First time cruiser, on Norwegian Jade visiting Venice, Dubrovnik, Athens, Izmir and Split. I was very much tagging along on a family cruise with 10 other people - going on a cruise had never been on my radar and I had no idea how it worked! Initially, I was a bit perturbed by the cost, especially the compulsory daily service charge, but once on board I was really impressed with how many incredibly hard-working staff were looking after us all. The staff:passenger ratio is very high and they all do a great job of keeping the cabins/ship clean while being friendly and jolly. Definitely worth the cost. Do bear in mind while budgeting that there's an additional 15% charge on drinks (unless you have a soda package or similar) whether it's ordering a bottle of wine or a small bottle of water to take on an excursion.

Food: we tended to have breakfast and lunch in the Garden Cafe/Great Outdoors - pizza, hotdogs, burgers and salads particularly recommended. The breakfast in the Grand Pacific is lovely, cooked to order while enjoying great sea views. We had dinner in the Grand Pacific & Alizar several times - they have similar menus with alternating dishes. Very tasty, good wine at reasonable prices - a lack of variety may drive you to the other restaurants with cover charges, but if you have fairly varied tastes there will be enough different dishes to amuse you. Service in both restaurants is absolutely impeccable - very efficient and friendly.

We only tried one restaurant with a cover charge - Le Bistro. This may well have been an 'off' night but it was all very Fawlty Towers. The food - being largely quite unpleasant - wasn't a patch on the regular restaurants and the service was awful: 20 mins for wine to arrive then the waiter couldn't get the cork out. After wrestling with it for some time, he took it away somewhere then returned with a cork-less bottle (never reassuring when it's not opened in front of you!) and when we both reached the last glass it was full of cork. When we discussed it with the waiter, he fetched a manager from a different restaurant who offered us another glass of wine. So it seemed like everything was back on track but then the angry chef appeared to have a heated discussion with one of the waiters before pacing in between the tables of the restaurant bawling out someone on the phone about how there was no senior management in the restaurant and that it was supposed to be full. We regretted spending the extra $40 for the experience, although other members of our party went to Cagney's Steakhouse and thought it was fabulous. Read more