NCL Mediterranean Cruise- Travel Adventures

Hi Everyone,

So this June/July I went on a cruise with NCL along the Mediterranean with my family, and it was honestly the most wonderful and relaxing 2 weeks, which I really wanted to share with any of you fellow travel lovers out there, or anyone wanting to know what the cruise experience was like. I think I'll do what I did on this blog last time I travelled, which was to do a post per country- I try to make the posts a bit of a mixture of a journal type thing for me that I can read back on one day, but also not make it too personal, and give any people travelling there soon some tips of cool things we did or tried. 

Okay so let me start talking about the cruise itself first. We did it with Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) and were on a boat called Norwegian Spirit, and I absolutely loved every second of it! I must be honest, I had never had any aspiration to do a cruise before and it wasn't something I'd thought about, but it is such a cool and fun way to see a ton of places in a pretty short period of time. As you literally just have a day at each city, it kind of just gives you a little snapshot of what the place is like, and gave me an idea of which places I'd love to one day return to one day. I will say that the actual travelling (especially with 6 of us in my family) was quite hectic and activity-packed, and so there was nothing nicer than boarding the ship in the evening and having a swim or dip in the jacuzzi and then sitting on the deck with a drink in hand looking out at the endless sea before having a delicious dinner. There was also stacks to do on the boat- from shows, magicians, the casino and arcade, organised quizzes and gameshows, big boat parties, tons of bars and pubs, etc., you get the picture. Every night they lay out an itinerary of all the things happening on the boat the next day, and there is definitely something for everyone. I cannot even start to explain how much I loved the actual cruise aspect of this trip! Because it's like a once-off payment type thing, there's no fussing about payment once you've boarded, which of course means endless delicious food, snacks, drinks and activities. The main deck has a big pool and lots of jacuzzis with deck chairs everywhere in sight to soak up the European summer sun. There are a lot of lovely places with great views dotted all over the ship ideal for a good drink at sunset and up to 10 different restaurants and cafes to pick from to dine at. The food was pretty excellent and the staff were all so friendly and helpful! My family took full advantage of all the organised games and shows happening, and the various plays and musicals in the theatre were also really cool. 

So our cruise was a 12 day one, which was for me, the perfect amount of time. We also had 2 "sea days" of travelling where we didn't stop off anywhere, which I actually loved as well because it gave you a day to relax a bit and to take full advantage of all the fun things there are to do on the ship. We started in Barcelona and from there went to Toulon, Florence, Rome and Naples. We then had a sea day before heading down to Greece, where we visited Mykonos and Athens. We then went up the Adriatic side of the sea and stopped off at Kotor, Montenegro and Dubrovnik before ending off the cruise in Venice. It was really a wonderful experience and I would highly recommend it to anyone umming and ahh-ing about doing a cruise!