Norwegian Cruise Lines FAM Trip
The first part of the trip started the night before in Amsterdam, a city I had never visited before. I arrived at lunchtime a few hours before my friend who was joining me on the trip arrived. I spent the time wisely by visiting the Heineken brewery, this is my form of culture when visiting a new city and I couldn't pass up the chance to visit the world-famous brewing site. It was a beautiful day weather-wise with the sun really showing the beauty of this city.
Once my friend arrived, we went for a walk around the city and found a nice little eatery to have dinner. I must mention at this point that we had left our suitcases in the locker facility at Central Station, this was a smart move or so I thought, to save time by not having to take the 10-minute train journey to the hotel until later. We found upon a nice little bar run by an American guy and let’s just say the night rolled on and we came out at around 2.30 am to a closed and locked up train station. This is the point where I realised leaving the suitcases there wasn’t a great idea as now, we had a 70-Euro taxi ride to the hotel and no luggage. However, it was the quickest check-out I ever had with no packing to do.
We picked up the ship the next day at the cruise terminal, which is very conveniently located behind the Central Station, handy for picking up our cases, if be it not a day later than planned. The check-in process for the ship is very efficient and all done in the shoreside cruise terminal. This meant that we could leave our cases to be taken to the cabin from there and all we had to do was a board with our cabin key.
Upon arriving in our cabin, I was very pleasantly surprised by the décor and the size of it. We had a nice balcony that was great for sitting out in the sun of Amsterdam and watching the world go by and admiring the infinity pools on the deck below.
We didn’t stay long in the cabin as it was time to go and explore the delights of this brand-new ship. It was a good time to start with the outside deck areas and take in the many activities that are on offer. A beach club, sundeck with several infinity pools, go-kart track (yes you read that right) spiral slide going down 10-decks on the outside of the ship, crazy golf, darts, tennis plus kids’ playground are just some of the activities on offer.
Once inside there was a wide and varied selection of bars and restaurants catering for everyone’s taste. I tended to migrate to the Local Sports Bar, but that’s just me. There were cocktail lounges and an American bar too. You would never get bored.
There was no shortage of places to eat and there was no chance for me to try them all in the short time I had but I did my best. There were restaurants that were more buffet style, right up to fine dining that comes with a small premium. I visited the steakhouse that came highly recommended and was not disappointed by my meal and the service I received.
One of the highlights was the second full day at sea, watching the theatre show in the evening followed by the transformation of the theatre into a 3-deck indoor nightclub. That was a show in itself watching the rows of seats folding electronically away to create this huge space. Let’s just say, it was quite a late night.
The next afternoon we arrived in the port of Kiel Germany. It was a short stop due to a delay leaving Amsterdam, but it gave us enough time to get ashore and stretch our legs before returning for our last night's dinner. After a short cruise around the coast, we arrived at 6 am in the port of Warnemünde where we disembarked and headed onto our transfer to Berlin and the flight home. It was only to be a short 3-night cruise, but I managed to pack plenty in during my time at sea.