Substandard??? No!!!!!

When cruising the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean, Mark would never consider cruising with Norwegian Cruise Lines. He was convinced that we'd be fed nothing but cold fish and that the staterooms would be very austere.

I'd cruised on Norwegian once before Mark and I were married, and while I could vouch for the food being okay, I had to admit that the stateroom consisted of a very tiny space with bunk beds. Austere. But also a long time ago.

But the cruise we wanted, the one that leaves from Honolulu and cruises around the islands for the week and returns to Honolulu, is operated by Norwegian. Only Norwegian. You can cruise with Princess and a couple of the others but you're leaving from Vancouver, or Los Angeles, or some other city on the west coast. Then you're spending three or four days getting to the islands, stopping at a couple of ports and then heading back. We thought we'd rather spend more time seeing the islands than "at sea". Norwegian was the only option.

I was also told that the food and service on this particular cruise was substandard. Reason being that it was run "by Americans". I heard this from several people. But truthfully, I had a hard time with that comment. Still do. Substandard service because it's run by Americans??? Where do you go for better service than you get in America? Certainly not Great Britain. Certainly not France. Where do you go to get better food than what you get in America? Again, not Great Britain and not France - not even Italy serves food that's better than what's available here in the US. We were pretty sure the food and service would be absolutely fine.

And it was. Fine. All fine. The food was fine. The service was fine. The stateroom was fine - not austere - it was actually well-appointed and comfortable.

I highly recommend this cruise. You get a taste of four different islands without having to spend time packing and unpacking and fooling around with TSA agents in airports.  And there's really nothing substandard about it.