This was our second cruise on the Navigator; we took the cruise to celebrate my husband's 40th birthday. The last cruise on the Navigator was 2 1/2 years ago and she has not aged one day. It is incredible to see how well maintained everything is. The ship was full (and more) and still everything was clean and well kept. The ship sailed from Barcelona, where we stayed for two days before and explored the city with the tourist bus (26 Euros for two days, well worth it as the bus takes you to all the major sites with commentary in quite a few languages). The tourist info at Sants Train station had told us about a shuttle bus from DRASSANES metro station, since we only had one trolley style suitcase between the two of us we decided to try it. You have to walk a couple of minutes as you get out of the metro station, cross the giant round-about at the Colon monument and wait for a blue bus at a bus shelter (just behind the red hut where you can buy tickets for the tourist bus and get tourist info). The shuttle trip costs 2 Euros, together with the metro ticket of 1,30 Euros, we had the cheapest embarkation ever. As we got off the bus porters were there to take our luggage, there were more than 20 check-in stations and no line. We were on the ship just minutes after getting off the bus. Not only the cheapest but also quickest embarkation ever. Interesting for European citizens : although the RCCL web-site said that you needed a passport, my husband wanted to try checking in with his ID card only - no problem. They never asked for a passport.

We had a promenade cabin, normal standard, everything clean and in good working order. The cabin attendant was fun, we did not spend a lot of time in the cabin.

The cruise was completely booked, half of the guests from Spain, with the guests from South America, this made more than half Spanish speaking. The ship was well prepared for this, most crew seemed so speak at least some Spanish. There was a welcome show in English and one in English and Spanish. The Love and Marriage Game show was separated by language (English in the Ixtapa Lounge, Spanish in the theater) but other than that we did not see anything radically different from a 'regular' or 'American' cruise. Well, yes, there was one big difference: this was the weekend when school holidays/vacation started so there were LOTS AND LOTS of kids on board WITHOUT the usual problems with kids on Caribbean cruises. The Spanish youngsters (including teens) were exceptionally well behaved. We never saw one drunken teen misbehaving. We do not have kids ourselves and I was not looking forward to cruising with hundreds of kids, but no problem at all. Read more