riverrat

1. Is there a future with HAL visiting more coastal towns close to debarkation port? - Noordam - has (1) one preAlaska itinerary that stays all day in Victoria :), Astoria and Seattle. This allows enough time to see Buchart Gardens. Koningsdam did California coastal cruising. The view sailing under the bridge and an overnight in San Francisco was legendary. 2. Could someone aim to make Sundays a seaday whenever possible? - In many ports everything is closed

We like following along with the blogs even when on the cruise. There is so much to do and see and no one does it the same way. We are enjoying so much thru your eyes.. ty

So enjoy being along for the cruise thru your blog 🙂 One of my treasured memories from Tales of the Pacific last year was the beautiful tour guide putting her arms up in the air, smiling ear to ear and singing out to our bus "Welcome to The Kingdom of Tonga - Where Everything is Free". When we asked, she stated, we are all the same poor, we share everything.

Thanks for sharing this... loved reading your insight. We visited this past fall. Never in my life have I seen coral that equaled the color I saw in Moorea. It was mind blowing. I hovered in 5 ft of water watching families of 500 baby fish in different heads of coral, then swam up to a staghorn that was a 4 ft work of perfect art.

Agree. I took a planned capsule wardrobe on a 6-week cruise. You know 3 pants, 4 LS, 4 SS, 4 shorts etc. I got super tired of wearing the same four long sleeve shirts over and over on sea days! The other thing to note is some stretchy fabrics do not fare as well through on board laundry. We had a joke among some of us ladies that we must be losing weight as our shirts were growing. Just guessing but thinking the elastic fails from the hot laundry press?

I think they hear us, just slow to react. Haven't been able to search for "Heritage Cruises" yet but it does say rolled out over the next year. I'm excited to see the list. 2022 News | Holland America Line Introduces 150th Anniversary ‘Heritage Cruises’

I know you were right under that helicopter as were we. It was so loud and INTENSE being aft. That was some day! I watched from the Crow's Nest with naval friends then came back to the room right before the helicopter lifted them all off the lido deck. Hope all is well. Miss seeing you guys in the hall. 🙂

I only wish. It is my understanding they opened the container in San Diego Oct 3rd to find none of the liquor on the manifest. They hoped it would catch us in Pape’ete. Are you all drinking on the Zuiderdam this week? I would think we would have heard as 1000+ have the drink package this trip thru the canal.

… another perspective…this 20 yr old ship is lovely and classy. We were onboard with the same shipmates for 6 weeks. Many received “pet names” good and bad. Sadly we noticed some passengers became more “entitled” and “demanding” as the weeks went by. So it goes…. For me, Hula and ukulele lessons were awesome and continued all the way to Pape’ete. Enjoyed the lectures and the captains noon talk. Bridge lessons and bridge play were wonderful and I came home sure of my ability to play. Loved going to bridge every sea day at 9:30am. Permission to dance, movies, sauna, in-room dining, trivia, happy hour and our veranda cabin all 5 🌟.Yes we ran out of Vodka so we drank a lovely gin (Citadel) the last night. We ate beautiful omelettes, salads, a different soup every day on the lido and the “breads” oh my!! I can’t complain about the food but…we never do MDR for dinner because it takes so long. Often we arrived on lido to BUSY so we found something else to do and circled back in 30 mins. It wasn’t the trip of a lifetime but our lives were seriously enriched by the places we visited, the cultures we met and the people we shared it with.

really like Trader Vic’s Mai Tai.

We are accomplishing this in Arizona with the...... Federal Write In Absentee Ballot (FWAB) It is a blank ballot, but we can fill it in at home and take it with us to mail. We obtained it thru email after a phone call to our local "Elections Services" In Arizona 1-800-THE-VOTE