The Traveling Man

Yes, sometimes shore excursions are available on board which do not show up online beforehand. Also, sometimes NCL will no longer list an excursion if it is fully booked prior to the cruise. In that case it may be shown several months in advance but not be available during the weeks just prior to sailing. Check with the Shorex desk on board to see if there have been any cancellations or if the tour operator has added additional capacity. If the tour you want remains fully booked, you still can ask to be added to a wait list in case of last minute cancellations. In any event, I would recommend avoiding tours that require long bus or train rides. The travel time scheduled for Berlin tours from Warnemunde is about three hours. Traffic delays frequently add another half hour. That makes seven hours of travel to spend maybe three hours in Berlin. A similar case is Paris from the port of Le Havre. You’re on vacation. Try to spend your time more enjoyably than sitting all day on a bus. If visiting Berlin is important to you and you can afford the time and money, schedule a few days either before or after your cruise to truly enjoy your visit there.

No, you said that the only thing available to do when boarding early is to sit around and do nothing while waiting for your room to be ready to be occupied. I suggested that there are many worthwhile activities to fill your time. Some of those can only be done once you are on board. Others can be done earlier, but sometimes the information needed to make an informed decision is sketchy or incomplete prior to boarding. While it certainly is possible to make dinner reservations online, changing the day or time can be done much more easily once onboard, and first come, first served at that point. The early bird gets the worm. While many of the entertainment venues on NCL’s ships can be booked in advance, on some ships some can only be booked once onboard. I’m not one to try to be first on board. I just try to get on board in time to enjoy lunch in the MDR or Haven restaurant at a reasonable hour, say before 1:00 PM. Neither do I need to max out my beverage package usage, but I understand those who do. YMMV.

We were on a Celebrity cruise ship at Cobh, the port for Cork, Ireland, when the security officer at the gangway stopped us to ask why I was carrying a very full duffel bag off the ship. So I said “laundry” and he let us pass, but with a quizzical look. Although we have enough Latitudes points to always get free laundry services on NCL, on board laundry with Celebrity would have cost an arm and a leg. Fortunately, there’s a drop off laundry in Cobh a couple of blocks from the pier. It’s across the street from the Titanic museum and right next to a couple of nice restaurants. An entire duffel bag, about six days of clothes for two of us, washed, dried, and folded, cost about $10. We went to the museum, had lunch, and the laundry was ready for us when we returned.

Absolutely! A stroll across the Ponte Vecchio is also a touchstone for a visit to Florence. Also try to get reservations for the Academia del Arte to see Michelangelo’s David.

I think her first time may have been with Cruise Next Manager Celeste, my wife, and me in Le Bistro on the Dawn this past October.

Or having lunch on board. Or signing up for Latitudes benefits like Wines Around the World. Or making dining reservations. Or changing dining reservations. Or making the most of a beverage package. Or making entertainment reservations. Or…

We really enjoyed our day trip to Giverny when we had a port day on a cruise to Le Havre. Now every time we visit a museum and see some of Monet’s work, we point and say “We’ve been there! I remember that lily pond! That bridge was full of people from our tour bus when we tried to get a picture of it!”

Glad things worked out well for you. Have a great time in Paris!

An internet search for “stabbing on NCL ship” takes you to several reliable sites.

We did this tour just prior to the COVID lockdown. As I recall, the walk from the bus parking area to the meeting point was at least 10 minutes, almost 15. From the meeting point to some of the interesting parts of town was another 10 minutes or so. In the afternoon, you’ll need to plan on leaving the Uffizi museum about a half hour before your bus departure time, or about 15 minutes prior to the appointed meeting time.

That reminds me of Johnny Depp in “The Tourist.”

I don’t think that it’s a case of NCL intentionally trying to make it seem difficult. Rather it’s NCL’s IT department having difficulty trying to tweak their software into doing things it was not originally designed to do. Compounding the $50 Free at Sea discount on top of the Latitudes discount seems to give them trouble. We usually try not to worry about it, but simply wait until after we have taken all our tours for that cruise, then finding a time that the Shorex desk isn’t crowded. It only takes a couple of minutes to get the discounts applied. No big deal.

Yes. 75019 here.

Would that be Bedford?

Sometimes they don’t show up on the website until shortly before the sailing date. I think they still do offer them, so you can keep checking back, or just call NCL to verify. There also are some independent tour companies that offer them.