NCL Star Iceland and Greenland Review - July 2023

NCL Star - Review

Iceland, Greenland, and all the icebergs were beautiful to see and great to experience. With a full ship, the additional sea days did make us ready to get off. I also felt bad for the crew that did not get as many breaks from us.  

Embarkation: POOR - No instructions to drop luggage before getting in line. One long, mystery line to wait in, in the cold wind. No concept of the check-in times that we picked during the online check-in. The online check-in also required a picture that they took again at the port. I saw complaints that this was too hard to take at home, but I just saw it as a roadblock to getting a good check-in time, which did not matter anyway. Another roadblock to getting a good check-in time was that my husband, on the same reservation, had to decline the upsells himself -- us both separately; are we really that easily tricked? They had an upsell for priority boarding, but we should already have that... However, priority only came after waiting in the security line outside in the wind and was still confusing which line. I guess whomever bought it was likely angry. The muster process was easy and used the new e-muster. The rooms were not ready until 3pm, only 1 hour before the scheduled sail away. With limited seating space on the ship, people were laying on the floor on their bags (must have been the people whose flight landed that morning!).   

Disembarkation: GREAT - Super easy; we walked right off with no line with our luggage. No customs at the port terminal, so we were able to jump right in a taxi at 5:40 am. With the very early flight that NCL booked (cruise lines say don't book a flight before noon, but they booked us a 9:30 am!), NCL was likely happy to be getting us of the ship early. The love of the cruise guests always drops precipitously on the last day. 

Cabin: GOOD - Our room steward was awesome. He always had my extra (hair) towel in our room and ice in the room (most days). He always greeted us in the hall, and our laundry was taken and returned quickly. NCL only does one room make up per day and no more towel animals now; sad cutbacks with  daily gratuities increased to $20/person. Good storage. No issues with the room. Never found much on TV. NCL needs to add some free on demand movies like Carnival added; this was convenient to watch between other activities. I also picked the worst obstructed view room, from the outside, it looks like the only one (per side) that instead of having a big picture window had two small, oval windows with a mirror in the middle -- so avoid 8106 and the room directly across from it. We could see out of only one, but only after have squeezing between the bed and desk. Travis had this on his side, and I had the fold down buck bed to not run into. 

Ship: WEIRD - Okay, that is harsh, but the layout, particularly on the Lido deck, was strange. I like the Jewel layout, and the promenade deck is very similar to the other Jewel ship layout. However, the top was very different. There was no nice observation lounge. The gym was in the back and had no aft windows, just a wall of mirrors. There were a few windows on the sides that one could see out of from a few machines. I like nice sail aways from with the gym in front with windows. By the pool, there was stadium seating that looked odd and too cold to use. The top decks in the front had good views, but a maze of decks and different levels. We did discover and use this hidden hot tub on a top deck. The Great Outdoors was replaced by the Spice H2O, adult only area. Both would have been hard to use on our cruise since it was cold. But, the Great Outdoors spreads out some of the buffet traffic and crowds, so I think it would have still been better. Though we also did not have a heavily-kids cruise. 

Food: GOOD - Not everything was a winner with our personal tastes.

Some stand outs: 
1) Ice cream (not just soft serve, what do call that hard serve :) ), which I prefer over soft serve. It was by the pool the first day and inside in the buffet other days. It was on this cruise, missing on our last on the NCL Jade. Stracciatella favor is my favorite; it is also served with the lava cake in the MDR, another one of my favorites.
2) Lamb chop and lamb shank at Le Bistro
3) Sea salt caramel chocolate tart in the MDR
4) Lechón Asado (Cuban roasted pork with plantains, rice, and black beans) in O'Sheehan's
5) Grilled iceberg wedge salad in the MDR was something that I had never seen before, so interesting, there were grill marks, and it was good.
6) Grill pineapple and Brazilian rolls in Moderno 

Entertainment: GOOD - We watched White Magic and a contortionist; they were very entertaining. We went to Paradis; we are not big production show fans. So, it was just okay for us; however, very loud music that I think the volume could be lowered. Carnival does a great job having multiple comedians on board; no comedians on this cruise or other recent NCL cruises. I enjoy the comedians. It was too cold or windy on the pool deck for it to get much use, so that made other parts of the ship crowded. There was only an outdoor buffet setup a couple of days. We went to the Newlywed, not so Newlywed game. It was fun, but hard to find a spot in the small space. Cruise Director staff trivia and other activities were fun. Travis did a martini tasting, got to be a bar tender, and it is always a fun social activity. We also enjoyed the Wines Around the World platinum event; our first time experiencing it. 

Crew: GREAT -  All of the crew were great -- our room steward, waiters, bar tenders, and cruise director staff. The MDR was slower that I expected on several nights, but it did not feel slow, I was just surprised how fast time flew. 

Ports: 

Reykjavik and South Coast - GREAT - Iceland is so pretty. We pre-booked a Troll Expeditions trip to the South Coast and saw two waterfalls, stopped at the Black Sand beach with basalt columns near Vik -- where I found puffin, yay!, and hiked on a glacier. All were very awesome and pretty. The tour was well run. 

We also walked around the city -- trying Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur hotdogs, seeing The Unknown Bureaucrat, Rainbow road to Hallgrimskirkja (Lutheran church), Harpa, and Sun Voyager and then the bird sanctuary, closer to our guesthouse. 

Akureyri - GOOD - We walked around (it was rainy today); we went out once in the morning and again in the afternoon. They provided free wi-fi at the port. We passed an adorable baby seal by the Strandgata (whale tale statue). We went to the botanical garden (very nice), saw Akureyrarkirkja (Luther church by the same architect as the one in Reykjavik), and passed the public pool. We considered this because it was recommended as a Icelandic culture experience, but it was so cold and rainy that we did not try. There were people there; it looked good with slides. They did have plexiglass around the spiral stairs that one waited in line for the slides, which should help. Later, we walked along the coast, past the airport, which was on the water, and up a hill that ended up in a cemetery, and found the heart shaped red lights in the traffic lights, that they added to cheer people up during an economic downturn. From the cruise ship, we could see waterfalls in this fjord. They did offer shore an excursion for sale at the port to Godafoss and Lake Myvatn. Unfortunately, I did not notice it until the afternoon. I looked at this tour beforehand, but did not pre-book since it did not have a ship does not make it to port free cancellation. So, note this if you are interesting in this tour.  

Isafordur - GREAT - Also a beautiful fjord. We pre-booked an Artic Shorex excursion to Dynjandi waterfall. This was the big waterfall at the top of a series waterfalls; very pretty! Then we went to Jon Sigurdsson Museum with a traditional sod grass roof house setup as it would have been. There was also a museum of the history in the area, and an old church and cemetery, and we saw whales in the bay. We had a good Icelandic cake in the sod house. We had another stop on the bay, which had a waterfall, a bird trying to attack people. It must have had a nest near. Our last stop was a view of the ship and near ski lifts. To and back, we experienced the two 5 km tunnels that connected Isafordur to the south portion of the island. 

Nanortalik - GREAT - This was our only Greenland stop. Nuuk and Paamiut, as well as Djupivogur, Iceland, were cancelled ports. Greenland due to so many icebergs, which were cool to see, and  Djupivogur due to too rough to tender. Here we hiked up Mt. Quassik for bay and iceberg views. We experience a neighborhood with colorful houses and then stopped at a Dutch grocery store. The crew was so sweet and giving the local kids some of the hot chocolate at the tender port. This was bad though -- the tender line took an hour, in the rain! They only had one dock, so slow to offload everyone and then reload. The tender boats piled up, waiting their turn to offload.    

Next up...Grand Canyon and other canyons

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