If there are white caps in your toilet...3

I've always thought of cruising as a rather rigid way to vacation. I've heard the stories about being assigned a dinner table full of strangers, set dress code, etc. Well... we chose Norwegian for their new "Freestyle Cruising". I am a BIG fan of freestyle cruising now. The only real dress code was that you couldn't wear your bathing suit into the fancy dining room. Better yet... you never were even required to go to the fancy dining room. We could eat whenever and wherever we wanted. We never even had to sit with strangers. There was a table for two waiting everywhere we went.

Each evening we would get a newsletter that told us all the activities that would be going on aboard the boat for the following day. That way we could plan what we did and did not wish to participate in.

Lesson 1: Early on they offered lots of talks about shore excursions, port talks about where was best to shop, etc. I bought in as a cruise virgin. By the end of the week I had figured out that all that was really a cleverly designed sales pitch. It wasn't all for naught because I did feel educated about stuff I new nothing about. I was just annoyed by the big marketing undertow to it all. I would have done better to just ask the shopping guy or the shore excursion guy specific questions and skip the big talks. All of the crew of the ship were really helpful and willing to answer questions honestly. We asked and the shore excursion guy gave us a recommendation and he was spot on and we really enjoyed it.

Also... in the same vein.... I bought in to the "get free stuff" push too. Now... I did end up with a charm bracelet that was basically free. I did pay for the first charm but it was only $5. That was really clever. The whole thing is just a promotion to drive you into the big jewelry store chain that happens to be in all the ports we went to. I just had to go on a quest at each port to find the store and go get my free charm. It was a bit of a hassle, but I did end up with a cute charm bracelet that represented my first cruise.

Our first day at sea I spent hopping from "talk" to "talk". When I wasn't doing that we were busy chilling. We were amazed with 2,200 people (over 3000 if you include crew) that we were always able to find a spot where no one was. That was a nice surprise. You can also easily find people. The big crowds were generally in the area of the boat where advertised events were happening. If you avoid those places you really don't have to fight off crowds. Below is a picture of us relaxing at sea. We had the whole back end of deck 13 to ourselves! We explored a lot that day and scoped out all the places where few to zero people tended to congregate.