Norwegian Jade Review
Very good cruise with uneven speciality restaurants
Rating by category
Additional details
I chose this one as it had a bicycling island tour (Bike and Cruise was outstanding). There were several 'group dinners' at the speciality resturants, and my wife and I went to a couple fy ourselves. The French Bistro was by far the best we encountered. (And was with a group of 12 people). The service was outstanding. I was not drinking other than water - but drank a lot of that and it was constantly refilled. The food came quickly and was excellent - as good as I have had anywhere. Even with people having multiple soups, salads, entrees, and desert, everyone was finished (And very satisfied) in under two hours.
The next night we had the misfortune of going to the Italian resturant, which was quite different. It had less customers, I think. The service was very slow, and the food was at best average (The Garden Cafe on the 12th deck was much better). This was certainly not what I expected. The salad (Ceasar) was good, but went downhill from there. The entre was midiocre - chicken parmasan was dry and overcooked. The desert was sweet (Cream brulee) but had not real flavor. It took over 3 hours and no one was happy.
The Jasmine Cafe my wife and I went to by ourselves. Service was OK - not as good as the French Bistro and not nearly as bad as the Italian one. But they did not come around often enough and were slow when they did. Hot and sour soup was so poor neither of us finished it. They have chopsticks but are unusualbe as the rice was not sticky. We tried a beef dish and a pork one - but were overcooked and tasteless. We skipped desert instead going up to the Garden cafe and getting one from their.
Cabin Review
Mid-Ship Balcony
This was our first cruise. We found the cabin very comfortable - neither of us really cared for the small area the commode is in. At the sink you hit your shoulder on the towels - not a big deal but be aware they space is well utilized. The Shower was good - really liked the water pressure. Don't bother in buying bottled water - the water on this ship is excellent. The steward did an excellent job keeping everything straight and neat - I once left some clothes on the bed by accident and he made the bed and replaced what I had put there - totally unnecessary. We enjoyed the towel animals quite a bit, as silly as that sounds. And liked having immediate access to outside on the balcony, where we would often sit - and you could leave the door open.