wOw! We are still glowing from our 1st cruise! We couldn't have picked a better ship! So lucky to be on the brand new Norwegian GEM! We live in NYC so leaving from NYC was a breeze. I'm a 32 yr old latina & my husband is 32 yr old chinese guy. No kids !

Actually, now that I remember it, it wasn't a true breeze getting to the ship. We were up all nite & morning packing. We brought 3 big luggage bags between the both of us, we each had 1 bookbag (laptop included), a suit garment bag, and i was carrying a duffel bag. It was kind of hard to schlep that around. We easily got a taxi from our apartment building but once we got to 54th street, the cab said all we had to do was cross the street. He was supposed to turn around and drive up towards the boat. Instead, he left us at 54th street on the opposite side of 12th ave (west side highway) and we schlepped across the highway, and we walked about 5 LONG blocks to the ship. My neck was so stiff from that and the stupid garment bag kept annoying us. But our excitement to get onboard was surpassing any of these small annoyances.

Getting onboard was a breeze. Apparently, we were Latitude members ?! I had no clue I was one ... I thought it was only for past cruisers ?! Once we handed 3 of our luggage bags to the crew and when we got inside the terminal (around 2:45pm) it looked like there was a long line to get into the boat ... but we were directed to the shorter Latitudes line and got onboard easily. We were stopped to take a picture of us getting on board and I tried very hard to look more awake ! Read more