing our blood alcohol levels!

We decided to eat in the Versaille again, but managed to go straight through at around 7-15pm without any queueing. Once again it was a lovely meal with great service & the Rose wine (white Zinfandel) was very quaffable!! We headed straight from our meal to the theatre to take in the Vegas show, which was excellent. From here we headed straight to the Spinnaker, where our lovely waitress Jovana again looked after us very well as we danced the night away with the 70’s theme. The animation team did their best every night in the Spinnaker, but other than in here we didn’t see too much of them. We finished the night off in O’Sheehans with beautiful chicken wings & nachos before retiring.

Our next port of call was Corfu, where we docked at around 10am. We were not in any great rush to get off, so had a leisurely breakfast before disembarking. Once off the ship, we caught the local shuttle bus through to the old town which was very reasonable & saved a long walk. We had a good walk around the old town, but it was so incredibly hot, that we had had enough within 2 or 3 hours & typically old Greek town with narrow streets and lots of shops.

The view up near the castle looking out tosea was very nice, and it was certainly worth a visit.

I know that some passengers headed for the beaches, but we are not really beach people, we prefer a pool to cool off, and as you may have gathered, we enjoy having a nice cocktail in the sun! We set sail again at 4pm, but as Ive mentioned, there was no sail away party or anything.

We had hoped to try one of the speciality restaurants, but the ones we really fancied were fully booked, so we were quite happy to stick with the Versaille, and yet again we were not disappointed.

All our girls took in the show in the theatre, which was an aerial / acrobatic act called Marrambolla, and they all enjoyed it, while my brother & I tried to keep in touch with our football team back home who were playing that night. Fortunately our cabins had Sky Sports News,which was a real bonus for us football fanatics. We all met up in the Spinnaker & also did the 5 o’clock somewhere bar, which featured Karaoke but like many venues this closed at midnight, though the Spinnaker stayed open with a disco long beyond midnight. The one thing the ship possibly lacks is an alternative showbar, as other than the Spinnaker, therewasn’t really anywhere with alternative entertainment – sure a few bars had pianists or singers, but it could have done with another showbar with comedians, or tribute acts on – again that’s my opinion & certainly doesn’t mean that we didn’t enjoy our nights. I can’t remember whether we had another late night visit to O’Sheehans or not,but I was quite excited about our next port of call, Santorini.

Onceagain we were not due in to Santorini until 2pm, so we were up early, perchedon our sun beds as close to the wonderful Bier Garten as we could get. I had chance to wander around the top deck to see some of the facilities on offer

We were due to tender into Santorini, so had to collect tickets at 9am.Now this was a total shambles, and very disappointing, we began queuing at around 8-45am as we wanted a quite early tender.The line was already quite big when we got to Ginza, where the tickets were being issued, and it very quickly stretched right around the ship.There was only one person issuing tickets,and it was taking an eternity. After around an hour in the line, the cruise director appeared and an American guy lodged a complaint about the speed of the process, and to be fair she took control of the situation, and she, along with another senior person began quickly issuing tickets, so the line began to move much quicker.Surely they must have experience of doing this, and there was no reason why tickets couldn’t have been issued quicker from the start?? We eventually got our tickets for tender number 10, and were relieved to get back into the sun.

@kevg 1889. Enjoying your report, pity your team lost ! WAWAW !!

@kevg 1889. Enjoying your report, pity your team lost ! WAWAW !!

The pain of defeat was eased by looking at the teams below us - and the cocktails:cool:

Enjoying your review and the nice photos!

I am really enjoying your report! I said earlier we were thinking about this itinerary, Now there is no thinking - we are definitely doing it!

Your pictures are great and I am enjoying all of the detail. Thank you and I am looking forward to more.

I am really enjoying your report! I said earlier we were thinking about this itinerary, Now there is no thinking - we are definitely doing it!

 

 

 

Your pictures are great and I am enjoying all of the detail. Thank you and I am looking forward to more.

I couldn't think of a better itinerary to be honest all of the ports were amazing & different in their own way - Dubrovnik was possibly the one that surprised me most it is stunning & my wife & I will definitely be looking to pay a longer visit there in the future

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I couldn't think of a better itinerary to be honest all of the ports were amazing & different in their own way - Dubrovnik was possibly the one that surprised me most it is stunning & my wife & I will definitely be looking to pay a longer visit there in the future

 

 

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We usually end up in the Caribbean but two years ago we decided on the Med out of Rome. My favorite cruise to date. We love the Caribbean but sometimes it is exciting to go somewhere different. It was a toss up between the Baltic Capitals and Venice to Greece. No longer a toss up thanks to you.:D

Awaiting your continued escapades aboard the Star. Booked for one year out and living vicariously

Fantastic report - look forward to reading more as I have just booked same cruise for 2018 [emoji177][emoji1]☀️[emoji484]

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The approach to the bay at Santorini was lovely, and we managed to dock quite a bit closer than the other ships, which was quite a relief, as the wind had got up, making the sea a little choppy for tendering in.

We sat having a drink in the Bier Garten, enjoying the banter with Melvyn and his team, as we waited for our tender number to be called, at which point we headed down to deck 4 to disembark

– then disaster!! I had left the tender tickets up on the top deck!! I flew through the ship to fetch them, and as I ran along the top deck I slipped & went full legth in a dive that Klinsman would have been proud of!! I was battered & bruised, but took a bow for all the passengers that were holding back their laughter, before running back at top speed – only to find that they didn’t even need our tickets when we got there!! The tender process took a little longer than anticipated due to the wind meaning they could only use one exit point, and the ride across was quite exciting as the waves buffeted our tender and the spray certainly kept us cool.

Thank you for coming back and continuing. I hope you were not too banged up after your fall. Looking forward to more.

Thank you for coming back and continuing. I hope you were not too banged up after your fall. Looking forward to more.

Sorry it's taking longer than I wanted as my mum is seriously ill in hospital - I hope to get more on later - as for the fall I had a huge graze on my arm and one on my leg but at least it got a laugh, not least from my family when I got back to them revealing all my wounds & then being told we didn't even need the tickets - ouch!!

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So sorry to hear about your mom. I won't rush you and I will just keep watching for future updates. Thank you again for taking time to report and share your trip and pictures.

Just a heads up ...we were on Spirit in June this year .which left from Rome but di the Adriatic from Venice .Be asvised this year it was hot, hot , hot ....everywhere ..very hard tovisit in extreme heat ..so if you can , go early in June or end of september ..july and August were brutal this year ..my friends were there in July and she got dehydrated and sick ..so make sure you drink loads of water ....

I decided no nore summers in Southern Europe for me ...way too hot

Just a heads up ...we were on Spirit in June this year .which left from Rome but di the Adriatic from Venice .Be asvised this year it was hot, hot , hot ....everywhere ..very hard tovisit in extreme heat ..so if you can , go early in June or end of september ..july and August were brutal this year ..my friends were there in July and she got dehydrated and sick ..so make sure you drink loads of water ....

I decided no nore summers in Southern Europe for me ...way too hot

Our Med cruise out of Rome was the first week in May and it was hot. Especially our time spent in Rome and Pompeii.

Thanks so much for your report, we are sailing on this cruise on Sunday and cant wait!

Enjoying your review.

We are considering a cruise out of Venice with a number of days driving around Italy pre-cruise, so following with interest.

[i wish your mom well.]