photo review- better late than never?

[shark&minnow]

I love reading reviews and they are an important part of my cruise planning, but it is always hard for me to get myself to do my own reviews. We did the Panama Canal on board the NCL Star, from Miami to LA on November 30, 2018. I am currently reading reviews for our next cruise and I'm feeling guilty that I never posted about our last one! So I am going to give it a go. I will use lots of pictures because I am not much of a writer.

 

The Star was recently out of dry dock and everything was in great shape. We got upgraded to a mini suite and it was great! I won't say much more about the ship since people go on all different ships for this itinerary but feel free to ask any questions you'd like.

 

We flew from Dallas to Miami the day before the cruise and we stayed at the Kimpton and ate dinner in the touristy area.

Let's see if these pictures work:

Edited July 29, 2019 by shark&minnow
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[shark&minnow]

The next day we ubered to the cruise port and boarded the ship. All went smoothly Miami is a beautiful city to see from the ship!.

[shark&minnow]

Our first stop was Cartagena. The port area has a nice little jungle zoo area with a gift shop and a coffee shop.

[shark&minnow]

We took the ferry over to the old town area and wandered around on our own. 

[shark&minnow]

The next day we went through the canal. We had watched a very good documentary about the building of the canal on American Experience, I recommend that. 

We got up early like everyone to watch as we entered the canal. Then something kind of bad happened. The cruise line had hosed all the decks down and I was wearing my cheap flip flops. When I stepped on the metal trim on the stairs my foot slipped and I ended up doing a full splits (and Cowboy cheerleader I am not) and I partially tore my ham string. I was in extreme pain but thankfully I was able to walk. The whole back of my leg eventually turned black. So I spent the entire day sitting on ice on our balcony.  But this actually turned out to be a good place to watch from and I could see our TV which was showing the view from the bow and we could here the commentator on the TV  At one of the locks they actually stopped and off loaded someone who was much worse of than me.

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Edited July 30, 2019 by shark&minnow
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[shark&minnow]

Costa Rica:

We did the Forest Sky Walk & Tarcoles Eco - Cruise. It was pretty cool, probably a bit much with my sore leg! It was quite slippery in the rain forest and I was being very careful not to fall again. One of the ladies in our group did slip and fall.

[shark&minnow]

Nicaragua: At this port we did the Flor de Cana rum tour. This was a beautiful facility and the story of the family that owns it was very interesting

[shark&minnow]

At our Guatemala stop we did the Antigua on your own excursion. This was probably my favorite stop. We visited the brewery and we wandered around the town. On the drive we saw some of the damage from the volcano that erupted recently.

[shark&minnow]

Our last two ports were Acapulco and Cabo. We enjoyed these ports with some new friends we made on the ship. In Acapulco we took the boat trip to see the cliff divers. The boat was fun and the lunch was good, but the cliff divers were not that interesting.

Then it was back to Los Angeles. We spent a few days visiting family in California before we flew back to Dallas!

[BillB48]

Always better late than never!

[Craving A Cruise]

Thanks for posting photos! Gives me a good overview of what to expect. 😎