This was our first cruise on a NCL ship and we were a little skeptical after some of our friends had taken a NCL Hawaiian cruise last year and did not seem to be very impressed with their experience. They reported that the food was not as good or offered as many selections as they had on their previous cruise. We did not find that to be the case and thoroughly enjoyed the freestyle experience. As a matter of fact we ate most of our meals in the Garden Cafe as opposed to the other dining rooms. Eating fancy is not as high on our priority list, but we do appreciate having a varied selection to choose from and the Garden Cafe offered many specialized and ethnic/national selections throughout the cruise.
We had booked a guaranteed inside cabin but did not find out until a week before we embarked which one we were assigned. It turned out to be on Deck 11, cabin number 11057. It was a nice cabin but it took a while to get used to the rare sideways set up since every other cabin we have had on cruises was arranged where the foot of the bed faced the entry door. This cabin had the right side of the bed facing the door and was a little cumbersome because the dresser drawers blocked the closet doors when they were opened. We had multiple problems early with the toilet, ranging from no water to overflowing and flooding the bathroom floor. We were surprised to find a complimentary tray of chocolate covered strawberries sitting in our room after one repair job.
The port call at Cartagena was much too short as we were not let off the ship until after 7:30am and had to be back at 2:30pm. We took a Sites of Cartagena tour that filled almost all of our port time. At the last shopping stop in the New Town area I was standing near a cafe and pulled out my iPhone to see if I could find a free wifi site and only found ones that were password protected. While standing there a waiter walked up and handed me a piece of paper with the password to the site written on it. Unfortunately we had to leave before I could do any more than download my recent email so we could not eat anything.
We had booked a guaranteed inside cabin but did not find out until a week before we embarked which one we were assigned. It turned out to be on Deck 11, cabin number 11057. It was a nice cabin but it took a while to get used to the rare sideways set up since every other cabin we have had on cruises was arranged where the foot of the bed faced the entry door. This cabin had the right side of the bed facing the door and was a little cumbersome because the dresser drawers blocked the closet doors when they were opened. We had multiple problems early with the toilet, ranging from no water to overflowing and flooding the bathroom floor. We were surprised to find a complimentary tray of chocolate covered strawberries sitting in our room after one repair job.