My wife and I are relatively experienced cruisers, having cruised previously on Royal Caribbean, Princess, and Carnival. This was our first Norwegian Cruise. We wanted to sail out of Barcelona and visiting Florence, Italy was important, so we chose between the Epic sailing from Barcelona or the Adventure of the Seas out of Valencia. We chose Norwegian because we had never been on this line.
The Ship:
Ship was new and very clean. Decor was much nicer than the Carnival ship (Pride) that we had been on, which was tacky/Vegas-style. Although the decor is quite nice, we didn't feel the quality of the furnishings was up to Princess or Royal Caribbean standards. We generally feel that Royal has the nicest ships afloat. On Princess or Royal, if you see wood it's real. On the Epic the wood was fake on pillars, for example. We didn't see the variety of art that we would see on a Royal Caribbean ship, but it still was tasteful.