Norwegian Jewel Review
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This was our 2nd sailing on NCL. We did Alaska in 2005 on the Norwegian Spirit and enjoyed the whole "Freestyle" concept. We made our arrangements through a local travel agency and thought we had a good price until I asked the agent to check with NCL to see if our Latitudes status would get us a discount. She came back on the phone and said NCL would discount our cruise $500 because we'd sailed before. Never hurts to ask.
I didn't like the fact that NCL didn't tell us our flight arrangements until 2-3 weeks before the sailing. I guess they want to try and negotiate the cheapest fares. At any rate, we flew out of Minneapolis/St. Paul on Northwest Airlines and then flew to Philadelphia to catch a connection to Barcelona on US Air. I've not flown US Air since they are a minor player in our neck of the woods (upper midwest). We found the flight attendants brusque and not particularly helpful. The plane seemed old and in need of a paint job. The headphones to watch the movie were $5 but when we got them, all we could hear was awful scratching and static. The crew apologized and said there were technical difficulties. We had to take the headphones off as they did not work the entire trip due to static and noise. The Philadelphia airport is undergoing major renovations and it is a mess. Avoid it if you can possibly do so. To get to our connection we had to leave the secured area and go through security again to get to the US Air terminal. Long and slow. I learned later that there was some sort of bus that would help us avoid this 15 minute walk but nobody mentioned that to us.
When we finally arrived in Barcelona, we were met by the NCL agent and our bags were promptly taken. We were escorted to a waiting bus by NCL agents who spoke some English and were very polite. Because we got into Barcelona about 10am and we could not start embarking for a few hours, the bus took us on a tour of the city of Barcelona and actually made a few stops, showed us the Olympic stadium from 1992 and took us downtown to see a beautiful church being built. I don't recall this itinerary being included as anything more than an airport to pier transfer but it was really nice to see Barcelona.