Those who know me best know my preferred method of traveling is cruising. For me, nothing can compare to sunrises and sunsets at sea. A virtually all-inclusive journey aboard a floating hotel. Cruises offer travel without the horrific torture of the TSA or the endless stops to gas stations. If I had my druthers, I would most likely live on a cruise ship. Well, that is, providing I could bring my small zoo of pets!

It was not a hard sell to my (at the time) fiancé, to take a cruise on our pending honeymoon. At that time I had been on several cruises with my family and once with an ex. As I had traveled once previously on Carnival, I convinced him this was our best bet. I will not bore you with the details of the trip, but will simply say it was hell. It took a full year to convince him to take another cruise. Having been a bit wiser to the all too young behavior aboard Carnival, we decided to try NCL, we chose their ship the Sun. This was in February of 2006. It was our one year anniversary. At this time we fell completely in love with NCL. The contrast between Carnival and NCL was like night and day. Before the cruise was even over my husband was planning our next trip. We chose the Sun to sail on the next year and then again the next thereafter. In 09 the Sun was not at a port we had access too so we opted to try another member of her fleet, the Pearl. This made us miss the Sun! Amidst many other cruises with NCL we managed to find the Sun again close enough to our home to sail aboard in 2013. Then again she left our reach. Once we saw she was returning this year we were excited. We could not wait to set sail on our old faithful gal!

Perhaps the nicest part of NCL was its creation of the Latitudes program. I remember when we first started cruising how we anticipated jumping up to each next category. I looked forward to each bump as each offered another tier luxury. Read more