New England Cruise - Norwegian Dawn

NYC - Canada - New England Cruise

September 2009

Our Fall vacations in recent years have been focused on photography where we drove to the venue. We have had some great experiences on these photo road trips but this was the year for our 40^th wedding anniversary so we wanted to do something different. The idea of going on a cruise has crossed our minds but, frankly, the cost has kept us away but not this time. We settled on a New York City to Canada and New England cruise aboard the Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) “Dawn”.

There are several cruise companies sailing this circuit but we settled on Norwegian for several reasons:

They sail from the cruise pier along Manhattan’s west side. We wanted to leave our car in Kutztown and take the Bieber bus to the Port Authority in Manhattan which is less than a couple miles from the dock. An inexpensive cab ride. Best of all, no driving near the city.
We were intrigued by Norwegian’s “Freestyle Cruising”. No assigned meal times or assigned tables. Eat when you want. In addition, no jacket and tie affairs. Norwegian requests “resort casual” at dinner otherwise come as you are.
This was our first cruise and we wanted to sail on something less than the largest one out there. The Dawn carries a max of about 2,200 passengers (about 1,000 crew) while some of the others carry 3,200-3,500.

This was a 7 day Sunday to Sunday cruise. The Dawn sails from New York and spends a full day at sea going directly to Halifax Nova Scotia. From there it was one day ports of call with the ship moving between ports overnight. Ports of call were: Halifax, St. Johns, Bar Harbor, Boston, Newport, and back to New York.

We booked four shore excursions and have to admit that the absolute best of them was a 3-1/2 hour photography excursion via 23 passenger bus. Our guide, Lance Timmons, was in a word, awesome!

We took just under 1,000 images between us and offer a few here for you to look at. Clicking on these images will take you to a larger view located on our flickr site. Each image also has a caption describing the image. You will also find, if interested, information on the camera used and the meta data. Images taken with a Nikon D60 are Kathy's. Images taken with a Nikon D300 are Joe's.

The Ship: