Back to Back Cruises

[PRINSENDAM]

Last year Ruth and I did 9 back to back cruises. It ran for 90 days and involved 6 different ships. There were a total of 83 cruise nights.... 23 formal nights, 15 informal and 45 casual!

 

We kicked off in mid September, flying Sydney to LAX. We had two night os the old QUEEN MARY before flying up to Vancouver to Join STATENDAM... to Alaska then back to Vancouver and an extra couple of days to San Diego.

 

Flew from San Diego to Barcelona and joined the old NOORDAM for a 10 day cruise which got us to Civitavecchia. Disembarked there and flew to Trieste to two night then on to Venice to join PRINSENDAM.

 

Three b2b on PRINSENDAM (33 nights)... Venice - Athens, Athens - Lisbon, Lisbon - Lauderdale. FANTASTIC!!!!

 

On arrival Lauderdale we went to Pier 66 for a night then next day embarked on OOSTERDAM for 2 x 7 day Caribbean cruises. On the second return to Lauderdale we disembarked and walked across the pier and embarked on WESTERDAM for another 7 day Caribbean.

 

From Lauderdale we then flew to New York... 2 nights then on to London and Southamptom to join QE2 for the crossing back to New York. Back in NY we were 'ashore' for one night before catching a glight back to Sydney... arriving home Christmas Eve... one year ago.

 

We planned the entire operation from start to finish, cruises, flights, hotels, transfers etc etc/ The itinerary and all the vouchers were printed out and inserted into a binder... some 35 pages of information.... we called it 'CRUISE 2004'. Almost as long as a world cruise but it required considerably more planning. In the end, after it was all over, we noted that we had not experienced one single glitch. Nothing went wrong and everything 100% according to plan. The only single thing that I did that was kind of 'careless' was to book a hotel in Trieste.... that was not quite in Trieste but was about ten miles outside the city. Didn't matter as it was a great place to stay.

 

We kick off again in January on 'CRUISE 2006'. This will be Auckland to Sydney in STATENDAM then NOORDAM maiden cruise to Caribbean followed by AMSTERDAM from San Diego to Hawaii. Then we fly up to San Francisco to join SAGA RUBY for a trans-canal which eventually gets us to Bermuda on 14th April.

 

The only way to go is with HAL's Annual Sailing Schedule. It is far and away the most useful brochure... you can see what every ship is doing at a glance.

 

Our CRUISE 2004 was lots of fun and because we were sailing on different ships with different people (mostly) every ten days or so it meant that we only had to pack for about two weeks.... and make extensive use of the laundry!

 

Stephen