Our cruise started late last fall looking for a cruise to the Greek islands. This cruise jumped out at my wife and me because of the ports we would be visiting. Barcelona, Rome, Athens, Ephesus, Egypt, and Malta, all packed into a single 12 day cruise! And to be honest with you, the price was right last fall; especially for Americans traveling to Europe. With the US dollar being so weak against the Euro we would have had to spend thousands of dollars more to have the same kind of vacation. We booked the cruise and then found Cruise Critic and began doing some in-depth research about the Jade and the ports we would be visiting.

Embarkation / Debarkation: Compared to the zoo at the Port of Long Beach or Seattle the pleasant folks of Barcelona made the experience a pleasure. I asked the check-in folks if they worked for NCL and they said they were port employees. You can tell the Port of Barcelona really wanted to keep the many cruise lines sailing from there. Please note we were approximately 2,600 passengers getting on a ship for which full capacity is 2,400. In less than an hour we were processed through, sent up to the Garden Cafe for a light snack and then invited to go to our staterooms. Our bags were waiting when we got to the stateroom. Amazing! Check out was also very easy. Remember you can carry your bags on and off if you have early flights. We got the earliest tags for ours and they were off on the first debarkation notice. Upon arrival to our cabin we were greeted by our cabin stewards, two delightful Filipinos. My wife, a veteran cruiser tipped them $20.00 each to grease the skids, so to speak and we were treated like royalty for the duration of our stay. We tipped them a similar amount on the last day even though NCL says some of the $12 per day gratuity goes to them (the boys told us less than 1% for them).

Dining: Due to sailing with NCL last October to the Mexican Riviera and the Cruise Critic reviews we really knew what to expect from NCL and its' "Freestyle Cruising". The whole idea appealed to us, mainly because of the dining arrangements. On other cruise lines we experienced cattle-call dining with your choice of two scheduled dinner seating's. This situation always reminded me of huge wedding receptions, lots of waiters bringing lots of food out from the kitchen all at the same time. And every piece of food was prepared hours before and waiting in hot boxes. Every dish was well done, you know, steam table done. On the Jade we were very pleasantly surprised by ordering steaks medium or rare and actually getting them as ordered. All of the entries were well prepared and cooked to order. I know others have complained about the portion size but we regularly ordered more than one appetizer, salad and soup and never got a comment from any of the wait staff. Sometimes the appetizers and desserts looked so good we skipped the entrees altogether and had a Tapas sort of dinner sharing with all of our table mates. If you didn't like one of the items ordered just order something else, no problem. The only comment I would have to NCL is the quality of some of the food is less than "prime" if you know what I mean, especially the lobster, but I think that is pretty much the same on all cruise lines. Our favorite dining room was the nicely decorated Grand Pacific, but also enjoyed the Garden Cafe on 12 deck. The daily selection was outstanding and the food buffet islands worked better than expected considering the numbers of passengers it served. This cruise was overbooked, so the buffet was jammed at the peak times; just go early or late; avoid going when the busses come back from the tours. One problem they will have to work out is the seating was limited in comparison to the number of guests and sometimes by the time we found a table our food was cold. By the way, we tried The Jasmine Garden Chinese restaurant on two-for-one night, normally $15. extra per person and we found the portions to be a bit larger and the food to be very good. I had a Sushi dinner for the extra $15. I was surprised and pleased with the quality of the fish. Read more