My First Cruise: Aboard the Norwegian Star (1/4)
From the Travel with Sheridan archives: This story comes from my first cruise aboard the Norwegian Star. Ships, itineraries, ports, venues and other details reflect the trip as I experienced it then.
That year was a little different as far as vacation planning went. Things were not quite lining up for one of my usual trips, so I decided to try something I had never done before: a cruise. My friend Helen joined me, and we booked a Mexican Riviera sailing aboard the Norwegian Star with stops in Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlán and Puerto Vallarta. Can't knock it unless you try it, right?
I drove down to Helen's house and we made our way to San Pedro to begin the adventure. My first reaction when we reached the port was basically, Holy crap, those boats are HUGE. The Norwegian Star looked less like a boat than a giant hotel someone had decided to float. It rose fourteen decks above the water with a festive star pattern painted across the bow, and before we'd even boarded I was beginning to understand that cruising operated on a completely different scale from the dive boats I was used to.
Embarkation involved a line that made airport security at LAX look short, but eventually we made it aboard. Our cabin was small but comfortable, and after dropping off our things we set out to explore. There were restaurants, pools, hot tubs, a casino, theater, fitness center, sun decks, a library, card room and all sorts of other places tucked into the ship. Exploration was not a quick event.
After the safety drill we were officially free to begin vacationing. The water was smooth, and I was impressed by how little movement I felt compared with smaller boats. We grabbed dinner and wandered around trying to decide what to do first, eventually finding a small bar called Gatsby's. That little bar would become our home away from home. It was where we met Evangeline, Marcelo and Richard, three crew members we immediately enjoyed, and where an impressive percentage of the week's stories would eventually begin or end.
The next day we tried to relax near the pool and discovered that relaxing around the main pool was not necessarily easy. There were people everywhere and music playing, which was fun but not exactly peaceful. We finally found a quieter spot toward the front of the ship—excuse me, the fore deck—where Helen could catch some sun while I worked on a few craft projects I'd brought along.
One of those projects was for a roaming-gnome swap through Craftster. The idea was that everyone made a little gnome, sent it to other participants and eventually got it back with photographs and memories from its travels. I sewed mine aboard the ship, using star fabric on his back to guide him on his journeys and shamrocks on the front for luck. We named him Emong—gnome backward—and decided this cruise would be a fine place for him to begin traveling. I stuffed him with ripped-up pages from Vanity Fair, which seemed as good an internal structure for a traveling gnome as anything else.
Emong's first official destination was Cabo San Lucas. The Star was moored rather than docked, which meant taking tenders ashore. That process ate into a surprising amount of our limited port time, and by the time we reached Cabo we really only had a small taste of the place. We walked along the waterfront, stopped for a beer with chips and salsa, and introduced Emong to the concept of travel photography. He posed with signs, got his little gnome feet wet and generally took to being a travel companion quite well.
Back aboard, we changed for dinner, returned to Gatsby's and joined a Wii bowling tournament in one of the lounges. By then I was beginning to understand that a cruise had its own rhythm. You went ashore for a few hours, came back to what was essentially a floating hotel, found something to eat, wandered into an activity and eventually ended up back at your favorite bar talking with people you'd only just met.
I still wasn't sure whether cruising was really my kind of travel. But we had two more ports ahead of us, Gatsby's was already beginning to feel familiar, and Emong had apparently decided he was going to have a very active social life. Mazatlán was next.
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My First Cruise: Aboard the Norwegian Star (1/4)
I’d traveled plenty, but I’d never been on a cruise. Then Helen and I boarded the Norwegian Star for the Mexican Riviera and I discovered an enormous floating hotel, Gatsby’s, some memorable crew members—and a completely different kind of vacation.
