It was on the Celebrity Eclipse, somewhere crossing the Atlantic, that we heard the erudite author John Maxtone-Graham give the best answer when he was asked what his favourite cruise ship was.
"The one I'm on," he said.
Now that can be taken as a cop-out, or an evasive answer, or both. But for people who like cruising, that's kind of the way it is. Hold up your hand if you love cruising and you've ever been on a bad ship?
We haven't.
And so it is that this week we will re-introduce you to the Norwegian Epic, a massive ship that is sometimes ridiculed by cruise experts who have never seen it, let alone cruised on it. It goes without saying that we liked her, a lot, on both our one-week Epic cruises…the first of them when she was a baby, just six months old.
There is much to like about the Epic, all of it subjective of course…
We like the size, big enough to hold the town where we live but not so big that you get lost.
We like the professional entertainment, which Norwegian made a priority about the time the Epic arrived, because (a) it's high quality (b) the concepts stay the same while the performers change, and (c) if you miss a show you want to see, there's always another night.
We like the food. Yes, it's possible to have mediocre food on a cruise (the old volume-vs-quality thing) but we have tasted no mediocrity from the Epic's kitchen.
We like the variety of specialty restaurants, which are not over-priced. In seven nights, you can have specialty main courses that range from lasagne (La Cucina) to coq au vin (Le Bistro) to superb steak (Cagney's) to all meat Brazilian style (Moderno) to prawns cooked before your eyes (Teppenyaki).
We like the balcony staterooms (yes, even the smoked-glass bathrooms…okay, we're indifferent) with beds that seem larger than the norm and so many little compartments for storage that nothing goes unpacked.
We like the people, especially the servers in the restaurants. Nice people work on all cruise ships, especially in the restaurants, but there's something unique about the Epic's people and the pride they feel in their ship.
We like the ship because it's distinctive. You won't see another one like it, which suits all the cruise people who consider it something of an ugly duckling because the typical blueprint went out the window with this baby.
But we were destined to like a lot about the Epic. It is, after all, a cruise ship.
Norwegian Sun
7 nights
May 20, 2013
Vancouver, Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Glacier Bay, Hubbard Glacier, Anchorage
Inside: $479
Cost per day: $68
www.ncl.com