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I found the submarine tour quite interesting.  The aquarium and Titanic part of the museum were ok. 
 

I did enjoy the farmers market although it was smaller than I expected. We walked around town and had cider and some pastries. 
 

I overheard a couple in the MDR that night say that they had done some research and had made reservations at a Michelin star restaurant for lunch that day and it was amazing. 

I’m back and yes I needed Euros. I bought cheese and flowers. 

We were fine all day with credit cards. 
 

Amazing Waffle: Laurence Take Away, Walstraat 4, 8000 Brugge, Belgium 

This was the most amazing thing I ate on the whole 18 day trip! 

On 5/23/2024 at 10:29 AM, bobndee said:

We hooked up with a group on the Cruise Critic Roll Call for our cruise. We hired a van to take us to Bruges, drop us off and pick us up at a specified time. It cost less per person and we drove right into the town center square.

We did the same thing. Used https://www.airpotaxiservice.be

Oops. I responded about the wrong port 

We stayed there last month. It was fine for one night. I would say it was about 95% as good as a normal Hampton Inn. There is an outside cruise shuttle company that stops there. I would stay there again. Convenient to the port. 
 

This is not the area where you can walk around and have a lot of restaurants and scenic activities. 

On 6/3/2024 at 4:07 PM, rodndonna said:

If you're not in a rush - emailing  - Onboardbilling@hollandamerica.com works. I have used it in the past.

 

It's slower, but easier than phoning (at least for me).

I had success with using this route.  Emailed on Thursday. Response on Tuesday.
I  had the Elite Beverage Package.  I had made a number of additional tips on the cruise. While onboard it showed as tips. Once on land and looking at my final statement it showed as if I had gone over the SBP price and was being charged the difference.   I asked they give me the money back if they couldn’t readjust it back to tips.  So they offered me a refund of $6.50 ( correct amount) or I could take an OBC for of $20 if I preferred. 

3 hours ago, BetsyS. said:

Thank you for all your reports and pictures. I enjoyed reading your updates. My stepfather and I will board the Zuiderdam on July 20 in Boston. We're looking forward to it.

Have fun!

On 5/26/2024 at 4:23 PM, cccole said:

I also want to tell you how much I enjoyed your "first" live.  It was fabulous.  Your descriptions and photos were great, made me want to visit some of your ports.  I loved that you took your water colors.  Do you have a set that you travel with?  And can you share any of them?   I'm thinking of doing the same on a 28 day Islands of the South Pacific cruise, but I need to practice.  Thank you again for letting us cruise with you both.  Have a great visit with family, Cherie

I didn’t paint as much as I thought that I would. A few painters got together in the mornings and painted together in the lido area. I never made it to that. There are smaller palettes made for travel than what I brought. Sometimes they are called travel palettes or even nano palettes.  Below  is a picture of mine which is more of a standard small palette. You can see that all of my supplies and the palette fit in a ziplock bag.  I only packed three brushes. I could’ve gotten by with one brush. I use a mix of different brands of tube paint that I squeeze into the palette and let dry. 

Final Thoughts:

I am back home. What a trip! We loved it. We loved Holland America.
 

I would really enjoy a TA again and can only imagine doing it on HA (or Cunard $$ 😬) Most likely I’ll be cruising on other lines before that happens though due to our being budget cruisers and living near the port of Tampa. 
 

Food: Very good. Strong points were fish and bread followed by beef and veggies. Dessert in general and cheese selection in the lido were the weak points.
 

Entertainment and Activities: Very good live entertainment. Crafts were uninspiring. Enrichment was 50/50. Daniel was great the guest speaker was not. Plenty to do. 
 

Service: Very friendly. Our serving team was OK our cabin stewards were great. Front desk excellent. 
 

Ship:Good condition for its age. Clean. Understated elegance with lovey art. Lots of pleasant areas to see the ocean from inside. Crows Nest and Promenade deck really added to the experience. I could easily have done this cruise in an inside cabin due to all of these areas. I do miss an old school atrium that goes all the way to the top and has a bar/entertainment on the lowest level.  

Cabin: It had everything we needed and we were quite comfortable. The bed and bedding were nice. Plenty of storage for us although a drawer in the desk would be nice. The tub which I was looking forward to was small. For many it would not work to use as a tub. 

Fellow Passengers: Very friendly and polite. A really nice bunch of people to be around. Sometimes we did get tired of talking about cruises and travel though. That was the main theme of conversation. 

Overall I would highly recommend Holland America. 
 

Thanks for coming along with me!

Thanks for the review

The Rolling Stone Lounge band was exceptional on my recent cruise! Also, the guest entertainers in the main theater were very good as well. I was on a TA so not sure how that affected the amount of guest entertainment or not. One was a  fabulous violinist. 

On 5/28/2024 at 7:12 AM, Niagarawine said:

I just checked the new drinks menu and pretty well every cocktail is over 11 dollars, confirmed it with my husband. Just doesn’t make sense with the have it all which is expensive.

Yes but my package was the elite one. My limit was $15 a drink. 

@Niagarawine I just looked at my statement now that we’re back on land.  I have a bunch of .50 cent charges too. It looks like a charge for going over the drink price. I had the elite package so that shouldn’t have happened. I think it is actually where I often added an extra .50 tip. When onboard and I checked my account it looked like it was the tips not an extra charge for drinks.  I’ll havetoinvestigate further 

On 5/24/2024 at 10:08 PM, Mickb said:

We are looking to book a transfer return trip from Zeebrugge to Bruges for a cruise we are doing in October.Would you be kind enough to give the website or booking email of Air Pro taxis please? A recommendation is worth a great deal.

thank you

Mick

I may have had the name wrong. It was most likely Airpo taxi.  Here is a website that I found. Airpotaxiservice.be

If memory serves me right our driver was Jeff. 
 

This was a wonderful cruise and experience. We are now visiting family in Germany. I’ll do a sum up of my thoughts after  I’ve mulled  it all over for a few days 😃 

Two small luggage storage areas on each end of the car. Best for carryon or smaller Almost useless overhead bins. A purse or half full backpack would fit there. No one used them. A carryon can just fit under your seat. For our larger piece we slid it under the spot where two rows meet backwards. 

Disembarkation Day- Ijmuiden

After an MDR breakfast we just walked off the ship. (We did self-assist) There was a very brief check of our passport with 2  questions and a stamp. 
 

It took about 25 minutes for an Uber to come. We went to the airport for about $62.11 with tip. The HAL shuttle would’ve been $39 pp. 

Once at the airport we went down one level to the train station. We took the intercity train to Venlo. You just scan your credit card as you walk down to to the tracks and scan again when you leave. It was quite easy. There is not a lot of storage for luggage. After a time we figured out how to get it out of the way. That was a bit stressful at first. 

The  pea soup was good but the version on Dutch/Orange night was better. 
 

The asparagus was very good. I was so happy to see it on the menu as I didn’t get to try white asparagus while in Bruges today. 
 

The brisket was so tender and tasty. The tri tip beef was also really good. The perfect plate would’ve been the brisket with the sides from the tri tip beef  

The Baked Alaska was a much more manageable size than PG’s. The ice cream to cake ratio was better and the cherries were tastier. (The quality of the ice cream wasn’t as good). Overall I prefer this version. 
 

We caught Inna’s  second show. She is quite talented. Then we caught the last two sets of Rolling Stone.  It was excellent again. I’m not sure how long their contracts are but Christina announced she unexpectedly had to leave but hopes to be back. She really brought the whole show together. Hopefully her replacement will be just as good. 

Went up to the Crows Nest one last time before dinner. Someone counted and they could  see 43 ships.  
 

The wind farm was also amazing but I didn’t get a picture 

2 hours ago, Mickb said:

We are looking to book a transfer return trip from Zeebrugge to Bruges for a cruise we are doing in October.Would you be kind enough to give the website or booking email of Air Pro taxis please? A recommendation is worth a great deal.

thank you

Mick

@dragonmaster can you help out please? 
 

I didn’t personally make the arrangements. 

50 minutes ago, New Jersey Pat said:

Enjoying your posts, especially since we will be on this ship in July.  Do you know who the Cellar Master is?

Someone helped us tonight with a wine question named Julius. I am not sure if he is the Celler Master or was someone working under him. 

29 minutes ago, BadgerRedux said:

That's very interesting; my husband likes to watch a little YouTube every day and I was thinking we needed to get the more expensive streaming option to support that.   I think you mentioned on another thread that you thought Premium filtered some of the streaming websites (Hulu, Netflix, etc.) but I was surprised that they wouldn't also filter out YouTube.

I was surprised too. 
It may be because people post personal videos to YouTube while on their trips, similar to Instagram/FB. So maybe they consider it a social media  platform 

We were docked next to Rotterdam today.  It really didn’t look that much bigger than Zuiderdam. 
 

Also, I’m not sure why or how but some staff seem to know my nickname.