Mtn2Sea

Please let me extend my deepest condolences. While no words are even remotely adequate, I do hope your memories of better days bring you some comfort.

Really enjoying your review! So sorry to hear about your accident, but glad you’ll still be able to visit Keukenhof Gardens. We were there on April 18 last year and they were beautiful.

We’ve only been to Sydney once. Because none of the ship’s excursions appealed to us, we decided to just walk around some of the town. We visited two old houses and two old churches before eating lunch at a waterside restaurant. For us, the stop in Sydney was low key, but nevertheless enjoyable.

Thanks for taking the time to write such a wonderful review with great photos!

We docked in Cobh last May while aboard the Zuiderdam and took an excursion to the City of Waterford, where we visited the Waterford Visitor Center, which has a showroom as well as a small production line. The factory itself closed in 2009 and most Waterford crystal is now produced in other countries. After our tour seeing how the crystal is produced, we had lunch in a nearby hotel. On the way back to Cobh, we had a brief photo shoot of the Lismore Castle. A couple of photos showing the beginning stages of the crystal production. Two photos from the city of Waterford. Two photos from the bus ride to Waterford. Lismore Castle Two photos from Cobh.

I’m late posting today. We got home last night from our Amazon Explorer to find an industrial dehumidifier and numerous commercial fans in our condo. A water leak occurred in a unit two floors above us. They indicated the equipment will be here until Thursday or Friday. We stopped in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for the day almost exactly five years ago while on the Amsterdam. We took a long excursion to see the elephants at the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. Our first stop involved walking down a pedestrian street, which is shared with the elephants, to a river where they bring elephants for their baths. We ate lunch at a very nice hotel before walking back to the main road where the orphanage is located. The word for the day was HOT. The air conditioned bus ride back to the ship was a welcomed relief, provided you didn’t watch all the crazy driving around you. This statue was outside a stationary store.

The Zaandam had an early sailaway from Roseau, Dominica, today. We have one more stop before getting back to Florida. Dominica Sailaway.mov

A year ago this month while on the Zuiderdam, we stopped at today’s port, La Possession, which is located on Reunion Island, a French overseas territory. We took an all day excursion that took us into the interior of the island, which has impressive natural features created by long dormant volcanoes. In addition to seeing magnificent scenery that included numerous waterfalls and steep mountainous terrain, we spent some time in a couple of small villages, Salazie and Hell Bourg, and had lunch in a small hotel with views of the mountains. Our last stop was at the Roulof Vanilla Plantation, which is being run by the fourth generation of the family that established the plantation. Reunion is a beautiful island, except for the traffic.

We stopped at Luderitz, Namibia, a year ago this month while on the Zuiderdam. After going through immigration, we took a boat that went to Halifax Island, which is a small island that in the 1800’s had 400,000 African penguins, but today only has a few thousand. Also on the island were, of all things, flamingos. Although our boat stayed just a little offshore, it was hard to get good pictures since the penguins were pretty small compared to many of the other types of penguins. For a portion of our trip, dolphins accompanied our boat. We also saw a few Cape Fur Seals on the trip to Halifax Island.

GH010640.mp4 We had a nice sail away from Tobago this afternoon.

Zaandam’s early departure today from Sint Maarten was delayed slightly due to a tour bus getting caught up in traffic. Beautiful sail away. My Movie 1.mov

I’m currently on the Zaandam. So far, shows have been at 7:30 and 9:00. It’s been awhile, but I have seen a ship schedule a show early for late diners and the second show for early diners. Such a schedule was not every night - just a rare occurrence.

I think it depends on where the ship is stopping. We stopped in Falmouth last year and took a rafting expedition. No problem whatsoever. The gated port area was built for cruise ships and does not have the in-your-face local vendors. Not much to do other than typical stores catering to cruisers, but at least you can feel safe walking around the port area. Even on our excursion we did not encounter the typical Jamaica issues. Our first visit to Ocho Rios was in 1987 and as others have indicated, it was a memorable experience! Since then, we’ve tried to avoid itineraries with Jamaica. The two other times we did stop in Ocho Rios, we stayed on the ship.

Bon Voyage! Hope you have a great cruise.

We stopped in Punta Arenas, our port of the day, in January 2018 while aboard the Zaandam. The locals say it’s the southern most city on the continent of South America, which differentiates itself from Ushuaia, Argentina, which is said to be the most southern city in South America, but is technically on Tierra del Fuego, a very large island. Our excursion for the day took us to an outdoor museum that has several replicas of ships that sailed in this area. The first was Magellan’s Victoria, which was the only ship out of the original five to complete the circumnavigation. The second ship was the Beagle, which had Charles Darwin as a passenger on its second voyage. The third ship was Henry Shackelton’s Ancud, which was used to explore Antarctica. After climbing around the ships, we then rode about an hour to visit the National Strait of Magellan Park. We walked around a small museum/interpretation center and then visited Fort Bulnes. The Captain announced that we had wind gusts that night which reached 90 knots - I wouldn’t know since I was sound asleep.