Our Caribbean Cruise on the Norwegian Dawn

Wow! That was our first impression when we embarked the Norwegian Dawn in Miami with a welcome champagne in our hands. No wonder, we entered the ship on deck 7 and the first we have seen was the Grand Atrium with its glass-domed ceiling and Christmas-decoration, which offered a pretty stunning view:

From CARIBBEAN CRUISE - Norwegian Dawn

This was our first ever cruise and may not be the last, thanks to NCL. We have booked a 9-day Southern Caribbean cruise sailing out of Miami on the 1st of January (an excellent start for the new year, isn't it?) with 3 days on the sea and 5 Ports of Call in: Samana (Dominican Republic); Tortola (BVI); Antigua; Barbados and St Kitts.
(Reviews on the Port of Calls will follow later in our next blog entry...)

Let's start at the beginning: we had an amazing sail-away from Miami with one of the most beautiful sunsets we have seen:

From CARIBBEAN CRUISE - Norwegian Dawn

There was a lot to explore on our first "sea day": plenty of restaurants, bars and lounges, a fitness center and spa, a Broadway-style theater, casino, pools & jacuzzis (not to mention the library, art gallery, jogging track, etc, etc) ... we ended up spending the entire day wondering around with huge open eyes and trying to cope with the type of luxury we aren't really used to (e.g. we asked the roomservice to serve our breakfast in the cabin, but woke up earlier the following day and didn't have enough patience to wait until the breakfast actually arrived) So we headed off to explore our over 2,200-passanger-capacity ship...

The two main restaurants were Aqua and the Venetian, both with very nice interior and top quality service.

From CARIBBEAN CRUISE - Norwegian Dawn

What do we actually mean by top quality? Well, how many times do you think it is "normal" to have a waiter coming to your table (either bringing or taking away something or simply just asking whether everything was all right) during a three-course dinner? WE stopped counting at 20 ...

Garden Café was the place to go for buffé breakfast. They had lots of things to choose from from fresh fruit (including MY favorite watermelons) to Zoli's daily on-demand scrambled eggs "with everything" prepared by an Indian cook in front of our eyes and, last but not least, OUR daily Pecanbons (the only food we've been missing from the US since we left in 2003)

We also tried one of the specialty restaurants, the Salsa Tapas Bar, offering Tex-Mex specialities - their tacos, fajitas and Sangria were out of the world! Well, have to admit that we are not very familiar with the Tex-Mex cuisine, so no idea how an 'original' salsa was supposed to taste like, but our food was really delicious.

From CARIBBEAN CRUISE - Norwegian Dawn

Our favorite place however was Gatsby's Lounge, which was in fact an Art Deco piano and champagne bar having a regular piano-entertainer playing well-known hits. The atmosphere at Gatsby's was really pleasant, which is why we have spent some time in most of our evenings onboard here. 

From CARIBBEAN CRUISE - Norwegian Dawn

To be fair, the ship had so many entertainment options (parties, shows, karaokes, etc) that we have not even come close to experience them all. The focus of the ship's entertainment though took place in the elegant Stardust Theatre, a Broadway style, over 1,000-capacity theatre,

From CARIBBEAN CRUISE - Norwegian Dawn

where we could enjoy a variety of performances ranging from Magician and Comedian Shows to India’s Bollywood and even a Show presented by the International Crew of the Dawn.

The Oasis Pool was a nice place to relax with a refreshing cocktail when we got tired of running around the ship (not on the jogging track, of course, just from one show to the other ;-))

From CARIBBEAN CRUISE - Norwegian Dawn

Overall, what we found amazing on the Dawn was the resort-style experience. Like we were really in a 5-star floating hotel/resort. We did WHAT we wanted to do, WHEN we wanted to do it and IF we wanted to do it, and there was plenty of "WHAT" to do. Besides, all services have been offered at premium quality (we weren't quite sure why was it important to make our bed twice a day and exchange the towels every time, but really appreciated our room steward's efforts to still find San Pellegrino for us even though they 'officially' ran out of it...). They even put away Gulliver neatly in his place every day!

Speaking of Gulliver, he also had an awesome time on the cruise ship, most of the time just comfortably relaxing at our balcony on the 9th floor or wondering around and introducing himself to Captain Paul:

From CARIBBEAN CRUISE - Norwegian Dawn

And now, ATTENTION! GAME-TIME. We have a game and we have a prize:
Guess what was Captain Paul von Knorring asking from Gulliver ??? The funniest and most authentic "guess" will be rewarded with a real Caribbean prize! Game is open until the 31st of Jan, we expect your responses by posting a comment (no emails).
Have fun! (or rather, WE are looking forward to have some fun)

Again, if you would like to skip our stories and just simply jump to the pictures, you can find here our full album on the Dawn:

CARIBBEAN CRUISE - Norwegian Dawn