Pacific Coast Cruise

From Sept. 20 to Sept. 26, 2009, aboard NCL STAR, we did our fifth cruise called Pacific Coastal cruise. Our first cruise, in 2005, is also aboard this same ship.

This is sort of a budget cruise because departure is from our city of Vancouver, BC. We did not have to fly to a location to join a cruise. We just took the 'skytrain' from right across our condo and voila, 45 minutes later we were in downtown Vancouver, where NCL STAR docked ready for boarding sometime around noon. We got there around 2pm, and 30 minutes later, we were in our room, and a few minutes more later we were enjoying a very wide spread of delicious buffet food.

We are not really interested in the itinerary port of calls. We just want to eat, sleep, relax, fill our lungs with sea breeze, watch shows, movies, join trivia and karaoke on the ship.

Port of calls are Victoria, BC, Oregon, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Ca., all of which Mar and I have been to couple of times already.

I really like cruising. I think, it is the most relaxing vacation one can ever have. You get to eat plenty of times a day without worrying about the cost. You get to visit places without driving or flying because the ship will bring you there. You get entertained starting when you wake up in the morning and until you are ready to give up at night.

Every night before retiring to our cabin, we go to our favorite place, the Blue Lagoon, a snack bar, where we get to eat fish and chip or panini, or chiken wing, butter cake with strawberry or cheese cake with blueberries or all of the above and drink lots of tea or milk.

Alaska Cruise

My husband and I celebrated our 25th anniversary in May 2005. We went on a 7-night cruise to Alaska to celebrate. Like everything you do the first time, I was extremely excited. I did a lot of reading blogs, forums, and reviews about cruising. As a result of my reading, I knew how to fully enjoy our first cruising experience. For example, I knew that the fish and chips at the Blue Lagoon Cafe is highly recommended. We tried it the first day and we totally agree with the reviews, we ate fish and chips almost everyday for 7 days.

There was a night where cruisers can dress up if they like which I think was called formal night. Women wear coctail dress or gown. Men wear tux or coat and tie. There's a lot of cruisers who prefer not to dress up, like husband and I, who wear casual clothes. The hightlight of this formal night is the picture taking opportunity with the captain of the ship. For us who are not interested with a picture with the captain, the hightlight is that formal night is also lobster night. One can eat as many lobster as one like. Husband and I managed to eat two lobster each.