Day 6 – Norwegian Bliss Inaugural Transatlantic

It’s Day 6 of the Inaugural Transatlantic cruise on Norwegian Bliss.

Chris and I swapped sides of the bed last night to see if we could get a better night’s sleep but it turned out worse for us both.We are finding the mattresses a little too hard and the pillows too soft for our liking. Other passengers we have spoken to are sleeping like logs however!

Will try and catch the steward to see if there are any options for us.

After a satisfying breakfast in the Garden Cafe we headed up to deck 17 and trekked along to the Go-Kart track – Chris was booked in from 11-12 and we were asked to be there ten minutes early. We met up with Ben, the Aussie guy from our Teppanyaki table, and they signed themselves in. There followed a longish wait while the people in front were loaded into the karts for their session. They were then given some basic rules of the track:

Drive smoothly no swerving in front of other karts.
You will only be communicated with by flags and lights
Yellow flag – proceed slowly
Red flag – stop immediately
Blue flag – passing permitted
Chequered flag- last lap
If you have problems, stop and put your hand up.

Next, their details were entered on a tablet and they were assigned a kart number. Then they were given tight black bonnets to put over their heads, like a balaclava. These are fresh for each person and the helmets are cleaned twice a day. They were then directed to their karts and helped into their seats and given a helmet.

Chris had a few problems with his helmet strap and they had to find another helmet. He also had to take his glasses off to get the helmet on and then put them on again on either side of the bonnet and through the visor hole.

Other useful information:

There is a tight strap on the helmet for under your chin and there is a four point harness seatbelt.
Shoes just need to be enclosed – no sandals or flip flops.
The recommended driving position is knees and arms slightly bent – the seats can be adjusted to make you more comfortable.
There are two pedals – green on right which is go, red on left for stop.
You get a figure of eight steering wheel – with a button for reversing and a booster button for 4 seconds of faster speed.
Be aware that some corners are very tight.
You have eight laps in total. Actual time on the track is about ten minutes.
The operators can remotely slow down your car if you misbehave!

Chris lost power about 3 laps in and his kart needed to be restarted. He liked that there were only 3 karts in his session otherwise it would have been very disruptive. We were finished by about 11:30. Now he knows how it works, Chris is keen to go on the go-karts again – it’s worth the nominal $7 charge!

The afternoon was put aside for a Cruisecritic Roll Call Pub Crawl. We met in the Manhattan Room at 2pm, some (including Chris) wearing silly hats for the occasion, were given Pub Crawl badges and different lists of 5 bars around the ship so we didn’t crowd the same one all at once.

The evidence:

It was fun and we met some really nice people. As usual, we ended up in the District where Chris drank the last drops of Funky Buddha Floridian.

We grabbed some food from The Local in between. I had the Spinach and Artichoke dip and Chris the French Onion Soup. I must admit to preferring the dip I had in O’Sheehans on the Jade.