Embarkation Day and Great Stirrup Cay (Bahamas)

This post is about the Embarkation Day on Norwegian Cruise Line and their private Island Great Stirrup Cay.

Embarkation Day – Saturday 

I decided to book the shuttle from the airport to the cruise ship with NCL, which meant they took my suitcase at the airport and transported it all the way to my room onboard the ship. I would choose that shuttle anytime again, since an uber costs about the same going by yourself.

At the port itself I had to wait for a little bit, because my cruisebuddy wasnt there yet. She was a girl I found in one of the facebook groups for aupairs and we barely knew anything about each other before the cruise, that we shared a room on for a week.

The check-in process was fairly easy, but the employee taking care of us seemed super annoyed and wasn’t very informative or friendly. We then continued to walk straight onto the cruise ship. (We did not do the Embarkation-Photo, because we wouldn’t have bought it anyways) The rooms weren’t quite ready yet, so we decided to hit the buffet for a well needed brunch. The selection was huge, but it was also crowded as it was the only restaurant open at this time.
Instead of hanging around the pool we decided to check the Guest Service for some general information (as everybody seemed to have gotten information folders at checkin).

As soon as we got all the papers and started to go through them, the announcement that the rooms are ready was made. So we headed up to our room and were in awe. The room was such a luxury to our usual travel standards and the balcony was just amazing. The size of the room was perfect for 2 people, but not sure if anymore would fit in there comfortable. After checking every corner of the room, we decided to head back up to the pool deck to enjoy and participate in the sail away party, while sailing out of Miami.

My suitcase arrived at our room just in time to get changed for dinner. We decided to head to the buffet restaurant again and it was like heaven on earth. So much food, such a big selection that we didn’t know where to start. Our favorite part was the Crepe Station.

The evening entertainment show gave us a sneak peak of all the other shows that would be on during our cruise and so we made up our mind super quick, as to which shows we will watch and which ones we will not watch. We decided to check out the party on the pool deck until we went to bed at 1am.

Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas –  Sunday

Our first whole day on the cruise was also our first stop of the cruise. We got to Great Stirrup Cay around 7am. This is NCL’s private island and all your packages from the ship (food and drink) extend to the island. We went to breakfast super early and got on one of the first tenders to the island. The cruise ships are too big to dock on at the island, so some small boats (tender) pick you up at the ship and work as an all-day shuttle between the island and the ship.

Thanks to our early arrival on the island we had many beach lounge chairs to choose from, but it was so cold that we had to use our towels as blankets rather than to dry the water off. After a while we decided to move to the back of the rows of chairs and got lucky enough to not get blown away anymore and actually enjoyed the island.

We spent most of our day on the pool lounges to sleep and went around all the amazing swings that are set up around the island (they just scream instagram at you). The buffet restaurant on the island catered about the same food as the ship itself and was super delicious.

During the late afternoon we decided to get back on a tender boat and go back to the ship, where we tried to enjoy a little bit more of the sun, before we headed back to our room to get ready for an early dinner. We chose to go to the buffet restaurant again. The variety of food is so big, that we actually just took a little bit of everything (Pizza, Mac’n’Cheese, fresh Pasta Alfredo, Crepes…). We enjoyed the calm evening with a walk around the ship and checked out the different areas of the ship. We went back to the buffet for a little midnight snack to be full of energy for the party at the pool. It was so much fun that we didn’t head back to our room until after midnight.

But luckily the next day was a sea day. More about that in my next post.