Overall, I gotta tell ya, this was a great cruise experience. The incredible crew, delicious foods and wonderful entertainment. We are both retired, in our 60s, excellent health and have many years of international travel experience. We booked this cruise at the very last minute to celebrate my birthday and to get away for the Christmas holiday as we'd done last year. Having cruised once before with Norwegian on the Baltic Sea and another time with a different cruise line on the Aegean Sea was the limit of our cruising experience.

We arrived at Miami International on a morning flight out of JFK. Retrieving our luggage was fairly simple and right there was the Norwegian representative with whom we had made transportation arrangements to the ship. $16 per person was well worth the 10 mile or so ride to the pier for embarkation. Our bags with the tags attached indicating our cabin number were swiftly taken and we got on the end of a quickly growing line in the broiling sun. In short order, we were inside the terminal headed towards the check-in counter. No problem with that and in what seemed like fifteen minutes or so, we had already dropped off our carry-on in our cabin and were seated up in the Garden Café on Deck 12 having lunch! At 4:00pm presicely, it was anchors away.

We had a forward cabin on Deck 8 (balcony) on the port side. You do feel the sea a bit more in forward cabins, but neither of us minded. A few of the sea days were rough, too. Our room steward introduced himself to us and was very nice, polite and accessible during the entire cruise. I must say, though, that I did have to ask for the nice bar soap I liked on more than one occasion, it appeared that the sheets and pillowcases had not been changed during the entire cruise and that everything in the room was covered with a layer of dust that I had to clean off with the Lysol wipes I had thought to bring along. Also, the balcony floor had the toenail clippings of the previous tenant waiting there to greet us and there was what appeared to be the remains of cheese on the little table. There was only one balcony chair and it was not until day four that we got the second one after I'd asked nicely many times. The balcony is only 30 sq ft and not someplace you'd hang out for very long. The real perk was being to open the sliding door to change the stale air. Read more