Catching up again

Well, after two days of staying in the cabin so I wouldn’t spread my cold I’m feeling much better and not going through tissues every minute or two.

Yesterday the port was for Pisco, Peru and I’m sorry I wasn’t feeling good enough to do anything. The port was really in the desert; not a tree to be seen. It was about 30 miles to Pisco and they ran a ship shuttle to Paracas which was about 12 miles away. Wildlife was the main focus of this port, there were flamingos, many types of seals, other birds and Penguins. I can’t believe I missed penguins. Jim was able to get some shots using the long lens as we left port.

Just before we sailed from the port the Captain came over the speakers and announced that we would be making a scenic departure that would allow us to see the Candelabra on the side of the mountain. We cruised very slowly as our tour guide, Frank, narrated over the speakers. This strange creation is many hundreds of years old and believed to be related to the Nazca lines [did I spell that right?] which are only about 100 miles from here. Unlike those lines which are only visible from the air, since this is on the side of a hill and the sun was perfect for some shadowing it was perfect.

This morning I made it to the book club at 9:00 - we are reading Like Water for Chocolate. Carolyn, the librarian is a retired school teacher and does an excellent job leading the discussion. At 11:30 we played trivia and then at 12:15 we had a CruiseCritic lunch. After that I decided it was time to read for a while and now I’m sitting in the Ocean bar ‘working’ and listing to pre-dinner music.  It's a tough life, but someone has to do it!

Callao, Peru (Lima)

We are in Callao, Peru; an overnight port and the end of the cruise for 74 people. 90 people are boarding as the new aft balcony cabins on deck 8 have opened. Apparently it is a full ship all the way.

Yesterday we took the shuttle into Miraflores and walked along the Malecon looking in the shop windows and looking for somewhere to have lunch. After passing by KFC, Burger King, Chili’s, Tony Roma and several more American chains we decided we might as well go back to the ship. It wasn’t terribly hot, but it was so humid you had to drink the air. We had done a city tour of Lima on our World Cruise last year so we decided not to do it again this year. We were planning on an excursion to a wildlife preserve, but it was cancelled due to weather and tides.

There was a nice deck BBQ yesterday evening for supper. Good food and some music from local musicians. Later I planned to go to the folkloric show, but I fell asleep and then decided to skip it. I usually love the shows and do some great photography at them. The name of this dance group was the same as the one on the World Cruise, so maybe I didn’t miss too much.

So far our weather has been pretty good, but we are missing some really bad stuff. The Cusco / Machu Picchu areas have just had disastrous flooding which washed out the roads and railway. There was a big overland excursion planned from the ship which has been canceled - I’m sure those people are hugely disappointed as it was one of the major sites for this voyage.

The Captain said that Veendam which is now in the Antarctic has 4 inches of snow on her decks on her first day following the Drake Passage. He has posted some pictures from Veendam on his blog. I can’t remember the URL for his blog, but you can get to it by going to the Holland America website and then ‘ships’ then Prinsendam. I really like Captain Shooenderbeek; he is very funny and personable and he ‘tells it like it is’. We knew we recognized him, but it took a while to figure which ship we had sailed with him before. It was the Veendam out of Tampa about 4 years ago. David, Ted & Becky, Barb & Bill -- you were all onboard with us for that cruise.

Now the not so good news… I seem to have caught a nasty head-cold. So I’m grumpy (and snotty!). But.. I guess it’s at an ok time as we have nothing special planned for a few days. More later.

at sea

These two sea days are wonderful… very relaxing - but with much to do. If that doesn’t make sense, you probably have never been on a cruise. Sometimes I’m too busy reading and relaxing and I loose track of time and end up missing a lecture I had planned to attend. The great thing… the ship (most ships) tape the main lectures and play them back on the TV so you can see them later.

Yesterday evening was our first Ensemble cocktail party and everyone attended except one person. The Captain, Hotel Manager, cruise director and several other officers and staff attended. There were excellent hot appetizers - probably more than was needed; certainly no one left hungry!

Today, I’ll probably attend a couple lectures but other than that I have no plans.

At Sea - crossing the equator

It seems like we have been very busy. Saturday we crossed the equator. At 2:00 we had a visit from King Neptune and his court. They did an excellent production of this - starting with the Captain sounding a long blow on the ship’s whistle and making the announcement. King and Queen Neptune judged 6 passengers and 40 crewmembers that were pollywogs; all failed and were sentenced to “the doctors” who covered them with whipped cream and spaghetti noodles. All good fun, they then jumped in the pool to get the worst of it off. I’m sure the crew hates to clean up that mess and the pool sure needed a good cleaning; they had emptied it down to about half so there wasn’t too much water in it.

On Saturday evening we were invited to a Cocktail party with the Officers and a number of other guests. I was surprised since we aren’t in a suite for this cruise. It was very enjoyable and we enjoyed visiting with Roger, the bar manager, and Kevin the assistant cruise director. Earlier we met with Roger to finalize the details for the Ensemble cocktail party on Monday.

Sunday we were in Manta, Ecuador. We took the shuttle into town and wandered through the market and purchased a couple things. Jim got a t-shirt and I bought a lovely embroidered shoulder bag. It has a nice wide padded strap so I can carry stuff more comfortably than using my little tote bag. After several trips, my tote bag is starting to look pretty grungy… I guess I’ll have to treat myself to a new one when we get home. After the market we walked about a block and were in a great park with huge shade trees… we sat there for a while just catching a few photos of local people. Then we headed for the pharmacy to get a couple things… a gel pack to keep in the little cabin fridge so I can use it on my back. It won’t be frozen, but has to be better than putting ice cubes in a ziplock baggie which always seem to leak.

Random thoughts:

• The food has been excellent - I love the variety but often get the beef. Last night I had pheasant and it was perfect.
• I really miss having a balcony; not just for the use of the balcony itself, but being able to see out through the full size of the sliding door. Our window is quite big, but you can’t see anything except sky unless you are standing. Well, as long as I’m being honest… I really miss being in an D suite. I like having the cabin space, the special amenities and most of all the Neptune!
• Our cabin would be perfect for someone that suffers from seasickness. We are on the lowest passenger deck and almost mid-ship. We feel almost no movement… I miss rocking and rolling! There is a huge difference in what we feel in our cabin /vs. what we feel in the public areas or the lido when the seas are a bit rough - we are surprised that the ship is moving as much as we are.
• All of the staff and crew are wonderful - I haven’t found one grumpy person. It still amazes me how they learn everyone’s names so quickly. Our steward was worried that something was wrong because we put our ‘do not disturb’ sign out in the evening… sometimes before he has turned down the cabin. We have assured him that it’s ok, we really don’t need anything if the sign is out.

Well, I guess that’s it for now… I’ll add pictures later.

Fuerte Amador, Panama

I’m a bit behind so I’ll try to catch up. The Panama Canal is always fascinating - no matter how many times you pass through it. We spent time sitting on the shady side of the ship and then coming inside for a while. After leaving the Canal we anchored off Fuerte Amador which is the main port for Panama City. They ran tenders all night so those that wanted to go ashore could do so and return at their leisure. Seabourn Legend is anchored near us; she is a ‘yacht’ class luxury ship holding only about 200 passengers… very nice!

This morning we had to have the alarm clock at 6:00 since we needed to be ready for our shore excursion to the Embera Indian Village by 7:30. We rode on a bus for a little over an hour and then on long dugout canoes for about 20 minutes to reach the village. There was a rather nice presentation done by the ‘Governor’ of the village that explained about their culture and clothing. Then he answer many questions. I particularly liked the one about what types of food they eat and where it comes from… “there is a supermarket in a village about 5 minutes away by boat”. So much for a really traditional lifestyle. Their costumes were very colorful and I took many pictures. We also had a ‘traditional’ snack of fried fish and fried plantains along with some cold soda. Although it was hot, the weather fairies were good to us and it was cooler than I had expected.

Tired, hot and somewhat hungry we did make it to Trivia… we won so now we are the proud owners of Dam mugs.

I haven’t had time to get the photos off my camera yet so I’ll come back and add them tomorrow.

Panama Canal

We have just entered the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal. We approached them about 5:30 this morning while it was still quite dark. Jim and I went forward on deck 7 and I tried to get some pictures as we approached the first lock, but I probably just got ‘art’ as they are liable to be blurry when I see them on a bigger computer.


We have been through the canal several times so I will go in and out all day, but probably not stay outside… it’s going to be really hot.

Yesterday we spent a couple hours wandering around in Puerto Limon but didn’t find anything very interesting except in the park we watched a sloth in the trees for about a half hour. He was awake and moving through the branches which was fairly unusual. They move their limbs so very slowly they almost make a koala seem speedy! I’m going to make this quick post as we are going in and out of internet range as we move through the locks.

Isla Providencia, Colombia

Isla Providencia is exactly what a Caribbean Island should be - unspoiled by tourist stuff! There are 5000 inhabitants and they get about 15,000 visitors a year. You can tell that they are working hard to increase tourism as they have built a beautiful walkway with many sitting areas all along the coast and then up and over a hill and down to a small beach area. The Captain said that we are the largest ship to have ever visited this island. The tender ride was about 2 miles as there is a large reef that the ships cannot cross. Although we didn’t plan for any beach or snorkeling days on this trip… this would have been a perfect stop. I was sorry I hadn’t worn my swimsuit under my clothes. I did take off my shoes and roll up my pant legs and wade a bit - it felt so wonderful I had serious thoughts of just dunking and swimming in my clothes, but I did resist as I didn’t want to be wet the rest of the day.


Today (Wednesday) we will be in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica.

We have just anchored off Isla de Providencia, Columbia. This should be interesting… no shore excursions were offered here and even the onboard “Travel Guide” Frank doesn’t know anything about this stop. We have had a couple of these sort of unknown stops on other cruises; some have turned out to be wonderful and some really blah. I’ll let you know about this one later.

The passengers on this cruise are just slightly older than us… the mid age is probably about 70ish. Most everyone seems to be quite well-traveled and some have wonderful stories. There are no children onboard and only a few people younger than 60. We have found several people that were onboard Royal Princess last year for the World cruise - it’s fun to chat with them .

Yesterday we went to the Grand Opening of the new aft pool deck which was a late morning party with the band playing and free drinks… but the pool and hot tubs were just being filled and not opened yet. Shortly after that we went to the first gathering of the Cruise Critics - great bunch of people as always. Sadly, by going to the CC gathering we missed trivia so, of course, the team won. What does that tell you??!! I also went to the speaker lecture on Columbus’ sailing to the new world.

More later…

Santa Marta, Colombia

Santa Marta is a small port city. I figured it would be pretty hot by noon so we headed off the ship a little before 10:00. We rode the shuttle into town and then headed for the market. The first market was the tourist stuff so we kept on going about 10 blocks later we saw ‘the market’. As many of you know markets are one of my favorite places to take pictures. This one was great in that everyone wanted their picture taken! Wow, did it get hot quickly! After the market, we decided to head back to the ship as there wasn’t much else to see - we wandered back to the shuttle slowly down some different streets just sort of absorbing the atmosphere and then back to the ship.

We had a nice lunch in the buffet and then just relaxed until 3:30 for trivia. Jim got to watch both football games so he’s happy. So am I as he was able to use his headphones so I don’t have to hear the TV. We have learned that his headphones are the only way we survive regular sized cabins… he needs noise and I need quiet!

Things really are coming around to normal on the ship and the passengers are much happier. The midship pool was filled and had a lot of people in and round it and the aft pool (with the new deck space) will have its grand opening this morning. Later this morning we will attend the first CruiseCritic get together.

Santa Marta, Colombia

7:00 am Sunday and we have just docked in Santa Marta, Colombia. We will have a shuttle to take us into town. There are a couple cathedrals and a market that I am very interested in visiting, but I’m not sure whether Sunday will be a good day for this. Since most of the fresh flowers sold in the US are grown in Colombia I’m thinking the market might be beautiful with flower stalls.

I haven’t mentioned Trivia yet… we are part of a great ‘for fun’ team. Our team name is For Fun. We have 5 regulars and an extra has dropped in a couple times. We actually won the first session… we are now the proud owners of Holland America bag tags! That was the Key West port day. On all the sea days they are running a cumulative score with a grand prize at the end of each segment. So far we haven’t done as well on the sea days, but we have fun and the team never argues about things.
I’ve gone to a couple of the lectures. There was one on how the Asian people crossed the land bridge from Siberia to North America and headed south… It was good. And yesterday we went to a lecture by a professional travel photographer on using your digital camera. One of his questions for the audience was how many are using point & shoot cameras and almost the whole audience raised their hands… then he asked how many use SLRs and 6 of us raised our hands. This is obviously not a serious photo crowd! Then again I’m still remembering our Antarctic trip in November when over half the passengers had wonderful cameras. I asked the photo shop staff if there would be a photo contest and “they didn’t know”. Duh - figure it out. I am in serious need of beating Jim this time since he beat me by placing second overall on the World Cruise.

Well… I was just about to say that things were smoothing out onboard but Jim just went in to take a shower and we have no water.

Now I know one shouldn’t compare cruises, but I’m going to do just a little. So far the food has been very good, the beef is so tender you can cut it with a fork and everything has been perfectly as ordered. And of course, I’m having the traditional Holland America bread pudding every day at lunch, but I need Melania to send me the dessert chef from Royal Princess. I knew that those desserts were really exceptional and so far although the other desserts are all good, they don’t begin to compare with the ones we had on RP. HAL is doing a great job of making this ‘special’ everything is geared to “our special grand voyage passengers”.

I’ll write about the port when we return - and I promise to add some pictures too.

Sea day - Caribbean

It is Saturday morning and we are just south of Jamaica in the Caribbean. Seas are moderate so we have a bit of rocking which we enjoy. It started nice and sunny, but we just went through a squall with some rain - ahead looks sunny again. Yesterday was a beautiful day up in the 80’s and mostly sunny all day, but there was a wind that made sitting on deck not too pleasant. None of the pools or hot tubs are filled or open yet and people are not happy about that. When it was still cool that didn’t seem to be a problem.

Last night was the Captain’s Welcome (a formal night) and we went to the dining room. The food was very good, but the service is so slow that I doubt we will go often. For those of you that know us, that isn’t unusual for us as we most often go to the Lido for dinner. We spent most of the hour and a half sitting with either dirty plates in front of us, or nothing. We excused ourselves before dessert was offered. As much as I hate to say it, I find the dining experience on this and other ships we have been on recently far below what we received just a few years ago. Our tablemates are delightful, but I just do not enjoy 2-hour dinners.

Our cabin went from very cold (first two days) to way too hot. Yesterday we spent the day turning the dial down… it’s now down all the way and we have a fairly comfortable cabin this morning. I’m putting our extra blankets under the bed in case we go back to cold!

We have received several very nice gifts, faux-leather journal and bag tags, nice big zippered tote bags with the Grand Voyage 2010 logo and an Amaryllis bulb with a vase. Since they grow very quickly, I’m trying to grow mine now as I don’t want to bother trying to take it home… the vase is glass and very large.

As many of our Ensemble passengers still had not received their Welcome letters, I asked the desk to make copies for me from my extra and we personally delivered them to all the cabins… now I know everyone got a copy.

Stay tuned!

Key West

Thursday - We docked in Key West at about 10:00. It is about 60 degrees and there is nothing special we wanted to do, so we stayed onboard and made the Welcome calls to all of the Ensemble passengers. In doing that I found that no one had received their welcome letters. Back to the “Front Desk”. She told me they were delivered last night… after some checking she found them and said “they forgot”. The letters will be delivered right away. It is now 3 hours later and we haven’t seen them yet, but we will keep checking. Things are a bit more disorganized than on past Holland America cruises. An example - our steward came in last night at 10:30 to turn down the bed and deliver the HAL gifts. We were already in bed, as I expect most people were on the first night. They are still saying all the glitches are due to the long dry dock and it will get back to normal soon.


The ship is lovely, at least the main areas which aren’t still under construction. The aft pool and several aft decks are closed for construction that is supposed to be completed today… it doesn’t look promising. We just looked down from the lido deck and I’d guess there isn’t a chance of it being finished today. The library seems to have a fairly large selection of books which I love as I spend most of my down time reading. I was able to connect to the internet easily from our cabin this morning - This is really important to me!!

The Ensemble letters were finally delivered about dinner time - I had made several other trips to the desk asking about them. It seems that over half of the people in the group were moved at boarding so our manifest with the cabin numbers needed a lot of updating.

Friday will be a sea day… more soon.

We are on the ship!

We are onboard. Our trip to Fort Lauderdale went smoothly; no glitches at all, but I still hate the air travel part of any trip. We stayed at the Ramada Inn Airport Cruiseport which is a typical 1960’s style motel. It has a restaurant, airport and cruise port shuttles and offered a complimentary breakfast. There is nothing luxury about it, but it was clean so it worked just fine.


I can’t say much about the weather in Ft. Lauderdale except that Denver was probably same temperature. It wasn’t very Florida-like to need jackets. It really didn’t matter as we had dinner as soon as we got to the hotel and then just relaxed a bit and then were ready for bed.

We took the shuttle to the port at 11:45 only to find that Prinsendam had arrived late from dry dock and boarding would be delayed. At about 3:00 we finally boarded the ship. I have to admit we have been awfully spoiled by having suites in the past as today we waited in line for about an hour before we finally reached the check-in desks.

Our cabin, is actually pretty nice for an outside (window) cabin. There is a fair sized seating area with a loveseat and chair. The small walk-in closet looks like it will have plenty of storage and there is a full size bathtub in the bathroom! The crew is working double time trying to get everything ready for passengers since she has been empty for a while. Our cabin is only about half ready. The bed is made and we have towels, but no other amenities like soap. It’s now 5:00 and our steward just delivered our ’gift cards’ and shore excursion tickets.

Thank you to Richard and Alice for the Pinnacle and to someone else also for the Pinnacle…. There is no name on that card, but I think I know who sent it. We wish you were here with us!

Our first piece of luggage just arrived and I need to start doing my Ensemble Host duties. So I’ll write more later.
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Our luggage arrived all at the same time so we were able to pretty much unpack before dinner. Since we had not eaten since breakfast at the hotel we were ready and it was very good; prime rib seemed to be the popular choice at our table. After dinner I got the cabin numbers for those that were missing from my list and then asked the purser’s desk to deliver the Welcome letters. At 9:00 we went up to the Crows Nest to listen to the Piano man and have a quick nightcap then it was off to bed. Thursday we will be in Key West.

We're Packed

Sunday was packing day.  We are all packed with the small bag still open in the bedroom for all those last minute items.  We did so well packing I'm worried now that we have forgotten stuff.  The big bags both weighed in right at 48 lbs so we shouldn't have any overweight bag charges.

I ordered the unlimited laundry service for the whole cruise... not cheap, but I just don't see myself going to the launderette while cruising.  I also ordered a large package of internet minutes - it is a bit less expensive to order it pre-cruise.

I've double checked on everything and I feel like we are actually ready to go! David is taking us to the airport on Tuesday morning. Newspaper is stopped, mail is taken care of.  Fred will be taking care of the house and, of course, Peter and Beth will help him out.  But, the biggest THANK YOU goes to Michelle and Shannon, Luxury Cruise & Travel's part-time agents that take care of all my clients while we do our traveling.  Words really can't explain how greatful I am to them!  Soon (or actually not so soon, as they are younger!) they too will be able to make some of these wonderful long trips.

I have a friend/client that is sailing on the Queen Mary2 World Cruise. He is sailing the first segments, New York City to Hong Kong.  His blog is one of the best I've ever read - you might want to check it out. http://pfsjoberg.blogspot.com/   Be sure to go back through the archive and start at the beginning.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Time is certainly going by quickly, we have less than two weeks to go until we leave for Fort Lauderdale and then board Prinsendam on the 13th. We have a pile of stuff that is growing daily in one corner of the bedroom. We don’t pack until a couple days before we leave; if I pack stuff earlier I can never remember what I have put in a bag and what I haven’t. Old age??

We received our cabin assignment and the upgrade fairy didn’t exactly love us. We will be in 446. That is an outside (window) cabin on the lowest passenger deck, but the location is great, portside and mid-ship. This will certainly be a ‘learning experience’ for us as we have never booked anything except a full S suite on Holland America. Since we are traveling as the Ensemble Hosts, we are more than happy with our outside cabin! We did have an outside cabin one time when we were hosting an Alaska cruise and we did just fine. Although we will obviously miss the balcony, I’m lamenting not having free laundry and dry-cleaning and the Neptune!!

We have already booked a number of shore excursions. They are the ones we really want and wanted to make sure they didn’t sell out. Several of my friends have done this cruise or parts of it and sent us their recommendations pro and con on shore excursions. The most helpful was “skip the dance (Tango/Samba) shows; the ones they bring onto the ship are better.” I think I have all the penguin excursions booked, but I was disappointed to see on the Fram blog that the King penguin babies are getting very big… I might not get to see penguin babies after all.

I’ll post again before we leave.