We recently sailed on Norwegian Star from Tampa, Florida to Roatan, Belize, Costa Maya and Cozumel.
We have only every sailed on Royal Carribean Freedom and Oasis(x2). So this was our first midsize ship. So not only was it our first time on a smaller ship but also on Norwegian.
Restaurants
We decided to book our our excursion and took a van up to a lookout over Roatan and then onto the Monkey Sanctuary, which was pretty amazing. We were able to hold and pet the monkeys. After that we spend a few hours on West End beach. Very, very nice beach. One you don't want to miss and voted as one of the top 10 beaches in the world.
Since our kids were with us on the cruise we decided to only visit the port shops. We had been told my many people back home that Belize City is not very safe and if you wanted to do an excursion this is the place because there was nothing to do in the city and not very safe.
We rented a 12 seater Golf Cart and drove to Mahahual beach which is only a 5 minute drive. Once there we found the Krazy Lobster restaurant, which was prefect. It had a swing set for the kids, free WiFi, $1 beers, white sandy beaches, excellent food and free kayaks. Would go back here in a heart beat.
It was a rainy day so our beach plans got cancelled so we decided to do a Chocolate Tour. It was great the kids all made their own Mexican chocolate and received lots of samples and information about the Mayan way of making chocolate. All the chocolate for purchase is hand made in the traditional Mayan way.
Nothing special about Tampa. There is really no beach to go to in Tampa which was disappointing.