teens

STANDING on the deck with an Aperol spritz in hand and watching the beautiful Sicilian city of Messina fade into the distance, I feel like I am living the dream.

And indeed we pretty much have been since me, my husband Alistair and our 15-year-old twins Riley and Harris set off from the port of Barcelona on a seven-night Mediterranean cruise.

As first-time cruisers, from the moment we step on to NCL’s 2,100-room, 18-deck Norwegian Epic – which underwent a massive refurb last year – it is brilliant fun.

Having checked on to the ship, we head to deck 15, with its two pools and three waterslides, to wait for our luggage to be delivered to our balcony state cabins.

Here, we take a peek at our fellow passengers – an eclectic mix of young and old from America, Canada, the UK and everywhere in between – as we settle on sunloungers with drinks and enjoy the live music, while waiting to depart.

Leaving Barcelona, we pass another ship and everyone cheers and waves to our fellow cruisers.

WAIL OF A TIME

I drove Irish Route 66 with deserted golden beaches and pirate-like islands

TEMPTED?

Tiny ‘Bali of Europe’ town with stunning beaches, €3 cocktails and £20 flights

The party atmosphere makes for the most lovely holiday vibe.

All decked out

With so much to do on the ship, you could never be bored.

There are 16 restaurants, including brilliant inclusive eateries such as the buffet Garden Cafe and the waiter-serviced Manhattan Room and Spice restaurants, plus seven speciality options, which we can dine at as part of our free-at-sea package.

For our first night we opt for Shanghai’s Noodle Bar, which we talk about for days afterwards.

There, we tuck into starters including sushi and spare ribs before mains of black pepper beef with broccoli, melt-in-the-mouth snapper, chicken and prawn chow mein, and egg fried rice, all washed down with sake for me and Alistair.

Our cabins have super-comfy twin beds pulled together into doubles, a sofa, shower and toilet, as well as tonnes of storage space and a TV.

We barely feel the boat move as we fall into a deep sleep, waking the next day in Marseille, where we decide to spend our first full day exploring the ship’s decks from top to bottom, taking advantage of enjoying the attractions while most guests are on shore.

Riley and Harris are delighted to find a Starbucks, while I love the serene Mandara Spa with its 50 different treatments, and we all gasp at the huge gym.

There is also teenage club Entourage, as well as Epic Theatre, where evening shows take place.

We particularly enjoy Red, White & British – a show of covers from Brit artists through the decades.

Plus, there’s a video arcade centre and a huge casino, as well as countless bars.

Exploring done, we head to the pool to test the water slides, including the 200ft bowl slide.

Excursions – which start from £37 per person – can be booked via the NCL app pre-departure or on board, and save you having to find your own way around new destinations.

However, our second stop is Villefranche-sur-Mer, a pastel-coloured coastal town where the shingle beach is just a stroll from where we disembark the ship’s tender, making a beach day a no-brainer.

Afterwards, we hit the town’s cobbled backstreets and pretty shops, marvelling at the handmade jewellery in Jour De Plage and eclectic clothes in cute Le Shopping De Nat on Rue de l’Église.

The station, with regular trains to nearby Nice and Monaco, is a stone’s throw away though, and many of our fellow cruisers set off to explore those cities instead.

Pisa The Action

That evening, we try Cagney’s Steakhouse, where we feast on jumbo shrimp cocktail or lobster bisque, followed by ribeye and fillet steaks served with a choice of sides – we love the parmesan truffle fries.

For dessert, the seven-layer chocolate cake is divine.

Our first excursion of the week is the following day when we arrive at Italy’s Livorno and take a coach to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa in all its glory.

Close by, we happen upon amazing pizzeria Santa Maria, where an extra-large pepperoni pizza costs £16.50 and feeds Alistair, Harris and me, while Riley plumps for a focaccia sandwich with mozzarella, £7 (Ristorantesantamaria.com).

The day ends with a trip to the historic seaside town of Viarregio, where we cool off with a dip in the crystal-clear water.

Opting to go it alone in Messina – as the port is located right in the city – we pop into the stunning Messina Cathedral, home to the world’s biggest, most complex astronomical clock, which stands 60m tall inside its bell tower.

Feeling suitably cultured, we then grab a taxi to Capo Peloro, a beautiful beach on Sicily’s north-eastern tip, where the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas meet.

Just Our Vibe

Back on the ship, both teens decide to chill in their rooms, so Alistair and I grab the opportunity to head to Vibe Club, an oasis of adults-only calm on the 18th deck with four-poster sunbeds and a hot tub, where we sip cocktails as we say our goodbyes to Messina.

Dinner that night at the Teppanyaki is our stand-out meal of the week.

We feast like kings on miso soup and seaweed salad, and marvel as the chefs sing songs, catch eggs for the fried rice in their hats and cook up a storm.

My steak-and-prawn combo is delicious, as is the sake-based wasabi cocktail I wash it down with.

We finish the night at our favourite bar, Shaker’s Martini Bar, where I’ve developed a taste for the Dirty Martinis, and my whole gang love their nightly live music.

Our last full day cruising is spent on the stunning Amalfi Coast, where our excursion takes us past Mount Vesuvius and to the Phlegraean Peninsula, so we can snorkel above the Roman resort of Baia, with its marvellous mosaics that now lie submerged up to 13 metres below the sea, before relaxing on the golden sands.

It’s an Italian bank holiday, and at the nearby beach club dozens are drinking prosecco, eating whitebait cooked in a huge metal vat of oil and dancing to their hearts’ content.

This couldn’t be a more fitting end to our cruise – pulling up in the port of Civitavecchia, near Rome, the next morning, we’ve laughed, danced, eaten, drunk and experienced some of the most beautiful places in the world.

At least 81 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since the start of the year, according to the UN’s figures. At least 23 of those deaths have occurred in the context of settler attacks.

Three Israelis, both security forces and civilians, have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank over the same period, the UN says.

The Israeli military has faced mounting criticism for actively participating in settler attacks on Palestinians, standing by, or failing to prosecute those responsible.

On Thursday, Israel’s police force said a 19-year-old settler had been arrested on suspicion of participating in an attack on the Palestinian village of Qusra on Saturday. It marks the first such arrest in weeks of attacks on Qusra.

Dozens of masked settlers descended on the village, surrounding a house while Palestinians were trapped inside, and throwing stones.

Israeli soldiers who were deployed to the scene reportedly detained the trapped Palestinians but not the settlers, allowing them to leave. The Israeli military said troops removed “rioters” and protected residents.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a future state – during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

The settlements are illegal under international law.

In a separate development on Wednesday, Israeli forces demolished the Palestinian village of Khirbet al-Tabban, in the Masafer Yatta area.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the village’s 70 residents, including 28 children, were given no warning prior to the demolition and were not allowed to remove their property.

It described the demolition as the most significant in Masafer Yatta since May 2025.

In the 1980s, the Israeli military declared about 3,000 hectares in the South Hebron Hills, which includes Masafer Yatta, as a restricted firing zone for training purposes.

The military says the Palestinian homes there have been built illegally.

In 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled to allow the demolition of homes in the firing zone and the expulsion of their residents, who had argued that such a move violated international law and that their families had been living there since before the State of Israel was established.

B’Tselem says Khirbet al-Tabban is the 66th Palestinian community to be expelled by Israeli authorities since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, which it alleges is part of a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” being carried out in the West Bank.

Meta, parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is on trial over claims it sought to hook young users on its platforms despite mental health concerns.

The top executive at Instagram has admitted that few teenagers have used a feature meant to counter addiction before it was turned on by default, as hearings in a landmark trial against its parent company, Meta, continue in the United States.

Adam Mosseri testified on Tuesday as Meta’s trial – over accusations that it designed its platforms, including Facebook, to be addictive to young people – entered its second week.

Mosseri, who has led Instagram since 2018, denied any suggestion by US states suing Meta that Instagram had stalled by not making the “Take a Break” feature the default setting for teenagers until September 2024, nearly three years after its launch.

“Most teens didn’t want it,” Mosseri said. “We decided to push forward with it anyway.”

Mosseri is a central witness in the lawsuit brought by 29 US states, in what experts call the biggest legal test yet of social media’s effects on young users.

Four of the states – California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey – have accused Meta of designing the platforms to hook young users, driving anxiety, depression and even suicide, while misleading consumers about the platforms’ safety.

All 29 states say Meta violated US federal law by improperly collecting and employing the personal data of children under 13 while they used its platforms.

The states are seeking approximately $200bn in damages from Meta.

‘Designed to fail’

Meta has rejected accusations that it sought to addict children, saying its research showed no clear link between adolescents’ social media use and a lack of wellbeing.

Under questioning from Jason Slothouber, a lawyer for Colorado, Mosseri acknowledged that the percentage of teenagers using Take a Break was in the low single digits before Instagram made it ⁠the default.

Take a Break encourages teenage users to close the app after a certain amount of time. Mosseri had estimated in a December 2021 blog post that more than 90 percent of teenagers who turned the feature on kept it on.

That number, however, referred to the number of those who had turned on the feature.

When asked whether Meta had disclosed its low adoption, which had reached only 1 or 2 percent of accounts, Mosseri admitted the company had not, but said the safety features were later turned on by default in Teen Accounts, which launched in 2024 and have parental controls.

Former Meta employees have said that features such as Take a Break and Quiet Mode were difficult to find and not widely used, casting doubt on whether they represented a serious effort by the company to limit screen time for young users.

“In my experience, Take a Break is a feature that’s designed to fail,” Arturo Bejar, a former Meta engineering director, testified last week.

George Volichenko, a data scientist who worked on safety features at Instagram in 2022 and 2023, likewise stated on Monday that adoption rates of such features were “very low” and that company leadership had declined to approve turning on Quiet Mode by default for young teenagers.

He added that turning on such features automatically would have had a “notable negative impact” on user engagement.

The trial could last six weeks.

Jurors are expected to issue an advisory verdict. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide whether Meta is liable and, if so, determine any civil penalties and changes to Facebook and Instagram.