Giving the Gem some love live Sept 19th sailing

[saltsandknit]

We will be sailing tomorrow on the Gem. I am so excited to cruise again it feels like early Christmas. I have had some requests to post food of the Vegetarian options and we have the premium plus beverage package so there will be upgraded drink posts and regular drink posts as well. I will try to post daily depending on the quality of the internet. If you have questions let me know!

[saltsandknit]

I want to start off with how we got to this cruise. We like most here had several cruises canceled. A Panama Canal cruise, rebooked for Feb, a Greek Isles cruise that is now a Mexican Rivera cruise in Dec and a Bermuda Cruise that is now this sailing on the Gem. But wait there is more !   The Bermuda cruise was canceled so we booked the Gem sailing from the Dominican Republic that cruise was canceled, so, we booked the Sun and that ultimately moved to the Gem. Here we are full circle.

 

About us we are Sonya and John, late 50's empty nesters that love to cruise. We are mostly vegetarian but will eat a bit of seafood when traveling but stick to a Whole food plant based diet as much as possible. We both work and have pretty busy lives, cruising being the best way to totally relax. We love to dance and spend most nights dancing and listening to the bands. We are pretty chill and just happy to be wherever the water takes us. We live in the dessert so the ocean and beaches are always a welcome treat.

 

We fly out late tonight around midnight and will be in Florida around 10:30 tomorrow. I hope to post lots of pictures and all the happenings around the ship.

Edited September 18, 2021 by saltsandknit

[rbalfour]

Looking forward to your review as I'll be boarding next week as you get off. Have a great time.

 

[Sand and Seas]

The Gem is a great ship!  Hope you have a wonderful time😎

[janpa70]

Can't wait to read your review also. Will be on the Gem in late October. Have a safe trip and a wonderful cruise.

[DCGuy64]

Thanks for your post! We’re on the sailing tomorrow with you, and had the same experience with booking the Gem-Sky-Gem. My wife is a vegetarian but I’m an omnivore, I especially love steaks, chicken and pork. I’m not a huge fan of seafood but will eat some dishes like lobster, scallops, shrimp and certain fish. Really excited about tomorrow’s cruise! Our flight leaves DCA at 6 am, *yawn* 

[luvcruzing]

I’ll be following along.  Thank you for doing this.

[Denise T]

Can't wait for the reviews. Thank you!

[bookbabe]

Please let us know how GSC looks after 18 months of no visitors.  Any changes?  Take lots of pics please!

[saltsandknit]

We are waiting for our connecting flight in JFK. It has been an easy trip so far, other than long. We should be in FLL around 10:30 and hopefully on the ship by 1. 
Here is a photo of our happy luggage 😄

[rmandmm]

Love that happy luggage! Following along!

[kdmbluerzr]

Following.  Have a wonderful trip!  🙂 

 

[saltsandknit]

Gem day one

Embarkation day was a long long day. 

We flew out of Salt Lake City at 11.50 pm Saturday with a very brief layover in NYC and landed in Fort Lauderdale around 10:40. We missed the first shuttle by just a few minutes the next shuttle was 30 minutes out. We chatted with another couple and had a great conversation about cruising. We arrived at the port I. Miami shortly after 1. The line for testing was quite long and took a little over an hour. The testing itself was very easy and we were done in 20 minutes

 

Check I. Took 10 minutes. We won an upgrade to an Aft penthouse suite our Butler was waiting for us and escorted us to muster and then to our cabin. But that time it was shortly after 3. We hustled to the buffet for a quick meal before the closed to get ready for dinner. 

There were some great vegetarian options in the buffet, I will update that in another post. We explored the ship briefly then went back to the cabin to unpack and get ready for dinner. 

We had dinner in the dining room, the vegetarian option was a veggie burrito it was quite tasty and pared it with the Greek salad. 

Dessert I chose the salted caramel and chocolate tart. Delicious but rich. 

We have the premium plus package we had a nice Cabernet with dinner 

 

That’s all we did. We are both too tired and we’re in bed by 7:30. We usually fly in the day before to avoid days like this but we had work obligations that made it impossible this time. 

[saltsandknit]

Gem day 2

 

We are in Nassau today. We are here for a very short time and we have been here many times so we are staying on the ship to explore and make up for missing out yesterday.  I was up very early around 4, John slept until 5 we are very early people. 

 

We had breakfast at Moderno. It was very nice I had fruit and yogurt, an almond croissant, French pressed coffee and avocado toast. John had French toast. 

It was raining when we came into port but it’s nice sunny and hot now   Sail away is at 3. The ship is not very full which makes it very nice. 

[TSUmom]

Looking forward to more and thank you for taking the time to do this!!

[janpa70]

Love the review so far. Which terminal did you sail out of? I heard NCL is going to be using the old terminal and the new one.

[Snowrose]

We sail on Gem in January. Would really appreciate pics of the Main Dining Room menus. And if you could find out which bar specializes in craft beers my DH would be eternally grateful.

 

Have a wonderful trip!

[TSUmom]

Did you have a suite check in and waiting area?

Edited September 21, 2021 by TSUmom

[saltsandknit]

17 hours ago, janpa70 said:

Love the review so far. Which terminal did you sail out of? I heard NCL is going to be using the old terminal and the new one.

We were in the new terminal it’s very nice but we didn’t get to see much because we were late getting on the ship we were hurried right through check in and onto the ship

[saltsandknit]

16 hours ago, Snowrose said:

We sail on Gem in January. Would really appreciate pics of the Main Dining Room menus. And if you could find out which bar specializes in craft beers my DH would be eternally grateful.

 

Have a wonderful trip!

I will find out about the craft beer bars. I do wish there was a district brew house on the smaller ships. I know the menus were posted in an encore thread for the main dining rooms they are the same menus on the Gem. 

[saltsandknit]

9 hours ago, TSUmom said:

Did you have a suite check in and waiting area?

Yes but we didn’t make it to the waiting area we were the last of the suite guests so the butler was waiting for us at the check in and escorted us directly to our room. 

[Snowrose]

4 minutes ago, saltsandknit said:

I will find out about the craft beer bars. I do wish there was a district brew house on the smaller ships. I know the menus were posted in an encore thread for the main dining rooms they are the same menus on the Gem. 

 

Hi! I appreciate you checking on the bars. My DH also wishes there was a District Brew House. 😊

 

With the MDR menus, I've already seen the menus from that post but that cruise was only 7 days long. Our January cruise will be 10 days and there are 14 menus total, so I was hoping to see if they were using different menus from the ones that have already been posted.

[saltsandknit]

Day 2 continues 

we spent most of the morning and  early afternoon exploring the ship and spending time at the pool. There are around 1200 guests on the ship and I haven’t seen any children. The pool deck was wide open and so were the hot tubs. There are no lines and service has been fantastic. We have had great conversations with crew, all of them have been so happy to be back it has been so nice. 
we ate lunch in Cagneys but there are no vegetarian options we were able to get a veggie burger and it was good but there were no condiments for it. We will eat lunch in the dining room the rest of the week. 
Dinner was in La Cuchina it was good but I ate too much. We had a very good bottle of Chardonnay with dinner

[saltsandknit]

After dinner we stopped at the martini bar. I got an espresso martini that was very good. John got a chocolate martini it was good but too sweet

we moved to the champagne bar for a glass of veuve and headed to the show Swing. It was pretty good but I would skip it if we sail the Gem again. 
there was a dance party at the pool late in the evening it was fun but ended a bit early due to rain, we spent the rest of the night listening to the pianist. He was very entertaining 

[saltsandknit]

14 minutes ago, Snowrose said:

 

Hi! I appreciate you checking on the bars. My DH also wishes there was a District Brew House. 😊

 

With the MDR menus, I've already seen the menus from that post but that cruise was only 7 days long. Our January cruise will be 10 days and there are 14 menus total, so I was hoping to see if they were using different menus from the ones that have already been posted.

I haven’t seen anything different but this is a 7 day cruise it’s the same menu that we usually get.