For fall break, we decided to take the kids on a 7 night cruise from Quebec City to Boston on the Norwegian Pearl. This is a new territory to visit (for the most part) for all of us so we were quite excited! Our journey started on September 21, 2023. This is a recap of our trip.
September 21, 2023
Full disclosure: when I booked this cruise, I didn’t realize it was going to be so difficult to go to Quebec City (our departure port) from Atlanta. Living near Atlanta most of my life, I’ve kind of assumed it’s fairly easy to fly anywhere since it’s one of the busiest airports in the world. Well, apparently it’s not so easy to fly to Quebec City. There’s no direct flights from Atlanta to Quebec City. We have to make a stop in Montreal. From Montreal, we have a few options, either take another flight, take a bus, or take a private taxi. It’s about 3 hours and the cost of taxi is about the same as the cost of a flight. The fall break is only one week so we didn’t have a lot of time, so we decided to fly in today (to Montreal) with Delta and take an early morning flight tomorrow to Quebec City and board the ship. I probably would have decided to book a different cruise had I known it was going to be this difficult to just arrive to the port because we had no time to really check out Montreal OR Quebec City, both of which were places I really wanted to visit.
I booked a hotel near the airport since our flight tomorrow is so early. The hotel came with free airport shuttle but it took a LONG time to arrive. We would have ubered if we knew it was going to take this long, but the place to uber was far from the place to wait for the hotel shuttle so we were kind of committed.
Our hotel was the Embassy Suites by Hilton Montreal Airport. Once we made it to the hotel everything was fine. The room I booked was the 1 King Bed 2 Room Suite. It was plenty of room for the 4 of us. Next, I wanted to somehow make it to Old Montreal to walk around and try some Poutine. This was not the best idea mostly because it was getting late and the trip to Old Montreal was rather expensive with Uber and time consuming. By the time we got there, it was really too dark to even see anything. Nonetheless I was determined to get there and try the best poutine at La Banquise.
If you follow my blog, then you probably already know that I enjoy trying authentic local cuisines wherever I go. However, you would probably also know that I’m a bit allergic to cheese, so trying poutine for me is just silly. Either way, I was excited to have my kids try something local that I thought they would enjoy – what kid wouldn’t like fries and cheese? And have a nice start to our trip. What I didn’t expect was that La Banquise was SO popular, that at 8:30pm on a Thursday night, there was nowhere to sit and the line to order was around the block. That wasn’t going to deter me by this point – it cost us $40 to get here by uber and the long line means we chose the right restaurant and it’s going to be worth it. Then I noticed there was a second line that was shorter, so I stood in that line, which turned out… was the to-go line. Oh well. The employees were very nice and quickly helped us with orders and told us we could walk around the corner to eat at one of the picnic tables in the park. There were about 30 types of poutines here and we ordered a standard poutine for the kids, a burger for myself, and a meat topped poutine for Teddy. We barely managed to find somewhere to sit, and the park was NOT lit at all. This would have been a much better experience if we were here earlier and been able to see. The park, La Fontaine Park, would have been quite nice as well.
Sadly, I think I enjoyed my burger more than anyone else enjoyed their poutines. Not to mention, the poutines were pretty pricy. I guess I’m glad we did this – my favorite chef Anthony Bourdain recommended La Banquise as one of his favorite meals in Montreal so I knew I would regret it if I didn’t come here. But in hindsight, if I knew what I know now, I would have just tried some poutine at the restaurant in our hotel. A lot cheaper, a lot closer, a lot warmer, a lot faster, and we would have had a table to eat at.
Back at the hotel room, Teddy did some work while the kids got ready for bed. I loved our room. It was very clean and spacious.
September 22, 2023
This morning we are flying with PAL airlines. I don’t even know why a small Philippine Airline would fly between Montreal and Quebec City, but this was by far the cheapest flight I could find between the two, and it’s a short flight, so I didn’t really care about comfort or service, which both turned out to be fine anyway.
As soon as we got our luggage, we headed straight to the cruise port. Got there about noon, and we were whisked onto the ship right away!!
Embarkation Lunch (Cagney’s)
Nothing gets us excited like a cruise does. It’s forever my favorite form of travel.
Butternut Squash Soup (Soup of the Day)
Shrimp “Louie”
Mozzarella & Prosciutto
Steak Frites
Everything was SO good. After lunch, we came to our room and discovered lots of invitations for different gatherings. We were invited to a VIP Cocktail Reception at the Bliss Lounge, I believe for having an upper level stateroom. We were invited to a military appreciation gathering for Ted’s military service (allows plus one) at Spinnaker Lounge. We were also invited to an exclusive gathering hosted by the CruiseNext team for Silver and above Latitudes members. This is a gathering to meet with the senior officers. We are Platinum tier with their Latitudes rewards membership which comes with some great benefits.
On the older ships, NCL would name all of its higher level suites. Each suite room is given a name, so even for the same category rooms, each stateroom number has its own name. The room we have is a 2-Bedroom Family Suite with Balcony. All of the rooms in this category have different types of gems as its name. Our particular room is called the Amethyst Suite. Our room number is 11512. With the newer ships, NCL stopped naming their suites.
Amethyst Suite – Room 11512 (2-Bedroom Family Suite w/Balcony)
As the name suggests, our room has 2 bedrooms. One is a King bed room with a big bathroom. The other room is a small bunk room which shares the guest bathroom. We love our room.
I really liked our bathroom. It has a lot of space and the shower has a nice view of the ocean.
On embarkation day, you can see the beautiful Jacques-Cartier National Park from our balcony.
One of my favorite things about NCL is that their premium plus drink package includes Starbucks beverages (unless you are on Pride of America). Not all NCL ships have Starbucks but I believe all of them serve Starbucks drinks. NCL Pearl has pretty good Starbucks options.
For this trip, our Butler was Alvien Jeric Basa and our concierge was Leo Austria. Both the concierge and the butler were AMAZING to us.
Dinner: Le Bistro
Dinner at Le Bistro today was so good. I love Le Bistro. Not only do I love their escargot, I also like the fact you can still get free glasses of Veuve Cliquot here (with the premium plus drink package). This is the only place on the ship that will sell you Veuve Cliquot by the glass, which makes it inclusive of the drink package.
Escargot
Croquettes
Mushroom Soup
Lamb Chop
Pork Chop
Everything was so good. Le Bistro is a specialty restaurant. The good thing about NCL’s specialty dining is that there are lots of ways to make it included in the fare. We get 2 free specialty restaurants by being Platinum latitude members. We also get 1 Le Bistro free from American Express Platinum credit card benefit. We also get 2 from the Free at Sea offer. So for a 7 night cruise, we get 5 specialty dinings.
Night Entertainment: Jason Russell
Tonight’s show is a welcome aboard show starring comedian Jason Russell. He never uses inappropriate language but many of his jokes have to do with his racial identity, being a mix of Black and White. We found him funny and enjoyable.
To Be Continued