Oak Hill Cruisers

On past HAL cruises, we have been able to exchange monies aboard ship.  Only exception (known to us) was that we could not get Brazilian Reals on our ongoing Grand South America/Antarctica voyage.  Guest services directed to to go to the money exchange store in the terminal of our first Brazilian port of call.

Will KEH, B&H and Adorama take vintage stuff, like a Canon A1 and a Leica M3?  For a while, Precision Camera here in Austin took vintage stuff but no longer.

Not looking make $$$, just get the old stuff a good home.

Great reporting!  We're now on the Volendam (Grand SA/Antarctic) and will start our Antarctic Experience cruising from Ushuaia departing on February 2nd and at sea from February 3rd until arrival in Port Stanley on February 9th.

Wondering if the the Volendam & Amsterdam will come close enough to see each other.  Just hoping.

Now in Punta Arenas, Chile on the Volendam.  Hoping to see the Amsterdam going the opposite direction around the Horn.  Asked the cruise / travel director if we will indeed pass each other.

Are they still printing the morning newspapers?  They still are being so on the Volendam which we are now on for the Grand South America/Antarctica.  We thought that HAL would stop the printing of the morning papers starting at the beginning of the year.

Can't wait to get onboard. We were supposed to have boarded the Volendam on December 20th to make a B2B with this cruise.  But we had to cancel the December 20th embarkation because of illness.

So we have been 99% packed for this cruise since December 17th.  It has been tough to resist going into our luggage for clothing items. 😉

We're now 11 nights short of 4-Star.  About to board Volendam on a Grand Voyage (77-Day South America/Antarctica). 

We're wondering if, once we board, they will apply the qualified on-board spending credits right away and accelerate our 4-Star loyalty status.

Nice reports!  Makes us think of our 2018 WC.  Kiss the fish, kiss the fish!  Lol 😉

Are they still printing the daily NY times newspapers?  Heard rumors that HAL considering to stop printing these newspapers.

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Having gone through much of the 68 pages of posts on this thread, it appears that one should use a photo hosting service like Shutterfly, Photobucket and the like to post photos on CC. 

Having lost all of our photos that we have uploaded to TinyPic (did not rescue them in time after notification), we're reluctant to start again with another hosting site.

As you can see, we've been trying, with limited success, to post and caption photos directly from our laptop hard drive (Windows 10).

Question: Is it still the CC photo posting protocol that we must use a photo hosting site?  Or have Windows 10 users discovered a way to post and caption photos from their computers?

Ma

 Main Deck Orientation with 3rd Mate 

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Great reporting, as per usual.  But we have to again ask; is Dolly aboard?  She was on the 2018 WC with us.  Just curious as to if she is continuing her 30+ years of literally living on the ms Amsterdam.

Err, looks like TinyPic shut down operations on September 16th.  Because we were on travel, we missed the opportunity to move our photos to Photobucket, so those images are lost.

But we will try to upload them here one more time when we get the chance.

Sorry about the picture links being inactive.  If we get time, we will contact TinyPics to see what happened.

Is Dolly aboard?

We're about seven points shy of 4-star.  We're booked for the 77-day Grand South America/Antarctic on the ms Volendam in Jan 2020.  We believe that we will awarded our 4-star about a week after we sail.

Just to get a head start, among other reasons, we're mulling over doing a B2B on the Volendam in December 2019 for 16 days so that we'll become 4-star on the start of the 77-day cruise.

On our World Cruise on the ms Amsterdam in 2018, we saw a couple that took regular 'mountain bikes' (not folding bikes) off the ship at several ports.  So maybe they'll allow it on grand and world voyages but maybe not on the shorter cruises.

You would think that HAL (and the other cruise lines) would 'trust' a company like Keurig so that their machines could pass muster for PAX who want to bring them along and not be sent to the naughty room.  It couldn't be more dangerous than a CPAP machine,

For the Venice sail away, the left (port) side will have nicer views -- if your ship will be allowed to port in the Venice Terminal and be allowed to sail between San Marco & Giudecca.

We would not consider taking our coffee maker with us on shorter cruises (7 to 14 days).  On HAL we book the longer voyages, like the  35-day Voyage of the Vikings, the 77-day South America & Antarctica & world voyages.  On these longer cruises, we would like to take a little of 'home' with us.  Now, we know that coffee from a Keurig is not the best coffee but it's darned consistent in quality, such as it is.

On several cruises on RCI that we have taken from the UK, they almost always had some sort of tea kettle in the staterooms with tea & coffee pouches.  The notion of having coffee every day that has a consistent quality beats the crap shoot of trying to get good coffee on cruise ships.

.....take it aboard.  Yeah, we know you can't take heat-producing appliances.  But, it would be great, wouldn't it?

We really enjoy toting it on long car trips.