Two Kids On A Ship ~ Oosterdam Review

[CupKayke]

My husband (41) and I (43) decided in August that our jobs demanded a quick vacation. We booked a Holland America cruise leaving from Vancouver, BC and traveling down to San Francisco with a stop in Astoria, Oregon. We left Sept 27th and arrived in San Francisco Sept 30th. 3 nights - the shortest cruise we’ve ever taken. I wasn’t planning to write a review but after reading the HAL boards, I thought it might help some other 40some “kids” considering taking a cruise on Holland America. We spent 3-nights pre-cruise in Vancouver so I’m going to cover a bit of that fun, too. There will be pictures. This will not be in-depth and detailed like most of my reviews have been. If you want the dirt… here it is… the ship was beautiful, the food was outstanding (far exceeds Carnival’s offerings), the service was excellent, and the other cruisers were about 30 to 40 years older than us on average which made for a quiet and peaceful cruise. We loved it. We will be returning to HAL.

 

And on that note… let’s start a little review..

 

[Krazy Kruizers]

Looking forward to your review.

[Mtn2Sea]

Looking forward to hearing about your cruise!

[CupKayke]

We flew from St Louis to Minneapolis, ran through the airport thinking we were dying from not having moved so fast in so long, and walked to the gate just in time to make our next flight to Vancouver. We arrived in beautiful Vancouver on a rainy Thursday night around 10:30pm. The nighttime Vancouver view from the taxi was beautiful. I like the city lights and the lighted bridges. Note: we had visited Vancouver for a whopping hour or less back in 2010 when we embarked on another cruise here but that day we took the train from Seattle then a taxi directly to the cruise ship and we only saw graffiti along the way so I had low expectations for Vancouver…but I was greatly impressed with Vancouver this time.

 

Our hotel for 3 nights was the Best Western Chateau and Suites on Granville Street. We were given mixed reviews about this hotel here on Cruise Critic but Trip Advisor has great reviews. So-So glad we decided to stay here. It was perfectly located, great service, excellent restaurant and bar on the main floor of the hotel, quick and good room service, 5 to 10 minute walk from not one but two Starbucks, near fresh vegetable markets, 10 minutes walk to several food/restaurant options, and two seconds across the street was a small grocery store. Every suite had a balcony and you can smoke on your balcony (husband smokes, I do not). Anyway… great hotel…

 

 

Since there is some controversy about this hotel here on CC, I will just say THIS was our first view out the front of the hotel and from our third floor balcony….

 

We watched this shop for 3 days to see if anyone ever went inside to try-out the 25-cent peep show. We saw people hesitate at the door but never, one time, could we see anyone walk inside – day or night. It became a game for us. Not a peep did we see. Regardless, if you walk out the front of the hotel and turn right you are in the entertainment/bar district which I hear is a bit seedy. We never turned right. We always turned left. We were literally two blocks away from a beautiful community garden…

 

And one night we had some delicious, cheap, and filling Vietnamese food at Pho Central (about four blocks away? 10 minute walk)….

 

This was the normal, beautiful view from our balcony...

 

The hotel is located a short walk to a mall and the main downtown sites. $10 taxi from here to Granville Island (and back). $10 taxi from here to the cruise ship. $31 set taxi fare from the airport. When you shut the door to your room, you don't hear a peep from another hotel guest or from the hallway... always very important in my opinion. I would obviously recommend this hotel and we would stay here again.

[CupKayke]

While in Vancouver we enjoyed several areas of Vancouver and loved them all! We took the free shuttle from the hotel to the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. The hotel gave us $3 off per person tickets when we asked where the stop was but when we got there, we got $4 off per person with our AAA card. I realize it’s a bit steep in price to visit this park and walk around and it is a workout, I assure of that… but we spent at least 3 or 4 hours here and walked the Cliff Walk and the Suspension Bridge (twice) and perused some other areas as well.

 

The Crazy Cliff Walk or Cat Walk…

I was scared going down the stairs to the Cliff Walk…

I was barely breathing come back up the stairs from the Cliff Walk..

So we checked-out the suspension bridge a few times…

 

We had a good day here. We also visited Stanley Park - which the free Capilano Shuttle will pick you up from here or drop you off from here. That was nice.

 

We also had a scheduled Vancouver Foodie Tour of the Granville Island Market. We have taken these foodie tours in several other cities now. The best part of a "foodie" tour to us is getting a fantastic history of the area and trying something new. My husband's favorite food was the boar hash at Edible Canada and mine was the chai latte from a Granville Island tea store. Our guide was Andrew and he was fantastic. Here is Andrew with some freshly made donuts from Lee's Donuts...

 

We loved-loved Edible Canada (that's a restaurant name) and we will make time to eat here again and shop in their quirky gift shop again if/when we visit Vancouver in the future. The gift shop sold many delicious and unique items... homemade caramels, bacon salt, and bacon n' eggs ~ which was chocolate speckled eggs filled with bacon. Cute.

 

We took the Aquabus tour of False Creek and walked all over Granville Island. The area is beautiful...

 

 

Up next... Embarkation

Edited October 10, 2015 by CupKayke

[Lizzie68]

This is great! I live here and I am thoroughly enjoying your review of Vancouver!:)

[Aquahound]

Boarding Oosterdam soon, so I'm really looking forward to ship pics. Great job so far. Keep em coming! :)

[Krazy Kruizers]

Loving it!!

Glad you decided to go to Vancouver 3 days early and enjoy that wonderful city.

[madera1]

Enjoying reading your review.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[canadianbear]

Loving your review and photos so far. Since we live right in Vancouver (about 10 minutes from the cruise port) I'm glad you enjoyed our beautiful city. We certainly love it.:)

[sail7seas]

What a wonderful review. I'm really enjoying it. Thanks for sharing with us.

[CupKayke]

It’s Sunday Sept 27th and we board the Oosterdam today. We took a taxi to Canada Place around 10:30am. The taxi driver was actually allowed inside the parking garage and dropped us off directly where we leave our luggage - very nice! We tipped the porter, took the escalator upstairs and the entire check-in process took about 10 minutes. No lines, no waiting. We were given an invite to a Mariner’s Club party or something of that sort. Holland America considered my husband a “one” star or something like that because my husband was booked on a HAL cruise around 10 years ago with his family. They paid for the cruise but he no-showed on them. He got that one star anyway.. somehow. Regardless, we don’t usually attend those types of gatherings but one never knows. This time, we did not.

 

We waited quietly and patiently with about five rows of individuals in front of us to board first. They also waited quietly and patiently. It was nice. My husband looked around and whispered we were surely the only individuals waiting that were still employed. There was a survey girl walking around asking basic questions – how many days pre-cruise did you stay in Vancouver, where are you from, and what is your age group, etc. We heard a lot of 70-plus. Actually, we didn’t hear anything younger than 70. I was surprised but figured this would change later as most people who are regular cruisers know to arrive early and beat the rush and this crowd probably had some cruise experience. It did not change later. If I had to make an estimate I would say 10 couples under 60s/70s total. Who knows. It didn’t matter to us or them. We felt like kids. It was great. Prior to this trip we were both feeling old. We needed the mental relief and something to look forward to in retirement which is planned for us in our 50s but now I’m off subject...

 

Once onboard we were told our rooms were immediately ready. WOW! That’s new. We took the elevator to the fifth deck, room 5037 – a forward balcony room. Our luggage was arriving in the crew elevator the same time we were arriving and one suitcase beat my husband inside the room. Impressive.

 

 

The room… standard balcony room. I see no difference here between other cruise ships except for a few items. I’ll write a few details because some people may be interested. The couch in this room was a pull-out sleeper. Nice. It was also old, stained, and looked broken on the corner. It was the only item on the entire ship we saw that didn’t seem to live-up to what I would now consider HAL standards. It wasn’t of interest to us even if it was new as we just used it as a place to keep our backpacks. The closet and storage space in this room was incredible. PLENTY of places to store items - several cabinets were left untouched by us. Also, once unpacked we realized the bed was designed so we could slide our two now-empty suitcases under the left side of the bed. The shower has shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. My husband thought they were decent. I carry my own shampoos. The bathroom had the oddest thing and I don’t even remember if other ships have this or not but they had a small, metal waste basket attached to the wall – and yes, you could remove it from the wall. It was very slim. I was sick the first night and there was nowhere to “relieve” myself so I had to call and ask for some vomit bags, literally. Don’t most ships normally have a regular size wastebasket? I don’t think I’ve ever been sick on a ship before so I don’t know the answer to that. It was an interesting situation to find myself as I do not vomit in toilets. Regardless, I was not sick after that first night as I know it was because I had a very large margarita upon embarkation and overate all the delicious food that first day. I learned my lesson quickly.

 

My husband smokes on the balcony and he was given a special ashtray to use. I think it keeps the butts and ashes inside it. He used one we had brought from home until the room steward noticed he smoked and then brought him the HAL ashtray. Later, I read in the informational booklet that if you smoke on the balcony you need to call and ask for a special ashtray.

 

The TV was a small flat screen. I wondered if all cruise ships have such tiny TVs but really, it was fine. We actually watched two movies and didn’t even notice the TV was small. Which reminds me of something… we noticed there was a small DVD player, too. My husband found this little booklet of movies on our desk – 100s of movies – that you can call and have delivered to room to watch on your DVD player for free! Only one movie at a time. The movies are all oldies but goodies – everything from When Harry Met Sally to The Hangover series (all of them) . I ordered a movie the first night and they delivered it. Then we tried to order another movie and someone else had it so apparently this was a popular perk. The last night my husband wanted The Count of Monte Christo (one of his all-time favorites). They were busy and said it would be 40 minutes until they could get the movie to us unless we would be willing to come to the front desk (floor 1) and pick it up. Of course I had it picked-up in just under five minutes. I had never seen this movie and thought it would be horrible so I was packing-up some items while watching a bit and hubby started snoring while "watching" and within 30 minutes I was hooked and watched the entire movie and loved it! Anyway, I’m sure it is a little thing but we thought this movie exchange was wonderful and a great perk for those who don’t like dancing or clubbing or jazz n’ blues – which was the feature entertainment on this ship.

 

The balcony, in both our opinions, was about 2 feet longer than any other cruise balcony we’ve had. We could be totally wrong but it felt so much bigger out there than on any other ship we’ve been on previously. We could put the chairs back against the glass wall and spread our legs out and still have several feet until we would touch the balcony glass. Not only does this feel more private, it feels safer. We loved the balcony.

 

I’m finished talking about the room now.. let’s get out and explore the ship…

[CupKayke]

Thank you all for your nice comments.

Photobucket is being a pain but I'll try to get some more posted tonight.

[CupKayke]

After finding our room we threw our bags down, changed into warmer clothes (it was cool and windy on deck) and decided to explore the ship. The ship was very quiet and none of the public areas were crowded. It would remain this way our entire cruise. We loved it. Today we walked all the way up to deck 10 and all the way down to deck 1, inside and out.

 

Here we are on Deck 10, an observation deck

 

 

Lido Deck, Forward Pool… as soon as we began cruising, this became a covered area due to the cooler weather. Nice. It is also interesting to note that on some of our past cruises the hot tubs have been lukewarm but not on this ship, they were steaming and hot and wonderful. There are 6 hot tubs on the Lido deck and always one or two are empty. Double nice.

 

Hubby with Canada Place in the background…

 

View of the Westerdam across from us…they left out about an hour or so before us…

 

Forward Lido Bar (there is another in the Aft section). For a Carnival cruiser here is one BIG difference... the bars were never busy. EVER. At least not the Lido bars. This bar was open for business but the bartender was over to the right arranging some ice. You could always get service immediately and Alaskan beer was buy one bottle, get one free. Never seen that on a ship before. The only time I saw the bars packed was the inside bars near the dining rooms before, during, and after the evening dining hours... lots of well-dressed, good-smelling, gentlemen and ladies enjoying their martinis and wine among other libations.

 

Our drinks before noon on embarkation day...

[erewhon]

Enjoying reading your review. Thank you.

Yes, Vancouver is a beautiful city.

[CupKayke]

The Oosterdam is what I would call "Classic Beautiful"... lots of framed black and white photos of previous/older years of HAL cruise ships lined the halls. I LOVED looking at these photos. Here is one next to our cabin door...

 

This is the large painting by the fifth floor stairwell... there was something about it I liked...

 

Each floor had a marble bench between elevators... they were different on each floor.

 

There was not an open ten-story or even five-story atrium-type area that most larger ships have on the Oosterdam. I'm not sure if this is how all HAL ships are designed or if this is an older ship or a smaller ship. There was a 2-story area near the front office and the main dining rooms. This crystal-filled world was slowing spinning and it is beautiful.

 

We sailed away after a quick and easy muster drill. Everyone showed-up at their muster stations on time, they were quiet and they listened to instructions and this muster drill was the easiest I've ever attended. No one was paged over and over while everyone waited. No one seemed drunk. This IS a difference from our past cruises.

 

We enjoyed sail away from our balcony. Here we are about to go under Lion's Gate Bridge

 

The most people we ever saw on the ship was during our muster drill. Then they all disappeared again. Soon after sailaway I again commented how quiet the ship is... my husband replied they were all taking their afternoon naps... and so we joined them. Maybe these retired folks have the right idea...

[FloridaTourist]

Great review. We are younger as well so enjoying your comments. Love Vancover when we sailed Alaska. We sail the Adriatic Sea on the Oosterdam in April but after it is refurbished in dry dock.

[CupKayke]

The food on Holland America was impressive to this girl who enjoys eating (too much). They have a sandwich station with some great pre-made sandwich options or you can order your sandwich while they make it in front of you. They have a Thailand food area which also has fresh sushi every day. They have a pastries area that has hard, hand-dipped ice creams like strawberry, butter pecan, etc. They have the regular cruise ship salad/fruit/cheese/bread bars and hot food bars. There is more than enough to eat on the Lido deck almost any time of the day. I was impressed with the pastries – items like Key Lime pie and Mango cheesecake and the cookies are soft. The food resembled the other lines except HAL far exceeds in the pastry and sushi area.

The sushi…

 

 

We ordered room service every night. We would walk to the dining room, write down our evening choices from the menu on the outside wall (starters, main courses, & desserts), and later when we were ready to eat, we just called room service and they brought the dining room selections to our room! This is a good perk of HAL not available on Carnival (but is available on Royal Caribbean). We called the first night and inquired and they told us we could order from the dining room menu up until 9pm. Most nights we ordered around 8pm and they would always say 40 minutes or so but it never took that long and they never forgot the A-1 sauce for my husband’s steak or the salt and pepper. The little things mean a lot on HAL and I was impressed with the service. The main food was the same as the other lines, IMHO. I wish they offered more chicken dishes but that is just me. The desserts were fantastic.

 

Below is a blueberry crisp with vanilla ice cream (me) and an “Alaska Gold Sundae” (hubby) which consisted of butter pecan ice cream, butterscotch, nuts and whip cream. I love HAL just because they offer butterscotch – you can hardly find that anywhere these days. Needless to say, we shared the sundae.

 

 

Soo… the first night we ate our room service then we put our tray & dishes in the hallway. They called and asked us to please not do that anymore because they need the hallways clear for walkers and such. I’m sure someone is going to think I’m going to joke about this but no, that was fine by us. Every time they delivered to our room after that they left a small card with the meal that said “Please dial extension XX and we will pick-up your dishes. Please do not leave your dishes in the hallway.” It said something along those lines if not that exactly. I didn’t like calling to have our dishes picked-up so most of the time we took them to the Lido deck and left them in the dirty dish bins. This is different from any other cruise line we have sailed with but it was no biggie and of course we would oblige.

 

So... Day 2... I was up early (2 hour time difference in my favor) so I decided to walk the outer deck 3. This deck is the morning walking/running deck for several passengers. Actually, I also saw several walking and running the outside Lido deck in the mornings too. Here is a picture I quickly snapped during my deck 3 morning walk before more of these “older” people came to lap me :o (true story). It doesn't look like it but the deck goes all the way around the ship. Most people were just walking on this lower deck.

Edited October 11, 2015 by CupKayke

[TraelorMex]

You can really write a neat review. Maybe you should get a job writing for some travel magazine! Reading your reviews is getting me antsy to start our cruise (and visit Vancouver).

 

Thanks

[Marigold252]

What s delight to see a review of one of our favorite cruise line ships from a "young" cruiser! We are young also...in our 70's...and are so glad you appreciate the quiet elegance of HAL. The Oosterdam (we also sailed her to Alaska)is large in the HAL fleet with only two ships larger than her (until next year when the Konigsdam is launched) but all have similar sized atriums each with a unique center fixture/sculpture. The panoramic deck is one of the HAL ships' best features. Looking forward to the rest of your review and your great photos!

[tassietravellers]

Thank you, enjoying your review very much. We will be on the Oosterdam next June for our first cruise. We are the older kids in my 50's, so its be really interesting to read your review, we will be in the Mediterranean, maybe the age mix might be a bit different, but doesnt worry us at all.

Thanks again, loving your review, Deb

[Krazy Kruizers]

Wonderful review.

Your pictures are beautiful.

There are times I have troubles with photobucket as well.

[Keith1010]

Enjoying your review.

 

Keith

[dancourt]

I am enjoying your review and also your photo's.

 

We hope to do a few days exploring Vancouver after our cruise.

 

I was very interested in your comments & photo's of your stay in what sounds like a wonderful city to explore.

 

Susan

[Divi]

Thank you for your review and wonderful pictures. We will be on the Oosterdam next month. Can hardly wait.:):):)