This trip was my husband and I's very delayed honeymoon. It took us 2 years but we finally saved up enough to do this cruise with a Balcony and couldn't wait. We both have extremely high stress jobs with not a long life expectancy after the age of 56, so we try and take measures to increase our life expectancy when we retire. I booked everything except my flights through Norwegian. We stayed in Rome for 2 days at a hotel that Norwegian booked. We booked our transfers through them, I was told I didn't have to worry about anything except my flights. I read all of my paperwork, and then re-read it the day before we left. I noticed that when it said hotel shuttle from the airport I would receive more information about it. I never received any information about the airport shuttle. When I called Norwegian they told me that I had to talk to the hotel, they had nothing to do with it. When I called the hotel they told me there was no shuttle. So we took a taxi, that cost $180 Euros (we are American). When we get to the hotel we see that there was a shuttle from the airport that was $15 per person, but you had to call within 24 hours ahead to schedule it. Norwegian never informed us of this. Another couple we talked to said they booked everything through Norwegian and their point of contact scheduled their shuttle for them. I contacted Norwegian about this, received an email stating they will be in touch with me and still hasn't been in touch with me.

Embarkation and disembarkation went smooth and might be one of the fastest experiences I have had on a cruise line. The ship was old, small and not a lot to do. We went on a shore excursion with every port. The ports were amazing, and we enjoyed all of the shore excursions except in Olympia. We decided to splurge and do Ultimate Olympia. It was $229 a person for a 6 hour tour that included a meal. There was another similar excursion called Best of Olympia which was $139 a person, was 5 hours long and included a snack. My husband has always wanted to go to Olympia so we decided to go big there. Ultimate Olympia is exactly the same as Best of Olympia. We left the port after one of the Best of Olympia groups, our tour guide left without a person so when we got to Olympia ruins we had to wait for that bus to show up. After 45 minutes of waiting around not doing a thing we finally were able to meet up with the other person and get her set up with everything. The ruins was CROWDED with tons of tours, a lot of them being from the ship so we experienced the ruins with Best of Olympia. We were at the museum with the groups in Best of Olympia. We left the ruins before other groups did to go to the restaurant. We had the same meal as Best of Olympia and then we left before they did and got back to our boat before the other groups. We did not have an extra hour anywhere and we received the same meal, but we paid $90 more per person. I went and complained to the Shore Excursion individuals and they told me they will tell the manager and he will get back to me. Never did.

The restaurants took a minimum of 1.5 hours to eat. I think out of the 11 days we had maybe 2 meals that were under 1.5 hours. The buffet area was terrible food. All of it tasted old and was barely warm. We complained about how long everything was taking and how they always overcooked our meals, except for the steakhouse and we received amazing service the next night. We were offered a free bottle of wine, that we had to use right then and there and at the time my husband and I weren't in the mood for wine and didn't want to waste a bottle. They never offered it to us again. That was it. Their specialty steakhouse has amazing food. We ate there 3 times. 2 of those times the meal took 2 hours. Read more