sailingdutchy

Sorry Tony, but that looks less appetizing than anything we ate on the streets of Lima!

Hi Paul , I know Diane would have tackled them and loved them herring is a very nice fish and yes it is not like the BBQ'd Piranha fish we had in Lima :D

Thank you Ann for this excellent review and great pictures and thank you for your and Pat's wonderful company on this ship , as always we had a great time ! Until next time ! :D:D:D

Tony

Thank you. We are sailing 17 days in Feb. Will be nice to get away from the Ottawa cold. Did I see you waving with Tony F on one of the sailaways- glass of wine in hand?

Wow you have a great memory Sahara1 to recognize us from afar . I believe we have cruised together a couple of times on the Prinsendam and the Volendam , two great cruises !

Greetings and until next time ! :D

Our Dutch friends ate those - a lot! They said the eggs were perfectly cooked, sunny side up. Looked good.

 

And the little pancakey things - don't know their name either.

Poffertjes Ann , delicious had not eaten those for many years . :D

Still prefer the old logo with the "Halve Maen" on the stacks

Agree with you 100% that is the rich history of Holland Amerika you can not throw that away just like that !

Thank you Copper !

Captain told Harbour Master he is ready for departure at 8 PM ! Waiting for pilot to come on board .

To everybody on this wonderful World Cruise Bon Voyage and a shout out to our friends Bernd and Mieke have a great cruise see you guys in May ! :D

Tony:D

Koningsdam tested azipods , everything OK Pilot to come on board between 19.00 and 19.15 ready for departure .

Koningsdam delayed further .

Veendam is moving

We'll be looking for Ann, Pat and Cathy this afternoon , hope the weather will improve fast see you back in port in 11 days for the second part of your cruise. Deck 6 just above second to last life boat ! Looking for the Canadian flag and perhaps the one from NewFoundland ! :D:D:D

Tony

Bon Voyage to all on the 2018 Grand World Voyage ! A special shout out to Bernd and Mieke Sanson from The Netherlands , we hope to see you after the cruise in May and hear all about your adventures !

Don't forget the golfclubs Bernd ! Tony :D:D:D

It would make perfect sense that either one of the two current Koningsdam's captains , Captain Bowland or Captain De Vries ( they both live in Canada !!! :D:D:D ) would be one of the captains on the Nieuw Statendam , same class of ship and they are use to the equipment and layout of the new ship .

I would not be surprised if either one is already in Venice to oversee this new built and they likely will take some of the regular officers they work with over to the Nieuw Statendam .

I'll check on the Koningsdam in January and see what the word is when on board !

I wonder when and where and by whom the ship will be christened . The Koningsdam was christened by Queen Maxima of the Netherlands in Amsterdam. Also find it a strange time for the scheduled Premier Cruise out of Italy in December that is if they are on schedule . The Koningsdam Premier cruise was delayed by a couple of months ! :D

For Tamarind food lovers we were on the Volendam in October and dined many times in the Pinnacle where I believe for the first time they had brought a Tamarind chef on board in Shanghai and one page of the Tamarind menu was added to the regular Pinnacle menu , so we were able to have some of each . I thought it was a great idea specially because we dined there 50 % of the time on this cruise and had more variety ! :D:D:D

Thank you for posting this , I was hoping everything would stay the same .Excellent benefit !:D:D:D

Over the last 5 or 6 years we have been to quite a few Le Cirque evenings in the Pinnacle Grill Restaurant . The evenings were always very nice but the menu it seemed had never been changed . Than about a year and a half ago we heard that the contract with Le Cirque New York had been cancelled .

On the Premier Cruise of the Koningsdam we tried out the Sel de Mer and were sold on it right away so over the three weeks we had four different and all great dinners there . Setting , service and menu choices were great ! :DBecause we found the dining room of the Koningsdam extremely noisy during the one lunch we had there , and it looks like an Ikea Cafeteria we stuck to doing a different specialty restaurant each night , The Pinnacle Grill (not as nice as on other ships ) Canaletto , Cullinary Arts Restaurant and our favourites the Tamarind and for lunch the Dutch Cafe :D:D:D. My friends and I thought the restaurant choices were one of the better things on the Koningsdam . We were no happy campers as far as the none existence of a library and that the rich long history of Holland America was nowhere to be seen and the ship was decked out as a modern arts museum :o

The new set up of the Lido Restaurant was also a big mis on the Koningsdam , to get a normal breakfast you had to go from station to station and you had to wait most of the time to be served , even for little things like some pieces of cheese .:o

Nieuw Statendam mediterranen ports.

 

 

While looking for something else, stumbled upon Nieuw Statendam which is scheduled in Dubrovnik on December 2nd 2018, after visiting Venice and scheduled for

Civitavechia afterwards.

 

 

http://www.portdubrovnik.hr/girica1.php

 

 

Some ports in and around Australia have schedules up and including as far as 2020, but only Noordam and Maasdam are reported in that area in December 2018 through February 2019, so no sign Nieuw Statendam is going there for the moment.

Not a very nice time of the year to start a cruise in Civitavecchia Jeroen for a Premier Cruise after the "shake down cruise from Venice to Civ. Hopefully the delivery date will be delayed like it was the case with the Koningsdam ! :D

I believe the Volendam will be in dry dock in Singapore from Nov 24 2017 until Dec 5 2017 .

Thank you for keeping up this list:)

I was on the Volendam in October 2016 and we docked on the river by the Bund. The captain had said this was their regular berth. The Amsterdam also docks there during the World cruise. It should be noted that we were 14 hours late docking due to bad weather and river conditions so tours were cancelled on the first day. We docked at 9pm.

 

 

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Thank you very much for this hastinc . When you mentioned the Amsterdam where our friends are on this years World Cruise so I looked at Captain Jonathans cruise blog and saw that they docked near the Bund near downtown like you had mentioned ! I did not realize that the tide also had so much to do with docking time slots . Thanks :)

Question for people who have been there . When docking in Shanghai does the Volendam always dock on the River near the downtown area ? There are three Cruise terminals in Shanghai two on the bay and this one on the river Huangpu . For some reason HAL could not tell me where we dock ???:rolleyes: It is rather important to know if you go touring because of distances and traffic . Looking forward to 3 days in Shanghai , Tony :):):)

Thank you everybody for your replies . I just got a little nervous because I did not know this happens every year . I just purchased the shares about a year ago , should have done that 10 years ago I guess , I would have been much further ahead ! I will now patiently waite until the end of April before blowing up a storm !

Has anybody heard anything about the future of tha Shareholders benefit program . We have booked a cruise for October and were told to wait until after July 31 to get On Board Credits showing . A friend in the Netherlands was told that the Shareholder program only runs until July 31, 2017 and that there is NO official word yet that this program will be extended after July 31 ! They were told to take up contact after the end of April to see if it will be extended . This from HAL head office .

Hi Joyce and Rick , I just got through your excellent album and wonderful description of your cruise and land tour in Alaska . Nice to see you also enjoyed the Canadian portion !:)

I think there is little chance that Martha ever would like to do this (there are no palm trees in Alaska !:D ) so for me it was that much more of a treat to see all the great pictures that knowing you guys for a large part were shot by Joyce , she has a very good eye for that and I really liked all the very detailed descriptions that you have put together of this adventure .

This should be a real help for people who have booked a cruise like this or are thinking about it !

Thank you , great to see this, and BTW I have not given up yet on the Rotterdam , there should be a good drop beginning of September I think once the Explore 4 is over .

Last March we had a fantastic band on our Trans Atlantic cruise , the Harry James Band on the Oosterdam who played 3 sessions each night in the crows nest . There were quite a few ballroom dancers present who specially came for Fred Radke and the Harry James Band . I was told they do that once or twice a year . Maybe ask HAL when this is schedueled again ?

On other ships we see some great dancing in the Ocean bar where a trio would be playing or in the crows nest with a DJ .

There is NO ballroom dancing on the Koningsdam that I saw just some jive or other modern stuff when BBking is playing (TOO LOUD ! )

I had been looking at a couple of cruises for the beginning of next year . All of a sudden they went up about CA$ 1100.00 pp for a 30 day cruise and a couple of weeks later another CA$600.00 pp. So a few drinks , a Pinnacle dinner is not worth this so called special ! Difference in price for the two of us is CA$3380.00 !:confused::(