I imagine little Albert Ballin looking out to sea from his hometown port of Hamburg, thinking: “I could put the grandest hotel and all the best restaurants in Germany on one of my father's ships, and sail, ensconced in luxury, around the world.”
To the delight of the thousands of tourists who now board cruise ships to take what many of them consider “the perfect vacation”, Ballin thus invented the cruise liner. He'd seen a future of leisurely sea travel available to any punter who could afford a ticket and didn't waste any time making his vision a reality.
A century and a half after he'd transformed the family cargo fleet into ocean-going vessels of grand proportions (dispelling the critics who'd said, “People will travel out of necessity — they'll surely not submit themselves to the hazards and discomforts of a long voyage just for the incidental fun of it”), Germans, Americans, Italians, Koreans, Russians and myriad other nationalities along with at least two intrepid South Africans took to the seas in one of the newest, most impressive boats to ever hit the high waters, the Norwegian Viva on its maiden voyage.
Like little Albert, we started our cruise staring out to sea and imagining — this time from the balcony of the glorious Savoia Excelsior Palace in the Italian port city of Trieste — what it would be like to spend a few days in a seafaring hotel of epic dimensions, waking up to a new, glamorous location every day.
We didn't have to fantasise too hard because the boat was docked outside our hotel window, waiting for a cargo of tourists to fill its enormous, empty belly. The scale of the boat was a complete surprise. It appeared like a floating ziggurat as we rounded a corner on the street from the train station, catching sight of the sea for the first time. It guarded us in our hotel beds like a massive sentinel towering over our top-floor room and, the next day, while exploring Trieste, we saw it looming in the harbour from San Giusto Hill, a lookout point at the Castello fortress with a bird's-eye view of the city.
GRANDAD'S DAYS
The only other time I've been on a cruise ship was decades ago, travelling with my grandfather (then recently widowed) and his new lady friend. I was nine years old — and apparently a good excuse for some respite from her when she became too cloying — “Have to take the kid up to the ... while you stay in the cabin and get over your sea sickness,” he'd say, filling in the blank with casino, theatre, ice-cream parlour, disco or restaurant each night.
As a child, the ship had seemed like a boundless wonderland where every whim was instantly satisfied. It was fantastically infinite in its offerings (at the time I thought that a floating cinema was a big deal). Now, grown up, I imagined that my bigger size and vaster experience would give me a different perspective. It didn't.
A MODERN EXPERIENCE
The Norwegian Viva, a few decades after my sailing with my granddad, has upped the ante on sea-voyage offerings. If it's what you're after, you can have constant stimulation via activities, festivities, song and dance, bottomless cocktails, musical theatre (Beetlejuice in the Viva's first big musical production), art admiration and delicious food galore. We did it all.
Cruising is meant to offer respite from all the travails of your job and home life and the organisers are super-amped to live up to the promises of the perfect vacation, sold in the online brochure. So, we were encouraged to swap hard work for hard play.
You can race go-karts on a three-level track at sea; drop at high speed in a free-fall slide where the bottom suddenly falls from beneath your feet, sending you hurtling 10 storeys, embalmed like a mummy in a straight jacket... ready for burial at sea (not really). We tried that too — more than once — there's one on either side of the ship.
You can kiss the dice of high rollers in the vast, but densely populated casino or take a quiet drink at the poolside bar at sunset and watch the endless blue of the ocean roll by. Perhaps show off your Charleston when it's swing night at the disco or your general knowledge at the quiz afternoon sessions and music trivia evenings that transform into a karaoke disco (highly recommended) once everyone is drunk. Done and dusted.
As we drifted along the many halls and various floors of the NCL Viva like clouds on the horizon, the weight of everyday stresses lifted from our shoulders and we floated on a sea of smiles.
FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD
After checking into our room, we spent the next few hours doing a recce of the ship. The lift goes up 20 floors; the top one is the entrance to the three-storey Viva Speedway, which we'd race in honour of our teenage sons on our “At Sea” day, when the on-board activities are at their densest and most organised.
On the 19th floor is The Wave, a tidal wave waterslide, which seemed to be closed most of the time.
The 18th floor is for games, slides and drinking. Tee Time is interactive mini golf; The Bulls Eye, a dart-themed bar we never made it to; the start of The Drop slide and The Rush, both dry, free-fall slides; the Speedway Bar; Kid's Aqua Park; The Stadium, with tabletop shuffleboard, pickleball, subsoccer, beer pong, ping pong and foosball, any of which I'd have to be very bored to consider attempting (never happened); and the top level of the sundeck and pool replete with deckchairs and glorious sea views.
Down a floor is the start of the food. There are so many restaurants and so much variety that you'd need another cruise and an extra few stomachs to try it all. There are various grades of being fed — from the breakfast buffets at various stations and lunchtime cafeterias (the best of which was next to the main pool) to the “you-need-to-book” smart dinnertime, themed restaurants. But no matter how you fill up (or top up, as the case may be with all the feeding) everything is incredibly delicious, and I mean serious-fasting-when-back-home delicious!
As it happened, we ate at the speciality seafood restaurant, Palomar, where we tried the whole lobster grilled in olive oil and lemon with capers and grilled carrots.
At Onda by Scarpetta, the Italian speciality restaurant (when in Italy, as they say), we ate Scialatiellei with shrimp, clams, mussels and calamari in a white wine garlic sauce and we gorged ourselves twice at Cagney's Steakhouse, the first time because we were told it was the best restaurant on the ship and the second time because we'd befriended a delightful Danish man travelling with his two beautiful 20-something-year-old daughters who reiterated it was the best restaurant on the ship. He also bribed us with a few bottles of Cristal.
SHORE EXCURSION DILEMMAS
We met Henrijk at the main pool on the “At Sea” day when, after trying all the activities, we joined the convergence of bodies — many showing the punishment of what was done to them in their 20s — on the deck chairs around the pool to wait for the Mr Sexy Legs competition.
Henrijk, a man in his late fifties, still apparently had the spirit of a 20-year-old, and, it seemed, the liver capacity. He was on the cruise to cruise, which wasn't that unusual among many of the high-income herd we were travelling with. What I mean by that is that when we walked the shore-excursion plank, the part of the cruise to which we were looking forward most, Henrijk stayed on board. Nothing on the very exciting list of outings enticed him enough to want to step into Croatia (our first stop was Split) or Salerno (entry port into Italy's magnificent Amalfi coast).
Since we were getting off the boat in Rome, handing our cabins over to the next set of travel journalists for the second half of the cruise (taking in Cannes, France; Ibiza, Spain and Lisbon, Portugal), we were definitely going to spend as much time exploring the intriguing locales on the trip for as many hours as possible.
We intended to barely make the ship's set-sail horn. I mean, six to eight hours to explore a city in a country you've never been before is hardly a lot of time and we were determined to make the most of it. The excursions on offer make the tyranny of choice a real thing. If you're into managed fun, there's plenty on offer, like a tour of the best places to take a selfie; exploring some of Croatia’s Unesco world heritage sites; visiting the filming locations for Game of Thrones; taking a cruise up a local river; exploring some of the beautiful beaches; and many more.
Likewise, it was difficult to exclude the other options when we were deciding what to do in Salerno on the Amalfi coast: tour Naples and make local folded pizza; explore the ancient ruins of Pompeii; or take a cruise along the Amalfi coast, among lots of others.
Then again, perhaps Henrijk had the right idea after all: stay on board and absorb the palliative effects of professional pampering. Split and the Amalfi coast will still be there next time and perhaps we won't have access to our fabulously comfortable stateroom cabins complete with spacious balcony overlooking the water, where you can admire the coastline of Croatia or Amalfi without having to delve into the crowds and the heat.
Perhaps nothing beats whiling away an afternoon racing friends on the Speedway racetrack, or taking in a comedy show, going to an art auction or just sipping delicious cocktails by the pool where the towel guy brings you a new one every time you get off your deck chair.
Henrijk's face, frozen in a rictus of compulsory pleasure, gave us all the evidence we needed that staying on board is a fine idea. We'll have to book another NCL cruise to find out for sure. Albert Ballin sure would be proud.
NORWEGIAN VIVA IN NUMBERS
- The ship weighs 142,500 gross tonnes.
- It is 294m long, with a maximum beam of 40m.
- At double capacity, Norwegian Viva can accommodate 3,009 passengers. On board, there are a total of 1,506 crew members to attend to them, including cabin stewards, guest services representatives, bartenders and more.
- Prima Class ships have an upscale feel and atmosphere, with a large selection of suite staterooms and the largest amount of deck space of any Norwegian Cruise Line ships thus far.
PLAN YOUR TRIP
The Norwegian Viva is currently homeporting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, offering seven-day Caribbean voyages with stops in the British Virgin Islands; Antigua; Barbados; St Lucia and more. In April, the ship returns to Europe for a second season sailing a variety of Mediterranean and Greek Isles itineraries. See ncl.com.
• Nagel was a guest of Norwegian Cruise Line.
