My boyfriend and I returned yesterday from our very first cruise. We are both in our early 30s, and it was also our first vacation together. We took the Norwegian Star from New York to Bermuda on a seven day cruise. I miss it already. :( I was going to try to break down the cruise day by day, but there's just no way I'll remember when we did everything. Instead, I'll break it down by category and try to go fairly chronologically.

Embarkation - It was very easy to get on the ship. We took the train from northwestern NJ to Penn Station in NY, then took a taxi to the pier. After I almost left my carry on bag in the taxi (oops!), we proceeded to hand our luggage over to the attendants. We then took the elevator upstairs to check in. I would say we were in line for only about 15 minutes. We checked in, and they took a picture of us and gave us our keycards for the ship. Then it was right on to the ship where the staff members were waiting with music and smiles!! We walked around the ship for about a half hour until it was announced that the rooms on our deck (deck 8) were ready. We then went to our room and checked it out. Our luggage got delivered to the room within the next hour or so.

Room: We booked an obstructed oceanview room, which means that while there are 2 windows in the room, there is a lifeboat in front of them. We didn't want to spend the money on a balcony, as we figured we wouldn't be spending much time in the room anyway. The windows were nice because we could get some sunlight in. Additionally, we could see straight through the lifeboat on my boyfriend's side of the bed. The room itself is pretty tiny, but it works with 2 people. I couldn't imagine being in there with 3 people. There were two twin beds pushed together with one set of sheets and a duvet, but you couldn't really tell that it was 2 separate beds. I only knew from reading all about the rooms online. There was also another bed that you could pull down from the wall to form sort of a bunk bed above our bed. There was plenty of storage space in the room - a closet with 4 shelves inside, 6 drawers, a vanity, and another table. After reading all of the message boards on Cruise Critic, I brought an over-the-door shoe organizer, which I placed over the outside of the bathroom door. Super handy. I put all of the little things in there like sunscreen, our sunglasses, my little wristlets, etc. I don't like clutter, so it was nice to have a place to put everything. I had also brought a hanging cosmetic organizer which I hung on one of the hooks in the room. We (well, I) kept the room very organized, so I never felt like we were cramped. The bathroom was also very tiny, but it works. There was a sliding door between the toilet and the rest of the bathroom. The shower was fine, and there was a bit of storage space above the sink where we placed our toothbrushes and such. There was also a clothesline in the shower where you could hang wet clothes. Read more