Precious Memories: Hi and Bye! Ponta Delgada

Friday, June 16, 2017

Hi and Bye! Ponta Delgada

NCL Getaway Transatlantic, Day 8

May 7, 2017 - Another Day at Sea instead of Ponta Delgada

Well, we got up real early this morning, planning to get off the ship as soon as it docks in Ponta Delgada, our first port of call after the last seven days at sea. I had the morning call set up for 6:00 but I was already up before the phone rang. For once, we had breakfast together at the buffet at 6:45.

Land Ahoy!

While having breakfast, we could see from the windows that our ship was getting closer to the port and it looked like a nice place to visit, a beautiful island! We saw the pilot boat and seemed like we were ready. But then, the captain came on the PA system and announced that because of the wind and waves, we were not able to dock and the pilot suggested that we head back out to sea. We will have another day at sea instead. So disappointing but what can we do? They have to rearrange the on board activities and publish another free style dailies later on.

I even had the port agent information photographed as emergency contact on land as usual.

Now that we cannot get off the ship, we came back to the cabin and watched the ship moving away from the island. I am not 100% sure now, but I think these are the pictures I took of the island on that day from our aft balcony. The sea was quite choppy indeed.

As we were sailing in and out of Ponta Delgada, ChC and MOR were able to use the data to send messages and checked email on their cell phones because we were so close to land. They were able to have connection until the ship went past the island. As for myself, my iphone went 'dead' for some reasons and I was not able to do anything with it. Not until we got to London where I had free wifi to restart everything again.

The newly revised dailies.

Nothing else to do, so I took a picture of the carpeting with the fish swimming toward the bow of the ship.

Waiting for a table at Taste for lunch.

Inside Taste

Fried calamari, appetizer

Vietnamese spring roll

My shrimp caesar salad

Milanese chicken

strawberry shortcake

As we were walking out from Taste after lunch, we saw a sign posted that they will be serving prime rib at O'Sheehan tonight so we decided that's where we wanted for dinner.

Barf bags along the hallway

In the afternoon, they announced that because the British Immigration officials could not get on the ship at Ponta Delgada, all the scheduled passport checks for tomorrow will be canceled. That turned out to be a giant problem for this 4000 passengers ship when we docked in Southampton.

Prime rib dinner at O'Sheehan's

Dinner at O'Sheehan's was good. We were there before 5:30 and were told that they do not start serving the prime rib until after 5:30 which was fine with us. Gave us a little more time to decide what we wanted as we sat and waited.

I had the country soup again which was very good!

Buffalo wings

prime rib

fruit plate

Since we had early dinner, that threw Ashok off and he was still cleaning our cabin when we got back. We then went up to the buffet and enjoyed our cups of tea to let him finish his work. By now, the ship was moving very slowly, almost like just floating at sea. I guess we have many extra hours before our next scheduled port.

Another time change, this should be the last one.

At 9:30, I went to the Atrium to see the Battle of the Sexes game show. It was hilarious and a lot of fun! The assistant cruise directors, young Filipinos, all did a wonderful job taking charge of the game show. It was a full house and very crowded but everybody had a great time.

Quick change of clothes

Women side

Men side

What can I say? This was a good game to have people get over the disappointment of the missed port.

The waves this evening seemed to be worse than earlier today, possibly because we were out at the open sea again.

Day 9, Day at Sea

May 8, 2017

Our Behind the Scene Tour (for Platinum) was scheduled for 9:15, so we got up and had breakfast around 7:00. There weren't that many people at the buffet at that hour.

omelette station

A model of the Getaway on deck 6.

The bar between Taste and Savor on deck 6.

Guest Services

BTW, they returned the $4 port charge to our accounts. I don't think they were going to do anything about compensation for the missed port yet at that time.

We met our Behind the Scene tour here at the Cruise Next desk.

They divided us into two groups and we had 16 people in our group. No photography was allowed so I did not have any pictures of this tour. First, we went down to the laundry room on deck 3 and 4. Very interesting to see the whole operation and the head of that department gave a thorough explanation of how everything works in there. We then walked through the crew quarters and then to the food storage and the galley. This has to be the biggest galley I have ever seen on a ship and the storage and butcher areas were quite amazing to see. With the department heads as guide, it was both educational and interesting. Somebody asked if we had enough food supply since we missed Ponta Delgada and we had been on so many sea days. We were told that NCL get all their food supplies from Miami and they don't use local food for safety reasons. They would ship all their food supplies to wherever the ships would be ahead of time using cargo shipping. The only food shipment that we missed in Ponta Delgada was more bananas. There is a little distance between the galley and the restaurants, no wonder the ice cream would usually melted by the time it reaches our table. I thought this tour was very impressive and gave a good picture of how things work on the cruise ship.

For lunch, ChC decided to go to the buffet because he didn't see anything that he liked on the menu. We wanted to have the salmon for lunch at Savor which turned out to be good.

Inside Savor.

Fresh fruit as appetizer.

salmon

caramel ice cream (without the pecan pie)

The only activity we had in the afternoon was for the port talk on Bruges, which turned out to be a waste because that was the second port that we missed on this cruise.

Teppanyaki

For dinner we had the 6:00 reservations at Teppanyaki. I must say that it's not my thing but I thought we would try anyway since it was free. I generally do not want to have to interact with others as I am enjoying my meal other than those I have dinner with. Having to respond and react to the chef made it a little too much work on my part. The chef did try, but you know well that they were just doing their routine presentations as far as asking questions, saying their lines, singing songs, and folding origami, etc. to make it entertaining. As for the food, it was not worth the $29.95 up charge for a meal with six shrimps and maybe seven or eight scallops and a bowl of fried rice. Of course there was the miso soup, the bowl of seaweed salad, and a green tea cake and ice cream dessert to go with the meal but still... Anyway, we had a good experience but I don't think I would do that again. It was more of a show instead of food.