What is a cup of coffee? Is the way that most of us start our day. At home a great cup of arabica coffee costs less than $.10 to brew. Your local 7-11 brews one as good; as are matter-of-fact, good cups of coffee are found almost everywhere; except, on the Norwegian Sun. In fact, coffee exposes what is truly behind Norwegian cruise line's "freestyle" cruising: nickel and dimeing(actually that should be dollar and more) passengers. You can get a good cup of coffee on the Norwegian Sun--at the espresso bar--$1.75; just like you can get a good glass of orange juice at the juice bar--for $2.50. You don't have to take my word for it, just ask yourself: why do they have so many extra cost food venues? Answer: because the free stuff is ..... We sailed last summer in the Eastern Mediterranean on Holland America's Westerdam--and I loved all the food. Yet, on the Norwegian Sun's August 2011 Baltic cruise, I not only found the coffee, orange juice, etc. undrinkable, I had to send back three dinners. The small difference in price between the two cruise lines, simply does not justify the huge difference in food quality (moreover, you end up actually paying more on Norwegian because of all the extra cost food you will end up buying).
This is all a shame because in almost every other aspect I found the Norwegian Sun to be a far better ship than I had expected. The other negative was service. There was virtually no table service (drinks etc.) in the buffets. Even in the main dining rooms I ended up having to get my own coffee in the morning (that was early in the cruise--later I just made my own in my room). That brings up another significant point--Norwegian's crew/passenger ratio is significantly worse than Holland America's; yet, they expect you to give a higher daily tip: $12 (in contrast to Holland America's $11). I didn't do it--I just gave the same $11 (it probably should have been $10).
