joanna111

I'm on the Veendam on December 8th and so far I'm the only one on the roll call!  I like being able to arrange excursions with people on the roll call.  DH and I won't do a $600 charter but if we get a few more people........This has worked so well in the past and I'm disappointed that I'm  not able to do it for this cruise.

I started a roll call for a Dec 2018 trip that includes Belize but no one has responded.  I'm hoping to get a few people for a Hol Chan/shark ray trip so if anyone reading this is on that cruise please find me on the roll call.

Per advice I received on CC I called HAL and preordered and paid for unlimited laundry before a European cruise and was charged the $7 rate instead of $9. I believe it would have been the higher rate if I had waited and ordered it on the ship itself. Maybe I just got lucky. Planning to do that again for a cruise on the Rotterdam in May.

What kind of surface are you biking on on the way down? And how steep is it? I'm a little nervous on a bike due to a crash on another trip but this sounds wonderful.

I'm looking at a cruise to Norway on Holland America but I'm intrigued by the idea of Hurtigruten. What are the reasons that you chose Hurtigruten over a more conventional cruise?

I am looking at a cruise to Norway and the North Cape on the Prinsendam in June. DH is concerned about the midnight sun and whether or not the curtains will make the room dark. He's pretty picky about not having any light at all when he sleeps. We're in an OV right now and I'd hate to move to an inside since it wouldn't even save any money because of the current promotion. Anybody have experience of how dark the curtains make the room?

I purchased the unlimited laundry at $7/day by calling HAL before we left home. Some posters on CC said that if I waited until I was on board (in Europe) it would be $9/day.

I'm a regular HAL cruiser but did a Baltic cruise on the Celebrity Solstice last year because of the itinerary. While I think Celebrity is a little better than HAL in many ways I found that that ship didn't have the expansive views that I'm used to on the HAL ships. I mean on the decks where you have big windows on both sides so you can sit in front of windows in a bar and see out the windows on the other side of the ship. The Solstice used that space for shops and fining venues. I loved the bars on the Celebrity but for the most part I could have been inside a building on land. It's more important to me to see lots of water.

Same situation a few years ago on a transatlantic that ended in Rome. One way flights were as expensive, or more than round trips. So I booked a round trip from Rome to DC with the return leg to Rome 6 months later bring timed so that we could take the return cruise back to the US in the fall if we wanted to. We ended up taking a non-cruise trip around Italy and found an Icelandair one way flight from Paris that was 1/2 the cost of the round trip. So we paid €64 for a hop to Paris and spent a few days there.

This was 2013 and the fare was $450 which was a bargain. As others have said we could have done an open jaw (airlines call them multi-city) flight with the last leg being anywhere we might want to go on the next trip. Beware! Airlines will know if you book a round trip and don't use the return leg and they have the right to go back and bill your credit card for the additional cost.

DH and I are on a 22 night Buenos Aries to Santiago cruise in January. Formal night is easy for me to pack for but not for DH. It seems like there are three options:

1. Take no dress clothes and rent a tuxedo for formal nights. Go to the MDR in a shirt with a collar but no jacket the other nights.

2. Schlep his suit and shoes for formal night but still just wear a shirt for non formal nights.

3. Forget the tux and the suit and just wear a shirt (okay, he should wear pants too) on formal nights.

He wants to avoid the hassle of taking a suit or even a jacket with him but I also feel strongly that I don't want to contribute to the further decline of formality. A tux is super-easy to rent (plus he looks cool in it) but I know he wouldn't want to be one of only 3 or 4 guys.

Any chance SA/Antarctica is more formal than other routes? How do you guys solve this?

I experienced the same same disappointment on the NA last year. My first dinner was prime rib which was a uniform gray color that I'd never before seen in food. I've since sailed Celebrity which was pretty good. I had been hoping things had gotten better since I'm sailing on the Zaandam in January. Want to give HAL a second chance plus the itinerary (Antarctica) is the best for what I want.

I'm booked for the 22 night Antarctica cruise in January on the Zaandam in an OV stateroom. Getting a suite is an option financially but it's a LOT more expensive (over 2X as much) and I have to convince DH. Because it's one of the older ships there's nothing in between an OV and a Vista Suite. Here's what I'm wondering:

Half of this cruise will be sea days and scenic cruising. I'm thinking that the view from a balcony stateroom will be dramatically better than out of the OV window. That it would really enhance the experience. True?

We have the lowest category of OV stateroom, aft on the Dolphin deck. It's described as a full view (not partial or a porthole.) Any way to get an idea of the size of the window?

Will we be able to sit on the balcony? Or will it be too cold?

What are the other perks that come with a suite? I need good things to tell my husband!

HAL's suite guarantee is not as expensive. HAL warns that the guarantee suite may be noisy. The guarantees are category BC of which I only see 4, they're aft under the sea view pool. But I probably need to reserve today to get the "limited time offer."

Any thoughts will be much appreciated.

Looking at the water on the premium pkg. Can you take bottled water ashore with this?

I'll be on St Martin on Dec 18th which is a Sunday from 9 to 5. I was there two years ago and did an enjoyable guided tour. I want to DIY (use taxis) this time, maybe a mix of beach with snorkeling if you can do it from the beach, a very little shopping and maybe a nice lunch. But I think shopping is fairly limited on Sunday and I wonder if some restaurants won''t even be open for lunch. I see there are 5 ships that day -- about 12,000 people! Will that make the beached crowded? So now I'm wondering if I should take an excursion?

I'll be on St Martin on Dec 18th which is a Sunday from 9 to 5. I was there two years ago and did an enjoyable guided tour. I want to DIY (use taxis) this time, maybe a mix of beach with snorkeling if you can do it from the beach, a very little shopping and maybe a nice lunch. But I think shopping is fairly limited on Sunday and I wonder if some restaurants won''t even be open for lunch. I see there are 5 ships that day -- about 12,000 people! Will that make the beached crowded? So now I'm wondering if I should take an excursion?

I will have 3 days in St Petersburg in May on a Celebrity sailing. Am I understanding right that if I don't want to get a visa and instead book a 3 day tour that it will run about 8 hours each day and I'd have to book an additional tour if I don't want to return to the ship at 5 or 6pm?

I did hear similar comments but I didn't bring it up at dinner so what I heard was random. Some of the flavor issue was in the main ingredients. The meats didn't have much natural taste. This is especially true of the pork. The lamb was the best of the meats. The fruit soups were as good as usual although they were never cold enough. A few of the main dishes seemed oversalted. Midway through the cruise the menu itself changed from the big leather folder to (can I be remembering this right?) a piece of manila-type cardboard.

We don't usually participate in a lot of activites. In port we have long, active days off the ship and then generally just relax and have dinner. My favorite thing about the sea days is just enjoying the ambiance. So for both in port and at sea days dinner is (or should be) a highlight.

But I guess it is more than just the food.

The new design of the Explorers Cafe right by the Crows nest meant that the quiet of the Explorers Cafe was often disturbed by activities in the Crows Nest. One of my favorite memories from the Noordam Transatlantic was being dressed in formal clothes and listening to the Adagio Strings after dinner. On this cruise the Adagio Strings were not very good either.

I also missed the sail-away cookouts on the aft deck. I knew that the Dessert Extravaganza was gone (and I can't condone that kind of waste of food) but I was surprised that NOTHING replaced it. I expected a toned down version with a few desserts and some fruit carvings and ice sculptures. This is only my second transatlantic but on the last one they left a giant atlas open on a table in the Explorers Cafe and everyday at a specified time a Navigation Officer would plot the route by hand and explain it.

I feel uncomfortable complaining so much but that is the purpose of this post!

Just spent 27 nights on the NA: 14 day R/T Barcelona followed by the Transatlantic. I'll post a review soon but I was disappointed in the food in the MDR. Dish after dish sounded good and looked good but was just flavorless. Had I not found the food in the Pinnacle and the Cannaletto to be very good/excellent I would have thought something had happened to my sense of taste!

In the past two years I've been on the Ryndam, the Noordam and two Royal Caribbean ships all of which had much better food. I don't know if I'll cruise HAL again.

Sorry to be so negative.

ATMS all the way.

First, my small community bank and my husband's credit union have a flat fee -- maybe $5? -- per withdrawal. No percentage. So that's very reasonable especially if you get a few hundred dollars at a time.

Second, we have access to different networks so it's not hard to find one that participates with the card. And we have separate bank cards so we have backup if one gets lost or eaten. And having funds in more than one bank means we can get double the limit of euros. We look ahead -- we might hit machines every day for a few days if we're heading to say, an island that we think will have limited atms.

Third, we love to walk through foreign cities! And at least in the larger cities we found atms on every street -- we have no sense of "looking for an atm." They're just part of our exploring the city.

Does anyone know if duplicate bridge -- with a Bridge Director -- is always found on a Transatlantic? There was one two years ago on the Noordam but maybe that's not a regular thing.

As people talk about "B to Bs" is that the same as having two different booking numbers? Our upcoming cruise can be made up any combination of shorter segments. We have two booking numbers and the payment was handled separately. Two sets of cruise docs with two boarding passes, etc. We could cancel one cruise (I don't mean getting our money back) and still go on the other. So logically we should start the second cruise with a clean slate as far as what wine we had brought on the first cruise.:) Except that sometimes you can't depend on logic.:mad:

I had thought that the rule was 2 bottles per stateroom but I see in my docs that it's written as 1 bottle per person. As a solo cruiser can I bring in 2 bottles or just 1?

Granted that Gala Night is not as, well, Gala as it used to be, but I'm puzzled by what I hear for our upcoming cruise. What we have is: 7 day cruise with 1 sea day has 2 Gala Nights, followed by a 7 day cruise with 1 sea day has 2 Gala Nights followed by a 13 day cruise with 8 sea days has 2 Gala Nights. I've only done one TA before in 2013 but there were 4 Gala Nights on that cruise. To me Gala Nights are more welcome if I'm at sea day after day than if I'm in port day after day. So it's extra puzzling that we have only half as many on the T/A as we have on the port-intensive Med cruise. Just wondering.

I was very disappointed in an Alaska cruise on Coral Princess after doing the same cruise on the Veendam. I was with a friend and I had been telling her how wonderful it was to sale out of Vancouver under the bridge. Well, they kept us sitting in a lounge waiting to hear the safety lecture until after the ship had started moving. So as soon as we could we raced out and up to the top deck only to find sheets of blue glass or plastic impeding the view almost everywhere.

That was not the only place with a poor view. In the MDR where Hal ships have so many windows, the Coral Princess has drapes. I asked about this and was told that people expect drapes to suggest a more formal dinner. In the Lido where HAL ships have as much glass as possible the Coral Princess has great big plants in all of the windows. I finally lifted one out of its pot to applause from people sitting nearby.

I have sailed transatlantic on the Noordam and I loved it. I would never sail with Princess again.

Thanks for all the responses.

I did indeed follow Danni's advice and purchased the unlimited pkg for $7/day so I'm all set.