thomastx
I hesitated giving 5 stars here (due to NCL transfer debacles), but ultimately gave 5 stars because Stockholm is awesome. Our group all left with the consensus that Stockholm was the one port we were left wanting to go back to, and that we needed another full day or two to experience it. City Hall tour was very cool. Walking thru Gamla Stan was more exciting than anticipated, and you find something new down every street. This is a place needing to be explored more deeply. Ferry over to Djurgarden provides MANY more options of things to do, including Grona Land, ABBA Museum, Skansen, Vasa Museet, and more. We found Vasa Museet to be slightly disappointing, due to poor lighting and small confined space preventing you from getting a good view of the entire amazing ship. The biggest negative to this port is that Norwegian Cruise Lines has majorly screwed up the transportation from Nynashamn. While we booked 390+ days out before the port was changed to Nynashamn and told by NCL months ago that they would provide free transport, we had to argue with them to get the free transport, and they claimed that we did not book before the change. If you take the free transport, they force you to choose from only two predetermined bus times, both of which cut your port time short by three hours. This was a debacle. Others on ship who took NCL excursions into Stockholm also said that they were disasters. The best method of transportation (which we took) is the train, directly from Nynashamn to Stockholm City. However, on return there was track maintenance which forced everyone off at one station, onto buses which were hard to find, and then dropped at another station to complete the train journey. NCL could easily arrange a transportation option for all on train, smoothing it for everyone. Doing this would allow negotiations for ensuring maintenance was not being done during the much-needed return trip time, or bus options properly arranged. However, the reasons for diverting to Nynashamn in the first place is suspect, and likely due to NCL not wanting to pay Stockholm port fees. All other ships were docked in Stockholm, with none in Nynashamn. I've heard NCL claiming issues sailing the Archipelago (as was advertised when we booked), although all the ships we saw docked in Stockholm clearly had no problems as well as the identical NCL Getaway last year. In summary, Stockholm is awesome and really needs to be two days and docked directly in Stockholm. Norwegian has turned Nynashamn into a debacle.
Visited: Jul 23, 2018
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