Hi everyone - this is my first time review from my cruise on NCL's Gem, so please be patient if I waffle on a bit. Belive me there is a lot to say on this beautiful ship.

However, as seems customary, I will start with the pre-cruise bits. I flew into Barcelona from Liverpool in the UK (I live about an hour or so from Liverpool airport in the North West of England) which took roughly 2 hours on Sunday 21st October. We had arranged transfers to the ship with NCL, which, whilst there was a bit of waiting, were pretty much OK. We were dropped right outside the terminal at roughly 12:30 in the afternoon, and the embarkation process was smooth, and we were onboard the ship with a drink in hand by 1PM.

OK, the ship. I have sailed with NCL before on Norwegian Spirit, which whilst I enjoyed, found certain things lacking. Sailing onboard Gem has restored my faith in NCL, and then some. From the minute myself and my girlfriend walked onboard, we were simply blown away. The decor may not be to everyones taste, as there are a lot of bright colors - blues, yellows, greens, turquoise, purples seem to be in the ascendency, however, I thought it worked extremely well. Read more