My best friend, her husband and me and my husband started planning this European cruise well over a year and a half ago. We decided to arrive in Barcelona two days before our cruise was to depart and stay at the Hotel Advance in the heart of Barcelona.I am so glad we did! We had an amazing two days in that beautiful city. Our flight arrived in Barcelona at 7:55 AM, so needless to say we were exhausted! We went straight to the hotel and they checked us in immediately and said they would get our room ready ASAP all the while speaking perfect English! Our hotel was in a perfect location and we could easily walk to everything. On embarkation day, we arrived at the port around 2:00. Our luggage was promptly taken once tagged, and the line to check in was not too long, maybe 25 minutes. We then stopped at the port stores to pick up bottled water and alcohol (saves A LOT of money!) Our luggage was at our cabin door and our cabin was ready by the time we took a very quick tour around the ship. The ship was clean and the service staff was very friendly. We had a balcony room and it had a lot more room that I thought it would. It was plenty of room for me and my 6 ft 3 husband. The toilet quarters were a bit tight, but you are on a boat not in a hotel room! A couple of servers even made it a point to learn and call us by name when they saw us throughout the cruise. Our cabin stewards removed the balcony wall between my friend's room and ours so we had a larger balcony and could enjoy the view together. We did go to a couple shows on the boat, one a comedy show and one a knockoff Vegas show. They were okay, but I wasn't terribly impressed. The food was excellent in the restaurants where you had to pay a cover, they had plenty of food and choices and were of excellent quality! In the other restaurants the food was more than adequate. We visited every restaurant except for the one where they cook in front of you. Overall we were pleased with the food. We did not do any shore excursions through NCL. We had two amazing outside tours though. We did a Florence and Tuscan Wine tour with Guido. The lover of all wine! He took a us to two wineries and an small authentic Italian restaurant that was the best meal we had the entire trip! Our tour in Rome was fantastic! We went through a company call Miles n Miles. It is family owned company and the son took us around Rome and the mother gave us a tour of the Vatican. There were 8 of us in our group and it was an amazing day! On word of warning on the Naples excursion: IT IS A DIRTY CITY! Piles of trash everywhere, filthy filthy filthy. I wish I had never seen it. It kind of tarnished my view of Italy :( We took a tour to Pompeii from Naples and the tour of the ruins was very informative, we were supposed to climb Mt. Vesuvius as well ,but they were on strike and would not let us pass. Monaco and Palma were both beautiful and we walked around them on our own. Disembarkation was a breeze, we just walked off the boat at our leisure. I would highly recommend this cruise. It was an experience of a lifetime and I can't wait to return to Europe!