Review: Jade 11 Day Eastern Med - Feb 23-Mar 7

[Carnac767]

Thanks for the review--really enjoying it so far. We had a great experience on Jade and were looking forward to cruising her again in October, until NCL changed the Holy Land itinerary to a West Med instead. Your account of long-distance travel with a toddler cracked up DW and brought back funny memories. At one point we had five, seven and under. They'd usually be wide awake until the landing gear came down on final, and then they'd fall asleep.

[rochelle_s]

OzCanuck,

 

I am really enjoying your review in particular your sense of humour. Looking forward to reading the rest.

 

I can confirm that the Jazz brunch was $15 on our sailing.

 

I had no idea your son was a Lady Gaga fan. I would have requested something just for him at the party had I known!

 

It was a real pleasure meeting you and your family and I am glad my mother and I had a chance to sit and chat that one evening. There seemed to be a lot of little ones on this sailing and LM was a real angel. By the way he handled himself one might think he was an old veteran of cocktail parties. I can see music lessons in his future as he has a real appreciation for it. Or perhaps I will see him down the road on Dancing With the Stars! :)

 

I noticed John has been reading along here and hopefully he will be back and can see this. John please drop me a line at my email. Would love to stay in touch with you and your wife and I don't seem to have your contact information. You never know perhaps we could continue a long distance conversation about theology! ;)

 

Okay sorry for the detour back to your regularly scheduled programming!

 

Rochelle

[happytraveller]

Keep this review rolling, its really great to read.

Hi Rochelle, hope you and your mum got home ok. Was good to meet you and we enjoyed your company on the tour bus in Israel, i was the sexist one!! not really, got the greatest respects.

Never know we meet up again on another cruise. Our next one is September on Emerald Princess from New York to Quebec. We are so much looking forward to this and the pre and post overnight stays.

[russianmom]

How am I supposed to get any work done today :D

 

I need to read the rest of the story!!!!!

 

Really enjoying your review and pictures. I too would have been devastated w/o my camera battery.

[rochelle_s]

Keep this review rolling, its really great to read.

Hi Rochelle, hope you and your mum got home ok. Was good to meet you and we enjoyed your company on the tour bus in Israel, i was the sexist one!! not really, got the greatest respects.

Never know we meet up again on another cruise. Our next one is September on Emerald Princess from New York to Quebec. We are so much looking forward to this and the pre and post overnight stays.

 

I think the Israeli guide might have given you a run for your money in the sexy department...but it would have been a close call! ;) If your September plans bring you anywhere near Niagara Falls let me know as I am right next door and my door is always open.

 

Rochelle

[kikki21]

Enjoying reading this! :)

Thanks to Rochelle for confirming the Jazz lunch price, we might go for that!

Just a week till we are on the Jade - woo hoo! :)

[TSUmom]

I too am loving your review. I have been giving info to my DD. She wants to take this cruise with us but is worried about her LM and the long flight and an 11 day cruise vacation with him. You have totally changed her mind and they are now planning on joining us!!! Thank you:D

[ibcnusoon]

What a great review, really enjoying it!!

[OzCanuck]

First of all, I just wanted to thank everyone for the kind comments. We have always been very independent travelers - I am constantly amazed at the camaraderie and sense of community that CC offers up to its members. Cruisers are a very distinct bunch of social, outgoing people.

 

@Carnac767 - it is so true about sleeping babies on planes! Why do they wait until landing to fall asleep?? Our one exception was flying to Amsterdam with LM last year - he fell asleep in my arms immediately after I had consumed two pints of beer in the PP lounge at Toronto. Wanting him to sleep as much as possible, I sat there in agony for 5 hours while he dozed blissfully.

 

@rochelle_s - it was also a pleasure meeting you and your mum. LM continues his dancing ways - anytime, anywhere music is playing. I think they really get into it at daycare. There were just over 100 "children" on the cruise, according to the UTZ staff. The most we ever had at the Zoo was about 5 - I did see a couple of other tots around the ship who never attended, however. What a shame - it's one of my favourite things to watch LM interact with other little kids.

 

@TSUmom - cruising with a baby, or an LM, is just SO EASY. In terms of flying to Europe, he did not experience one single moment of jet lag. His routine was completely unaltered - it simply adjusted automatically to the correct time. I haven't mentioned anything about the flight home - but - as we walked off I thought to myself (phew, I'm glad I'll never have to see all those people again). More on that later. I guess at the end of the day, it's only 8 hours of your life - and now that he is a little older and we are a little better at it, we will be much better prepared for our next long flight.

[OzCanuck]

Day 6 – Limassol

 

This day was very similar to Alanya. We got out of the ship around 10am, after the usual breakfast at Cagney’s, and took the NCL shuttle bus to downtown Limassol. At $10/pp it wasn’t a bad deal, and at least LM was free. The city kind of depressed me, but then again we saw so little of it that I probably shouldn’t make a judgment.

 

 

Mosque near downtown:

 

 

Church near downtown:

 

 

Inside:

 

 

We meandered up through the pedestrian walking area, passing a few restaurants and souvenir shops (what is it with the big rotisserie barbecues for sale? What a weird souvenir.). We gave the “castle” a pass as we wanted to keep walking, eventually ending up on the beautiful seafront. We walked and walked, then stopped at a playground to let LM run around and get some exercise.

 

He loved it. He ran, he climbed, he hung out with some locals.. . it was a good time.

 

 

 

Instead of heading back to the ship to eat, we stopped at a restaurant (opposite the “castle”) and enjoyed a couple of pints of beer and a nice vegetarian plate of appetizers. I was very surprised how many beggars came by to ask for money. Met another cruise couple there from Thurso, Scotland – a place I had visited many years ago – absolutely gorgeous scenery up there if you ever get the chance.

 

We bought the requisite fridge magnet and caught the shuttle back to the ship to do our usual nap, workout, relax routine, followed by the Under 3 Zoo.

 

I set up my camera to do a time lapse of our departure from Limassol, and for those of you that missed my earlier post, here is a link. Note that the ship actually starts moving around 1:20 of the video - so fast forward to there if you want the action, but I do find all the activity in the freight yard fascinating:

 

 

I am totally loving this GoPro Hero camera. I will most likely only ever use it for time lapse sequences, but it is great! My old time lapse standby was a Nikon P2 that I bought in 2006. It was ok, but the only setting was 30 seconds, which is a bit too slow for most applications. For example, here is a video of the deck on our house being built. It would have been much better at a 5 second shot rate.

 

 

And another “cruise” we took, an evening cruise on the Mekong River in Laos. Again, the 30 second shot rate was just too slow:

 

 

But I digress. I didn’t leave with a great impression of Cyprus, but like I said – we didn’t really see much of the country. I think in retrospect it would have been a good place to do an excursion, and I do regret not organizing a private one or even doing one the ship’s tours. Unfortunately it is probably a place we will never find our way to again unless by some extraordinary circumstances.

 

We dined in Alizar tonight and the service was great. But – I am getting a bit tired of the vegetarian offerings. I don’t want to eat pasta every night!

 

Tonight’s show was “Stars on Strings”. This was excellent. A lot of very subtle adult humour, with some general slapsticky humour that kids of most ages would enjoy. LM loved it! The lights and colours and music kept him completely hypnotized for the entire show.

 

Just as an aside, Jeffrey, our butler, brought us canapés every night. The first night they were seafood, and of course I explained the vegetarian thing to him. After that he was very good about having someone put together something vegetarian. We received a nice tapenade with crackers and cheese (I have to assume the tapenade did not have anchovies, but who knows?). The sweets were good – he usually delivered two different plates of something. Sometimes cake, banana bread, chocolate stuff showed up night after night. A couple of nights we also got some nice vegetarian savoury pastries (made fresh). He did keep the coffee machine stocked with the teas and coffees we like – and brought cartons of milk for LM.

 

He was good, but we did not utilize him as much as we did our other butler on the Pearl. Just our choice – we didn’t eat in once. On the Pearl we put LM down to sleep in his bedroom, and then had the butler bring in dinner – probably the best use of him I could think.

 

Another day is done, and tomorrow we’ll wake up in Israel. I know the progress of this is painfully slow - I will try and get it up tomorrow!

[happytraveller]

Hey Oz

 

Just loving your reviews, absolutely fantastic, you should become a travel correspondent. It is a pity we did not meet up on the ship probably passed paths as I previously said.

If you ever get chance to visit the Isle of Man, let me know and will show you some real manx hospitality. We do have a Vegetarian Restaurant on the Island.

[OzCanuck]

Hey Oz

 

Just loving your reviews, absolutely fantastic, you should become a travel correspondent. It is a pity we did not meet up on the ship probably passed paths as I previously said.

If you ever get chance to visit the Isle of Man, let me know and will show you some real manx hospitality. We do have a Vegetarian Restaurant on the Island.

 

Thanks, ht! Believe it or not, I am 1/8th manx... but have never even considered a trip there. I will keep it mind!

[kikki21]

I have been to Cyprus many times on land holidays and it is a lovely place.

 

I think you would have enjoyed heading over to Paphos Town or the capital Nicosia over staying in Limassol... both if those places have plenty of character and are about an hour or less from Limassol by car.

Or Cyprus has a lot of natural beauty such as in the Troodos Mountains or by Aphrodite's Rock, maybe next time! :)

[OzCanuck]

I have been to Cyprus many times on land holidays and it is a lovely place.

 

I think you would have enjoyed heading over to Paphos Town or the capital Nicosia over staying in Limassol... both if those places have plenty of character and are about an hour or less from Limassol by car.

Or Cyprus has a lot of natural beauty such as in the Troodos Mountains or by Aphrodite's Rock, maybe next time! :)

 

Of course you are correct. And like I said, it is hard to judge a country by just the area around its chief industrial city...

[OzCanuck]

Day 7 & 8 – Haifa

 

Yikes! Did we really leave Toronto a week ago???

 

We slept in a bit, and got a very late start on the day, not leaving the ship until after lunch. That worked out well; LM had his nap before we left so was in a fine mood. I wore shorts and a t-shirt out as it looked like a beautiful day. I should have worn a coat!

 

Our balcony view:

We walked over to Ben Gurion avenue checking out the bullet holes on this building:

We walked up the long hill towards the Baha’i Gardens. They are quite beautiful and imposing from almost anywhere in Haifa.

 

We checked out a rather dull shopping mall, walked through a few stores, and ended up at the Haifa tourist authority.

 

They gave us instructions on getting to the Grand Canyon mall, so we hopped on the 23 bus and rode through Haifa for about an hour to get to the largest mall in Israel (which is medium sized compared to North America).

 

We quite enjoyed the bus ride, talking with some locals and taking in the scenery. I’m not sure why we chose to spend the day wandering around a shopping mall, but it is always interesting comparing prices of things around the world. I was getting a few odd looks I think for wearing shorts. It was starting to get very cool After we were done, we took a cab back to the ship. The staff at the gangway were wearing parkas!

 

We hit the under three zoo quickly (sparsely attended) . A late dinner followed at Grand Pacific, which was completely empty. We had very good service that night – no complaints. Mind you, there were probably only about a dozen tables occupied! We actually got to sit right back by the windows for the first time.

 

There was only one show tonight, at 9pm – Magika. Unfortunately that would not fit well with LM in terms of bed time, so we wrapped up this day and watched a movie after he went down.

 

A word about our room steward, Joel. He was GREAT. Whenever we would leave or return to the cabin, LM would try and find him. He’d start whenever he would see a cleaning cart in the hall – ‘Hi Joel’ ‘Hi Joel’. Joel would always appear and greet LM by name – such a little thing to do, but it makes such a difference to a 17 month old (and his parents). Of course the funny thing was – whenever LM would see a tall Filipino man in a housekeeping uniform, he would blurt out ‘Hi Joel’. That made me laugh.

 

The next day was Sabbath. We did our usual Cagney’s breakfast, and then went to the Haifa train station and caught the train up to Acco. View above the train station:

The train was full of military ‘kids’ in their army fatigues heading home for Sabbath. We also realized that we would need to catch the 2pm train back to the ship, as it was the last train for the day. Subsequently I found out the flat taxi fare was only about $40 – I wish I had known that as we certainly would have stayed later in Acco and explored a little more.

 

We walked around Acco and stopped for some great baklava at a bakery, enjoying people watching. We made it to the old city, but mindful of the impending last train, we didn’t explore at all and headed back to the station to get the train to Haifa.

 

Sea walk near the old city:

So essentially in Israel we went to a mall, and enjoyed a train ride. I guess the problem is, if there is anything really interesting to see, I want LM to enjoy it and see it as well – and remember. This trip is about relaxing for two weeks for us – not really about ‘traveling’ per se.

 

We were back on the ship by 3pm and did our usual baby nap thing. This was one time I actually called our butler to bring us in some lunch. Guess what? He was off and had left the ship. I eventually got through to the back-up butler who brought us in some food..

 

LM had dinner at the buffet (we really weren’t hungry), then Under 3 Zoo, followed by a good hour of playtime in the toddler play room (just off the little splash pool). There were some nice views of the departure at 8pm, and you could clearly see the Baha’i gardens in the distance.

 

Unfortunately there was only one show tonight - the international crew concert, at 9pm. We didn't make it due to LM (again).

[happytraveller]

Hi Oz

 

1/8th Manx, sounds really great. You would not want to be here at the moment, ferries to the UK cancelled due to the bad weather. Some schools on the Island closed due to snow. Lots of roads closed, its snowing, its very windy, the advantages of living on an Island!!!

Its now late afternoon and all schools closed at 1pm due to the weather, dont think we have had the English papers delivered today as they have not reached the Island due to the weather.

Wish we were back on the cruise.

[Ilikebigboats]

Enjoying your review!

Impatiently waiting for more!:D

[OzCanuck]

Sorry everyone. I was sidetracked by real life over the past few days.

 

Day 9 - Sea Day

 

Today was actually one of the highlight days for me. I had really wanted to do the "Behind the Scenes Tour" - I'm just totally in to that kind of stuff. If my good camera was not working I probably would have canceled, but because I was able to get the battery charger in Turkey, it was a go. At $55 probably a bit expensive, but it actually did run for almost a full three hours.

 

As I had done LM breakfast duties a couple of times while the other half went to the gym, it was no problem today for me to do the tour while she looked after him.

 

The tour started in the theatre:

The stage set for 'Showdown'

 

 

 

The stage manager, and of course I cannot remember his name, was very engaging and talkative, and clearly enthusiastic about his job. It was good to see. Each performer has a mini-closet with all the outfits for the entire cruise.

 

I was actually surprised what a catacomb of stairs and hallways we had to walk through to get to the dressing rooms - it seemed quite far away from the stage. It was very near the bow of the ship, however, as you could see the camber of the walls turning in.

 

Next, the bridge.

[OzCanuck]

The tour moved on to the bridge area, walking the entire length of the ship. There was cursory security before we entered the bridge, just checking that we had ships cards with us.

 

By the way, we were told no photos in a couple of areas, but nobody was prohibited during the entire tour from taking any photo they wished.

 

Some bridge shots:

 

Ship movement can be controlled entirely from that joystick:

 

Must..resist...urge...to....push.....buttons:

 

One crew driving, and one in the background with binoculars (near the NCL 'bridge cam') watching for traffic:

 

As soon as I've finished talking, you ALL get a chance to drive!

 

View looking backwards from the little bridge 'wing'. Our cabin is just a few meters back:

 

More bridge shots coming...

[OzCanuck]

The azipod controls on the bridge wing:

 

Ship schematic diagrams on the walls. (Sorry for the glare).

 

Looking backwards from starboard bridge wing:

 

How to drop the anchor. And, how to drop the anchor IN A HURRY!

 

Just use these controls:

[OzCanuck]

After that, we moved on to the environmental area. Again, the crew member who showed us around was very, very passionate about their job. Unfortunately, I couldn't hear much of what he was saying - the environmental equipment was very loud. And - there wasn't much to take a picture of, except pipes. Though - on the way there I did snap myself:

 

And, just outside the environmental centre, a sign that I fully support:

 

Next.... the kitchen.

[OzCanuck]

The tour took up through Alizar (set up for the auction) and into the combined Alizar/Grand Pacific kitchen. It was a neat place to be.

 

It was here I learned, while looking at photos of proper food presentation, that they also do a veggie/bean burger for lunch, on request. From then on in it was my favourite lunch option. Very tasty! (And it seemed "home-made" - not frozen out of a box, though I could be wrong. Who cares, it was good.)

 

Head Chef dude waiting for us to gather around:

 

Acres of fridges to store ready-made dishes. They retire them after a maximum of four hours, if not consumed:

 

Workers slaving away over soup tureens (I think he said they were 1000 liters):

 

 

Giant stir-fry:

 

Plating some snacks:

[TSUmom]

I have always wanted to do a ship tour and now I will on my next cruise. Thank you!

[OzCanuck]

After that we moved on to the food storage area, and the bakery - again, in the bowels of the ship. This place was amazing! So much food!

 

Frozen squid tubes, anyone???

 

The squid was piled high, amongst all this other frozen fish:

 

Fish sous-chefs doing their thing:

 

Lots of meat ready for the kitchens:

 

Happy chicken dude in the chicken room:

[OzCanuck]

More food.

 

These chickens feel pretty cooped up:

 

On to the vegetable cooler (massive). This man is the guardian of all things vegetable:

 

Mushroom, anyone?

 

The volume of food is quite amazing:

 

The cake assembly line:

 

This looks deceptively small, but it is a giant dough-kneader.