MrsMuir

Kazu, thanks so much for your excellent list. It's easy to read with your consistent format. Best of all, now that I'm on it, it seems much more real!

Mrs M

I meant to say, "our disembarkation in Rome." I'm out of practice here but will warm up with a cruise to look forward to.

Mrs M

Ruth C, I was so happy to see that you will be on our Gems of the Mediterranean in October. I hope that we will get to meet each other somewhere between Venice and our embarkation in Rome. I see you are going on across The Pond as well. I am traveling with a friend who is a first-time cruiser. She's a real trouper to book a 19-day voyage with the likes of me!

Happy planning!

Mrs Muir

I forgot to say I'll be on Nieuw Amsterdam. She is a lovely ship with a great staff.

Jacqui, I am happy to ask you to please add to your list:

October 7, 2015: 19-Day Gems of the Mediterranean, Collector's Voyage

Mrs Muir, traveling with a pal because DH is happy being a Docent at the museum.

Thanks so much!

Mrs M

Trisha, I have been away from CC and just learned of your beloved's passing. My heart goes out to you. I have followed your posts for many years and have often quoted your byline, "Happiness is a moving floor." It may seem like a long time until you are happy again. In the meanwhile know that many wish you well as you take this difficult journey. You are not alone.

Mrs Muir

Alcarondas, thank you for an enjoyable and well-written read. You would be fun to travel with.

Mrs M

I forgot to mention that Santorini was overcrowded when we were there. We did not enjoy our day there except for stopping for a cold beer to get away from the crowds. Santorini may be lovely when the ships aren't calling, but the queue to take the cable car back down to the harbor took over an hour. It all depends on how many ships call at the same time.

Mrs M

Tell you what, jka: send me on one or both and I'll report back. Both of those itineraries are wonderful. If I had to choose, I would choose Door #1. Here's why:

1. Nieuw Amsterdam is a beautiful ship and one of our favorites of the newer HAL vessels. We have never been aboard Zuiderdam, but we have been on her sister, Westerdam, and she did not make as much of an impression as the other HAL ships, especially Nieuw Amsterdam.

2. The itinerary includes the ports of Dubrovnik and Kotor as well as some other must-sees such as Pompeii and Barcelona. The other itinerary includes Athens, another must-see destination, but for a one-day port stop it is a bit of a rush to visit the Parthenon.

This is, of course, subjective. Either choice sounds good. You have a wonderful decision to make, and you really can't go wrong.

Mrs M

Isn't the Nieuw Amsterdam lovely?

I have never attended a religious service onboard, but I would be sure to be there if I knew you were the celebrant, F. Himself.

Thank you for your positive posts.

Mrs M

correction: no one out on the bow could see in our forward-facing windows. Sorry for the confusion.

We had an upgrade on Nieuw Amsterdam from a Verandah to an accessible stateroom. It was closest to the bow and the balcony was extra-large because of that configuration. We had lots of space and liked the extra windows looking forward, even though we could see out and others could see in when they opened up the bow for Venice and Istanbul. The curtains were closed at night for navigation reasons -- we were right below the Bridge.

We liked everything about the stateroom except for the bathroom, which was utilitarian. It was spacious, but unattractive with the extra shower head adjacent to the toilet. Because it was wheelchair accessible, there was no shelf under the sink, and the sink area was small. I had to be creative in order to store all my potions as well as DH's in just one series of shelves instead of the usual two above the sink.

We couldn't get used to the fact that there was no door-sill (or whatever it's called) into the bathroom (wheelchair accessibility). I would automatically step over the nonexistent barrier. Frankly, I like that door sill because it means we're on a ship! I would also stumble on the way to the sliding door because it was sloped for wheelchairs and rolling onto the balcony.

But we loved being so far forward, loved the extra space and the larger balcony. We usually reserve early and as far forward as possible to avoid balcony smokers -- and just because we like experiencing the feel of the waves. So we were, overall, very happy with this surprise upgrade.

My Daddy and I had always shared a love of the sea and ships. I'm a poor swimmer and I always say that I prefer to be ON the water, not IN it.

This is counter-intuitive, but I really became eager to be aboard a ship in 1972 when I saw "The Poseidon Adventure" for the first time. I wanted to be a part of that world, though not upside-down!

My first voyage was on a Silja Line ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki in 1975. My friend Joan and I shared a claustrophobic interior cabin with bunk beds and a little bathroom. It was quite posh, we discovered, because many passengers just slept on deck or in the public rooms. I loved being on the Baltic Sea, the feel and sound of the engines; everything! I woke up very early to see the sun rise over the water. That's when I vowed to go to sea again.

The very next summer Joan and I boarded the late, great Pacific Princess for a Mexican Riviera Cruise. Next was a two-week Alaska Cruise, a one-week working cruise on the Island Princess, and then the Panama Canal on the PP. Marriage and working life intervened until 2000, when DH and I boarded ms Rotterdam for a 12-day Baltic cruise. That's when we got hooked on HAL.

If we could afford to, I would book at least one cruise each year. DH suffers on long economy flights, so the next cruise will probably be from the West Coast. I still long for a Crossing on a Cunarder, specifically the QM2. We were married aboard the Queen Mary in 1978.

OK, I'll stop now. It's been three months since our last voyage, and each day that ache only gets stronger.

Mrs M

Thanks so much for the fascinating drydock video. I know I always talk about my one-week career aboard the late, great Pacific Princess, but this video brought it all back again.

In about 1977, the Pacific Princess came into Los Angeles -- or San Pedro? -- for a few days in drydock. My sweetheart in those days was an Engineering officer, so I was able to visit the ship after work one evening. My first impression was how high up the 20,000 ton ship looked out of water. With an escort I climbed the scaffolding in near darkness while balancing a container of chocolate-chip cookies.

There was a party in an officer's day room with the usual complement of British officers, plus the Italian chef. The men loved the cookies, which were the slice-and-bake kind and took maybe 15 minutes to make. The person who raved the most was the chef, who thought they were home-made.

Fun times........RIP, my beautiful first ship.

Mrs M

Thanks, Kazu, for your wonderful sendoff, complete with maps, and everyone's good wishes.

We are starting our adventure in a fun way: taking Amtrak from Flagstaff overnight to Fullerton, CA. Beats that long drive across the desert -- and the white-knuckle, five-freeway drive to Long Beach. We'll spend the weekend with my sister and we fly on Monday.

Others have written excellent reviews and photo journals of this cruise. If we encounter anything different I will let you all know. Got my Tagalog and Indonesian flash cards, my Dutch grammar book, and phrase books in Italian and Greek. I should look up courtesy phrases in Turkish before I shut down the computer.

Thanks again, Kazu!

Mrs M

Add me to the list of HAL friends who are encouraging you to just enjoy your cruise. If HAL were paying you to spend hours each day blogging about your cruise, then maybe. But that's not the case. I compare live blogs to experiencing one's holiday through the lens of a camera. Studies have shown that a camera is a barrier to one's enjoyment and memory of living.

Send us a review later. In the meantime, just relax and live in the moment.

Linda (formerly of Seattle, who watched you depart on your first Grand Voyage in 2009 from Seattle.)

That's wonderful for you, congratulations. We were offered upsells today from a Verandah VE to a Signature Suite or a Neptune Suite, but the offers were way too high for our pocketbook. Like DH said, "We have a balcony already." I wish they'd come back with a lower offer; does this ever happen?

Mrs M

I, too, am glad for Venice, but I'm also glad that our cruise out of and into Venice takes place very soon because we've never been there. Would that the cruise companies just scale back on orders for these megaships!

Mrs M

Thank you for the link. I found it helpful. My sister always tells me she "writes" the alphabet with her toes during long flights. Great idea, but she flies Business Class. In Sardine Class it's hard to lift your feet, much less write with them. We're flying "Premium Economy" on Delta soon, so I hope the extra cost we paid for Premium will allow me to extricate my feet from underneath the seat in front of me. Provided it isn't reclined, that is.

Mrs M.

Tusen takk for such a great review, though you are only halfway through. DH and I are doing the first 12 days that you covered so beautifully. Your photos and review have made me even more excited.

Mrs M

I did laundry ONCE, on our first cruise on Rotterdam. Never again. Finding enough quarters was a pain, and I was annoyed to see that there were only women in the laundry facility, cheerful as if doing laundry was their duty. Now we send out my husband's underwear and socks and shirts, using the unlimited laundry plan. I hand-wash my unmentionables and hang them over the tub.

Vacation is not for doing laundry. Or cooking. That's why I can't understand the appeal of RVs. Don't get me started....

Mrs M

Please continue your well-written review. We'll be aboard Nieuw Amsterdam -- for the first time -- very soon.

Mrs M

Near Nyhavn, along the waterfront across from the Opera House, there are some restaurants at the Hotel Admiral. One is casual, outdoors and not too horribly pricey. Inside, the Salt Restaurant is very good. I can't vouch for the prices since we were a large group. We really like the Copenhagen Admiral Hotel and have stayed there three times since 2000. Check TripAdvisor to learn if the construction noise is still going on. We were last there in September 2013.

As others have noted, you can buy a meal at one of the dozens of places lining Nyhavn, and you get to people watch. That's better than watching your wallet in Copenhagen. We love it.

Mrs M

What an interesting topic. I am a List Maker. Making lists for packing and sightseeing puts me in control and lessens anxiety. What if I forget important travel documents? If not for my To Do lists, which I rewrite about every six days, I wouldn't have renewed our passports in time for our next cruise. I make lists for my clothes so I can determine the color scheme and avoid overpacking.

For each cruise I make up a three ring binder divided into sections for the ship (deck plan, tonnage, year built, etc.), the hotel, the flights, facts about the ports, currencies and how to say Please and Thank You in the languages we will encounter -- including aboard the ship.

And what pleasure this gives me. DH just packs what I have set aside for him and enjoys the experience.

I must get back to the fold out guide to Greek and Roman mythology for our next cruise. Why not exercise the "little grey cells," as Poirot would say?

Mrs M

I was mailed an Atlas in 2012 after calling Seattle directly and verbally twisting the arm of the customer rep -- in a friendly fashion, of course. I didn't ask for one last year because I had looked cold reality in the eye and accepted the fact that our cruising days would be few and far between now that we had both retired. I even threw out the HAL Atlas, along with many other lovely atlases from Cunard and Princess which had been sent to me without having to beg for them.

Well, you can imagine how long that resolve lasted. Our financial adviser understands my travel addiction and has creatively enabled us to ENJOY the fruits of my 46-year career, at least once in awhile. Now I wish I still had that old atlas, if only to peruse the deck plans and dream. It's just not the same online. If we can't snag an atlas on our upcoming NA cruise I'll just have to wheedle another one out of Seattle.

Mrs M -- so happy to have a cruise in our future!