We sailed from Barcelona, and a fantastic start, blue skies and champagne awaiting us, we got Easyjet flights and were at the ship by 1pm, very easy check in. We have previously sailed on The Jade, but The Gem although much the same, had a few more luxuries, like the Bowling Alley - which we called The Bling - it was so velvety and extreme and the Rock climbing wall also the loungers on the Gem were superb, lovely cushion ones around the pool (if you could get them, but if you kept any eye out one or two normally became available throughout the day)Also the brilliant huge round sunbeds on the upperdecks which anyone can use. My kids loved the slide. The food was brilliant, our favourite was The Grand Pacific, whereby all the staff sang Happy Birthday and presented him with a cake in the evening, the staff go above and beyond to make your stay a good one and the cabin girls who looked after us on Deck 5 were so so lovely, lovely animal shapes out of towels to greet us in the evenings and a lovely power shower, the beds you just want to bring home with you they are so comfortable. The Spinaker lounge top floor of ship was perfect for pre-dinner drinks as you have a brilliant view of the ocean and the popcorn handed out to kids went down well. We did soda passes for the kids which again they loved the independence of going to the pool bar to order their drinks. You feel very very safe on the ship too. The sailaway BBQ was great and the general party atmosphere, it would have been nice to have a couple of more days at sea, but the itinerary was very well planned by NCL and they even managed to dock at Villafranche when it was very windy, the next day another cruise liner got told the port was closed. We did all our own trips and thoroughly enjoyed all or stops. This trip is very affordable if you do your own flights and lets you experience some luxuries which certainly would not be on offer if you paid that money for a hotel in Europe. The only thing I could fault is that it did not sail from the UK and there were a lot of Med people on the ship, hence our children could not make as many friends as they normally do and the staff were having a job controlling some of the "rowdy" kids in the pool they did manage though I just felt sorry for them when the parents could not understand why the kids were being told off. Like I said superb choice, fantastic bars/dining/pool/sunbeds/views/staff, would definately like to sail with them again as a family of 5 the Freestyle dining at whatever o'clock and having our own tables suited us and was wonderfully relaxing. If you are umming and arring book it now, before they sell out, the only other thing is they do not do a cabin for 5, we would have to have a suite which is way over our budget. we managed this time by having 2 cabins with interconnecting doors.