On Board

The above photo is of the Norwegian Jade, our ship for the next nine days. Norwegian Cruise Line provided me with this photo. A great shot of the ship and one that I could not capture as I was on board and not shooting from a chase ship or helicopter.

I have hundreds of shots of the ship in port, like this one.

And other shots of the ship in port in the fjords like this one.

Although I shot most of the images of our cruise with an Olympus EM1 Mk II, my iPhone X did come in handy.

I took this shot of the ship from inside a bus while climbing a steep, curving grade.

Smartphones can take some great photos!

Well, enough about taking photos of the ship. This was embarkation day at port in Hamburg.

We left our hotel at around 11:30am to get to the cruise centre for noon.

Chaos.

It seemed as though ALL of the passengers had decided to arrive at the same time.

There were two queues: the first involved dropping off luggage and the second involved checking in.

We were fortunate in that I was able to secure an upgrade for this cruise. Lorraine and I were Haven guests which meant that we had a special queue to bypass the crowds.

If not for the upgrade, I expect we would have been several hours attempting to clear the lines.

We were escorted to the ship along with two other families and seated at one of the speciality dining areas onboard the ship where we enjoyed a wonderful lunch.

At around 2pm, our room was ready.

I was expecting it to be a nice suite, and it certainly exceeded our expectations.

When we were doing our planning, I tried to find a video walkthrough of the Yellow Diamond Suite on the Norwegian Jade and I did not find one. So, here is my attempt at showing you our home on the ship for the next nine days.

We departed Hamburg around 6pm and Lorraine and I spent much of the evening enjoying the cruise along the Elbe river. Here are a few scenes from that evening.

Weather was perfect and the river calm.