My family (my parents and my sister) and I just got back from the 7 nights Western Mediterranean cruise with NCL on the Jewel. Since I really enjoy and appreciate all the reviews I read from this website I think its only fair that I should also share our experience with you.
We started our trip to Barcelona two days before the cruise so we could spend some time in Barcelona and after reviewing the hotel options NCL offered, we decided to book our own hotel. I use tripadvisor.com for hotel suggestion and booked hotel H10 Universitat Hotel at Plaza Catalunya. The hotel is very nice but I am not sure if it is worth what we paid for ($215 per night per room). Barcelona is a very nice city and we had a great time explore it on our own. Two days was really not enough to see Barcelona but we did visited good potion of the city. Sergrada Familia by Gaudi was just absolutely magnificent; a must see in Barcelona; do go there early to avoid the crowd.
Now on to the cruise, the embarkation was very fast (no wait) and the staffs are really friendly. We just walked right on to the ship without any line and they took our credit card info on the ship and sent us to our room and buffet up at the 12th deck. We booked two rooms for four of us, my sister and I stay in room 9074 with a balcony and our parents stay in an inside room just opposite our room (9073). The rooms are small but they do have a good size bathroom. The hair dryer was also surprise powerful. We loved the balcony in our room, and our parents spend a lot of time in our room so they could also enjoy the balcony. My sister and I both agree that we will never cruise without a balcony room, its just a must have for us because we like to stay in our room. After checking out our room we went up to the 12th deck for the sail away party/buffet which a big surprise was waiting for us. The buffet was not self-serve but served by the staff, you have to ask for everything even a cup of water. No explanation was given on why they change the format of the buffet instead we were told to sanitize our hands every where we go, it was very frustrating. After chatting up with some of the crews we found out that there was an outbreak of stomach flu couple weeks ago on other cruise ship and just to be safe they stop us from serving the buffet ourselves. It is now a big hassle to eat the buffet breakfast and lunch which my family enjoyed so much. All the staffs in the buffet area were also not well trained on handling serving the guests this way. Finally, after a couple days they stopped serving this way and allowed us to serve ourselves--still I think the damage is done, it just really decrease the free style experience.