POA1

Daily Program from April 1, 2024 And, because we care, JPEGs and a PDF. 2024-04-01-Daily-Rotterdam.pdf

The Easter Service was held in the Main Stage showroom. While not exactly packed, there were more people here than there were on the pub crawl, so that's a good sign. We did not have musical accompaniment to the hymns, but there was a a family who definitely sang lead parts in their congregation's choir. They helped us to sound pretty good.

This was our first cruise over Easter. We weren't sure what to expect, but we were absolutely delighted by the Easter Service. As many of you know, all Holland America cruises have Catholic Priests onboard. This was very fortunate for us, because the Very Rev. Louis Phillips of Portland Maine was on the Rotterdam and graciously volunteered to lead the interdenominational service. I have attached a PDF of the "bulletin" if you are interested. 2024-03-31-Easter-Service-Rotterdam.pdf

The HIA-included fares havehad refundable deposits going back to at least last spring, probably earlier.

Daily Program - Easter Sunday - March 31, 2024 Again, JPEGs and a PDF. 2024-03-31-Daily-Rotterdam.pdf

The Rotterdam Art Tour - with the formerly secret next-to-last Observation Deck page. If you have the old version, with the missing page, please keep it. It could be really valuable on the secondary collector's market. (I'm not saying that it will rival the "Inverted Jenny" postage in value, but you never know.) Rotterdam-Art-Tour-2024-04-fixed.pdf

Day 2 Daily - Saturday, March 30, 2024 JPEGs and a PDF -- which are hopefully in order. 😀 2024-03-30-Daily-Rotterdam.pdf

Oh, heck. Let me see what I have left in scan images. These were two-sided pages with 4 content pages per side. They had to be rotated and cropped, so I'm kind of mad at myself for the error. Thanks for pointing it out. I'll fix it,

Laundry - From the "Almost Pointless Because The Ships Are Heading to Europe and the Prices Are Different There" file... Text version: LAUNDRY PACKAGE OPTIONS LAUNDRY BY THE BAG $ 25 All the laundry you can fit in our blue Holland America Line laundry bag. *Eco-friendly dry cleaning is not included. *Please allow 48 hours for your laundry to be returned. UNLIMITED LAUNDRY AND PRESSING 12 - Day Cruise — Unlimited Laundry* - $ 102 9 - Day Cruise — Unlimited Laundry* - $ 76.5 UNLIMITED PRESSING SERVICE 12 - Day Cruise — Unlimited Pressing* - $ 48 9 - Day Cruise — Unlimited Pressing* - $ 36 For all of the above offers, please allow 48 hours for your laundry to be returned. We hope you enjoy our laundry service onboard. In order to process everyone's laundry in a timely manner before disembarking, we kindly ask you to send your final laundry to us no later than 48 hours before your disembarkation date. Should you wish to purchase the below items please advise your Stateroom Steward*: Blue Cloth Laundry Bag for $15 Laundry Return Garment Bag for $6 Holland America Line SAVOR THE JOURNEY *- This should really read: "If you are a thief and decide to steal these items, please make sure that you want to pay this much. 😉

Thank you. It's not normally something I'd pay a lot of attention to, and we tended to have a PG lunch schedule conflict. It's good to know that we weren't rejected.

Lunch was offered every day. The two major changes were the addition of the sushi/poke options and the deletion of the Lido lunch menu. The Dive-In and New York Pizza and Deli remain. Removing the Lido makes sense to me. I've seen it go sideways when a guest "would have picked something different" from what was delivered. If you really want something from the buffet, it's a short elevator ride and a brief walk away. (Just my opinion.) Lunch was delivered in a reasonable amount of time. And it was as hot as it would have been if I walked it back myself. That being said, we prefer the cabanas on the Vista & Signature class ships. On them, your cabana has a table and two chairs inside the cabana itself. The Pinnacle ships' cabanas only have the two loungers and two small side tables inside. Lunch, and working in the cabana, are easier on the older ships.

A few observations on the cabana amenities: We kind of approached the amenities with the mindset of "scheduled amenities." If you have experienced the pool amenities at a Four Seasons or Ritz Carlton, you know that they follow a certain schedule in terms of delivering things. If you are by the pool when they're passing frozen bananas, for instance, you'll get them. When I first saw the amenities list, my mind went directly to the the schedule model. That's not really what was going on in the Retreat. The issue was with my assumptions, not the product, per se. We received anything we asked for. It's just that it took a few days to figure that out. Our guys usually offered us breakfast or coffee if we arrived in the morning. DW had a cappuccino on occasion. I usually had water. (They kept bringing water, despite the "one bottle" written on the sheet.) We had breakfast in the Club Orange dining room most mornings, and room service once. We may try to investigate the Retreat breakfast options next cruise, if only for the sake of science. Our cabana stewards were fine. Unfortunately for them, and probably every cabana steward going forward, we had amazing cabana guys on the Zuiderdam during our Christmas cruise in 2018. They will be hard to equal, let alone top. That doesn't mean we'll stop looking. One of other things people asked about was whether they refilled your sparkling wine. They did. A lot. Now that we've had a week of our cruise post mortem*, we know we need to do a better job managing our Retreat experience. We have high expectations for March. *-Refers to the post-project review, not anything dead.

I took a photo of these while we were on the ship, but the scan is easier to read. Cabana Amenities: ON ARRIVAL One Bottle of Still & Sparkling Water Fresh Fruit Plate Choice of Specialty Coffee Fresh Juice Selection of Danish & Pastries MID-MORNING SNACK Virgin Piña Colada Smoothie Guacamole & Chips Chocolate Chip Cookies LUNCH Poke Bowl* Choice of Tuna, Salmon, and Tofu OR Sushi Platter* Spicy Tuna Roll, Salmon Nigiri, Nami Signature, Maki Roll, California Roll Please ask your waiter for the Dive-In & NYD Menu AFTERNOON SNACK Watermelon & Pineapple Skewers Homemade Gelato or Milkshake BEVERAGE A Glass of Complimentary Sparkling Wine

The Zaandam and the Koningsdam are the only ships in the fleet we've not been on. We were on a many of the retired ships as well.

FWIW -- If I'm ever going to go on a really long cruise, I'm going to have to streamline my workflow. I am slicing the paper into scan-able size, then scanning it. Those files are converted to PNG or JPEG and compressed. Then, the uncompressed files are used to create the PDF, which is optimized at the end. I would probably drop over if I attempted a @richwmn sized project, 😁

Embarkation Daily Program - March 29, 2024 JPEGs of the pages and a PDF of the whole scan. 2024-03-29-Daily-Rotterdam.pdf

You may be right. I am not ruling out being shunned though. I wonder what the definition of "longer cruises" is? We're doing a 12 late next year, but our vacation schedules will preclude anything in the 14+ day range for a few years.

Post 3 of 3 of the Art Tour - PDF at the end. Rotterdam-Art-Tour-2024-04.pdf

Post 2 of 3 of the Art Tour:

The Art Tour: These are pretty big files. The Department of Scanning Things scanned them as PNG files so they wouldn't get too pixelated when uploading them. They also created a PDF if you want to see the guide before you cruise. These are big files. If you don't want to deal with large files, feel free to skip the next few posts. I will put 5 images in each post and attach the PDF to the third post in the series. I ran these through a PNG compression program, but they're 300 DPI and pretty large.

I checked with Michelle. We did not receive an invitation to a Mariner's Lunch, I don't know if there was none, or if they held one and shunned us.

Having grown up in the Northeast, I did make the assumption about February & Easter. We were most concerned about the Big 3 school districts in Southern Florida: Palm Beach County, Broward County, and Miami-Dade. They're all on break the week after our cruise. I think Martin County is the closest that has "our week" for break. Up in Central Florida, Orange & Osceola Counties are off ob break over Patty's Day. I am hoping those lovely people and their wonderful children will gravitate toward Port Canaveral. (In case you're reading this, parents: Parking by Port Everglades is really expensive and hard to come by. We had to buy a condo down here over 20 years ago - just to have a place to park! There. That should do it. 😉)

I don't recall a Mariner's Lunch invitation, but I will check with the boss and see if I missed it. We liked the room for what may seem like a silly reason: The sofa and desk are not opposite each other. They're on the same wall. That means that the little square table ("Bashing Knees Since 2016!") did not get in the way as much.I can see the appeal of the various flavors of bump-out rooms, particularly the ones with the enormous balconies. A good friend of ours had one of those on the Rotterdam and it gives you a huge amount of outdoor space. Easily enough for the band to set up and still leave room for the dance floor.* We selected the forward one because it's closer to the Retreat Cabana area and we spend a fair amount of time there. *Making that up. Unless you had an accordionist, there would be very little room for dancing,

Excellent question! I don't know off the top of my head, but I am going to be scanning all the daily programs later today, so I'll check. We usually make a Pinnacle Grill lunch reservation for the day the lunch would be held, so I wasn't paying attention to see if there was one.

I'm not so sure on the kids. Easter is April 20th next year. The school breaks should be clustered in February, around President's Day and in April around Easter. In any case, we'll be in Club Orange and have a Retreat Cabana.