Live from the Westerdam - Ft. Lauderdale to Rome.

[ekerr19]

Mark - Thanks for the updates, I've enjoyed them very much. Glad to hear all is going well onboard. :)

[localady]

Mark-

Hope you havd a sunny day to be able to take in the pastural view from St. Paul du Vence. I loved the little medieval town and also agree that it would be challenging for mobility impaired individuals. Thanks for the lovely reports!!

[PhylHarv]

We had excellent service with our Room Service meals. They were always prompt in delivery and tried to get you whatever you requested. One laughable time though was when my husband ordered 2 bananas and 2 oranges and received 2 bowls of sliced bananas and 2 glasses of orange juice! After that we just picked up fresh fruit in the Lido when our cabin steward hadn't refreshed our in-room bowl of fruit.

[mhshapiro]

We have returned safely from our cruise. I'm quite jet-lagged from the Rome to JFK flight, a three hour layover, and the cross-country flight from JFK to LAX. We used American Airlines frequent flyer miles for this trip. Fortunately on our way home both our flights were on time, but those coach seats on AA get mighty uncomfortable after a few hours -- and the food onboard AA has deteriorated beyond belief.

 

After I recover a bit I'll post a summary and review of the ship and the cruise. I also took a few hundred pictures that I have to sort through before posting (I bought a 1 Gig compact flash card for my camera recently, and the darn thing will hold about 1800 pix so I just snapped away!)

[dakrewser]

Welcome home, Mark. We'll give you a day to get over jet lag...

 

 

 

:) -dave

[mhshapiro]

I did not comment on our last tour at our Livorno port stop. We did the Leaning Tower of Pisa tour. While this was listed as moderate walking, my wife actually had less difficulty on it than on our tour of St. Paul because it all was level ground.

 

Pisa has to be the original tourist trap, but we were lucky to have had a really great guide. She was very knowledgeable about the tower's construction and the stabilization work that has been done on it. She also was very familiar with Galileo's experiments on falling objects that he did at the tower, and on his deduction of the law of the pendulum that he made while watching a chandelier sway in the nearby cathedral. As a physicist, I appreciated the commentary.

 

On our way back to the meeting point we decided to walk one block more and take the street parallel to the one that is next to the city wall. There was none of the tacky tourist stuff on it, but we did find a really great gelato store.

 

When we docked in Civateveccia we took the HAL shuttle to the airport then a cab to our hotel (Holiday Inn at the Parco de Medici) since our flight out was Friday morning. That hotel is close to the airport and has free shuttle service.

 

I'll post my review of the cruise and the Westerdam in a separate thread.

[Mahya]

A friend and I are trying to make up our minds about which

ship to take in the Western Mediterranean.

 

Somehow from all the comments, and especially about the

service...and many about the food, although you have found it alright, I think we're going to pass on the Westerdam.

 

My only experience cruising has been on the Royal Carribean

Majesty of the Seas and it couldn't have been better...the food was wonderful, and very exotic at times, the service was great, the entertainment left a lot to be desired...it would have been lovely to have a big band or a piano player...and the ship was so big, we never did get to see

everything on it.

 

Unfortunately RCI has a cruise from London to Spain, but doesn't make a lot of stops in the Western Mediterranean as she heads back to Florida, and we did want to see more of the mediterranean and even Casablanca.

 

There are some old ships going in that direction , the Costa

Europa and the Costa Romantica. Has anybody had any experience with them?.

 

The MSC line has a ship from Genoa to Spain and Casablanca...has anybody had any experience with that line?

 

Wow. These are difficult decisions when you don't know much about the lines and ships.

 

thanks for any info

 

Mahya:confused:

[trubey]

Mark, I've been trying to remember to ask you a question for about two weeks now. I just hope you're still reading this thread. The day you were in Ponta Delgada, we went down to the city (about a half-hour drive) to see if we could talk to some of the folks. We will be on the Westerdam next year and just thought it would be fun to get some first hand information.

 

However, we messed up because we hadn't realized that the ship was here for the morning, only (sorry for the weather that day) and that the passengers were already loading—we even saw one couple grabbing a taxi and have it hurry them out to the pier.

 

I'm sorry this is taking so long. But, afterward we drove to a town a few kilometers east and watched the ship sail. While we were watching, we could see something dark just to the west of it. It probably was just a small fishing boat, but we thought it also might have been a whale. Do you recall anyone mentioning it?

[mhshapiro]

Dear Trubey,

 

We did enjoy our morning in Ponta Delgada, in spite of the weather!

 

I can't remember anyone mentioning a whale following the ship as we left port.

 

We did see a pod of dolphins playing as we left one of the ports on that cruise, but I can't remember which port that was at.

 

If you haven't seen them yet, I posted a number of pictures from that cruise on Webshots:

 

http://community.webshots.com/user/mhshapiro

 

Cheers.

[trubey]

I just looked at your pictures.

 

Horta looked great, but your Ponta Delgada (note the spelling) excursion really didn't seem too interesting. In case anyone ever asks me, was that the Ribeira Grande/Pineapple Tour?

 

Here's your ship

[mhshapiro]

Actually, that was a Mariner's Club (Golden Bear Travel/American Express) tour that we were on. It did include the pineapple plantation, which probably was not the most interesting thing on the island to see but we did have some very nice refreshments there.

 

(I'll check the spelling on those pix.... I was seriously jet-lagged when some of them were posted.)

[jimgo140]

A friend and I are trying to make up our minds about which

ship to take in the Western Mediterranean.

 

Somehow from all the comments, and especially about the

service...and many about the food, although you have found it alright, I think we're going to pass on the Westerdam.

 

My only experience cruising has been on the Royal Carribean

Majesty of the Seas and it couldn't have been better...the food was wonderful, and very exotic at times, the service was great, the entertainment left a lot to be desired...it would have been lovely to have a big band or a piano player...and the ship was so big, we never did get to see

everything on it.

 

Unfortunately RCI has a cruise from London to Spain, but doesn't make a lot of stops in the Western Mediterranean as she heads back to Florida, and we did want to see more of the mediterranean and even Casablanca.

 

There are some old ships going in that direction , the Costa

Europa and the Costa Romantica. Has anybody had any experience with them?.

 

The MSC line has a ship from Genoa to Spain and Casablanca...has anybody had any experience with that line?

 

Wow. These are difficult decisions when you don't know much about the lines and ships.

 

thanks for any info

 

Mahya:confused:

 

 

Hi Mahya,

 

I cruised with my wife in the Mediterranean on the Westerdam when it was only a month old, and have been on her 3 more cruises in the Caribbean - the last two solo after her demise. I really liked The Westerdam, but she's not as young as she used to be. I like to take cruises to and/or from Ft. Lauderdale, since I live two miles from Port Everglades. Last fall, I cruised on MSC's Poesia from Barcelona to Ft. Lauderdale. The itinerary included Casablanca, where I took a ship sponsored tour. It was fantastic. Went through one of the world's largest mosques, saw Rick's bar, several palaces, the olive market, etc. I loved the long sea voyage, and the fact that I was home about 15 minutes after disembarkation. The single supplement on that cruise was very little. My next cruise is on RCL's "Legend of the Seas" 10/30/13 from Barcelona to Ft. Lauderdale. It doesn't have a lot of stops, but I love the sea days. The prices were great with a low single supplement. I booked a large outside cabin (last week). The grand total including air was under $1800, including $200 OBC.

 

Jim