Rick&Jeannie

Pool deck entertainment at noon. Seaside Duo. Contemporary hits & favorites. Pretty good singer!

The usual sea day breakfast scramble in the buffet:

We are, thanks! Yes, we are impressed with the Spirit.

We were sitting in the very back of Onda last night...I mentioned that it seems "long and narrow"...

Sadly, no. Apparently nobody arranged a CC Meet & Greet and with this being only our 3rd NCL cruise I did not feel "qualified". Perhaps there was one...but it was not publicized on our roll call.

This was the parking area at the Belvedere overlook. Imagine trying to turn a bus around with *another* bus parked beside you and close to a dozen other smaller cars and trucks! (Deep respect for professional drivers...)

Internet seems to have slowed down a bit....I'm going to try to upload some pictures. This is Karen, our tour guide/driver for our Moorea 4x4 "Adventure". She was somewhat on the petite side but she really manhandled that little 4WD truck!.

Yes, we just received the special laundry bag/coupon last night. Probably could have waited a day for the batch we just sent out but we didn't know for sure when we would get it!

Recap so far: Day 1 - Papeete Day 2 - Raiatea Day 3 - Bora Bora Day 4 - Mooreaa Today is Day 5, first of 4 sea days. Looking forward to some downtime. I *really* like sea days, DW only somewhat. I'm anxious to get a chance to explore the ship. We keep getting "lost" trying to get to various spots on the ship...not because we don't know where we want to go but because we seem to always have to go up or down a deck just to get to the front or back of the ship on the current deck. We ate at Onda last night (Italian). All 6 of our party agreed that it was very good. We'll be doing Cagney's and Teppenyaki within a few days. I was a little surprised at how small Onda was, being tucked away at the very back of the ship on deck 12. It's long & "skinny" but it certainly did not diminish the quality of the food! The decor was very nice. Lots of good service.

We are looking forward to trying out Onda this evening for our first specialty dining. Regarding food...we ate at Windows a couple of nights ago. Very nice decor...the "newness" of the ship's refurb really shows here...but it's all just "window dressing" (pun intended.) It appeared that the restaurant was about half full...lots of empty tables but the service was the slowest we have ever experienced on *any* cruise ship. We had to ask multiple times for various things. Frustrating. The food was good...it's just that it took forever to get through the meal. Thankfully we were not trying to get to a show or anything else after the tiring day we'd had. We'll give it another shot (maybe tomorrow night) or possibly Taste, the other MDR.

No step ladder...just one of those trailer hitch mounted steps. One had a pretty serious "rocking" motion soyou had to be careful to always step on one side or the other. The other truck was pretty stable. No real safety issues other than just bouncing around inside the frame like billiard balls! Nothing that a good dose of Advil and Tylenol couldn't handle!

The Belvedere overlook (for lack of a better term) is at the top of a fair sized hill/small mountain. There is a TINY parking lot at the very top with a concrete viewing platform that is about 20 x 20 feet. It's a great view overlooking the bay where the ship was moored, but parking was CRAZY! There was an area about 100 feet below the very top where hikers were supposed to park (apparently some hiking trails were there but we never saw them) but everybody naturally tries to drive all the way to the topmost area, which is a dead end! Imagine 2 full sized buses, 5 or 6 open-air trucks like ours and maybe 10 cars crammed into an area of about 100 feet by 40 feet. It was pretty wild when anybody wanted to leave because the only form of parking was double and triple stacking the vehicles! But it *was* a great view!

Today was Moorea and another third party excursion. (I much prefer to go with ship tours but we booked somewhat late and really couldn't get anything that appealed to us.) 4x4 Adventure, Belvedere and Rum Distillery. This was your typical road tour around the island in almost the exact same type of truck as our other tour in Bora Bora...an open-air 4 wheel drive truck. (Probably a Toyota but I didn't really pay attention.) We visited 2 Island high points with amazing scenic vistas. We were supposed to visit a rum factory but when we got there the guide said there were too many people, very crowded. We just took the stance of "if you've seen one rum factory you've seen them all!" Plenty to be seen in the Caribbean!

For anyone contemplating this itinerary...be sure and bring plenty of T-shirt type tops & such. We've done our share of Caribbean cruises...but I just don't remember it being anywhere near as hot! We're only able to wear a set of clothes for a single day before needing laundry done! And it's a heck of a lot more expensive on NCL than the other lines we've sailed. Our first bag of basically t-shirts, shorts and underwear ran $54.00, and there was not anything that needed "special" attention. Bring as many as you can handle but be prepared for at least a couple of laundry charges. (We don't have any special loyalty levels...so we don't have any laundry perks.)

Another couple of shots from the vanilla "farm".

This is what happens to your fruit when you try to sneak it off the ship!

Interesting way to serve a diet coke! Purple ice...

Carrot cake at the local is our current hit!

Hah! Just heard from another couple that we're cruising with that their tender boat broke down and is being towed back to the ship! I'd give anything to have video of that!

Bloody Mary's bar on Bora Bora Currently closed for renovation, opening sometime in 2025. Lots of famous people have visited!

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I'll have some pics later for today's excursion...in the meantime, here are some from previous days.

Today we have a short stay in Moorea. Tender port with the last tender returning to the ship at 1:30pm. We have a "4x4 Adventure" lined up...third party. Not really sure exactly what we are facing!