Norwegian Gem Review

4.0 / 5.0
2,589 reviews

A Gem of an Adventure June 14-21, 2009

Review for the Western Mediterranean Cruise on Norwegian Gem
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kingpgmr
First Time Cruiser • Age 20s

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Additional details

Sail Date: Jun 2009
Cabin: Mid-Ship Balcony
Traveled with children

Pre-cruise - Saturday, 6/13 Barcelona 

Just for some background, this was my sixth cruise, my wife's fourth cruise and my step kids (daughter age 13 and son age 17) second cruise.   I have previously cruised on Carnival and Royal Caribbean and have found them to be comparable in quality.   This would be our first time on Norwegian Cruise Lines so I was eager to try out freestyle cruising.

We left on Friday, June 12 for the journey to Barcelona. We flew from Dallas (DFW) to Barcelona with a layover in New York (JFK airport) for 3 hours on American Airlines and the flights went off without a hitch and were on time.  It was sunny and warm upon our arrival in Barcelona and we were all pretty tired (I did manage to doze for about three hours on the flight but the leg room on our 767 from JFK to Barcelona was cramped at best so it was hard to get any true sleep).   We breezed through customs and proceeded to baggage claim (which was extremely overcrowded as there was only one carousel operating to handle multiple flights luggage).   As the luggage came out, people began to crowd and bump me, so it wasn't too pleasant but we manage to retrieve all of our luggage.   We got a taxi (no problems at all finding one although we had to try about three different taxis to find one large enough to fit our four large pieces of luggage in the trunk) and headed to Hotel Regina which is at the top of Las Ramblas in an ideal location.   I had printed out the name and location of the hotel, so I just showed that to the driver and he found it with no problems (the Barcelona taxi drivers seem to speak little to no English).

Cabin Review

Mid-Ship Balcony

Cabin BA
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