OlsSalt

Banoffee Pie - and second the Peanut Butter Pie. Liked the Oatmeal Chocolate bars in the Lido this time. And the MDR creme brûlée was excellent. Room service chocolate cake is always rich, moist and excellent. I do believe they use the "good chocolate" when making HAL chocolate desserts. Holland after all is a known chocolate country.

Yes, but it is a modest surcharge. It is excellent and well worth the small surcharge price, when compared to buying a quality gelato on shore. There is a Gelato station by the Dive-In near the central pool area.

Dining stewards know when you want to be left alone too. Our late fixed dining was at 7:30 on our last cruise. Tables for two are fine in the MDR and allow for a lot speedier service than larger tables - under a hour has been the norm for those seeking some quiet and stability when dining. This option just should not be overlooked, since some people reported problems with "anytime" dining. That is all. Good thing we have choices. Fixed dining is a choice too.

Most HAL ship dining rooms are not noisy, but the Pinnacle Class ones noisy with brittle, bouncy acoustics that seem to be written into the original design. Fixed dining, particularly late seating, offers all those old main dining room pleasures with a crew that gets to know what you want after the first night. . Dinners in late fixed are now often under an hour. Almost too fast on our last Pinnacle Konigsdam cruise. Just perfect on our last Noordam cruise - and a quiet lovely dining room as well. .

I am reminded of when Mrs Panky asked our parents during our 6th grade after school ballroom dancing classes, if she could teach us ..".the bop". (Circa late 1950s) They said yes, my sister got permission to buy a 45 RPM of "Sheeboom". And the rest is dance history. Hope you find a venue for real ball room dancing. It is/was a lot of fun, along with the bop.

Why do they have several copies of the same book? Could be this is how they got sold. Out of the bargain bins perhaps - some of the titles are a bit sketchy and less than current demand authors. Also offers a chance to form a mini-book club having multiple copies on hand. Some editor did pass judgement that any book found here was worthy of publication, so there may be surprises to be found. Skim and be surprised, perhaps? Willing to see this as a work in progress. In these perilous revenue producing times for HAL. I think they are off to a fine start, and this will get even better when passengers themselves add more to the take-one, leave one selections.

Vacation is getting away from electronic devices; which now includes the less than handy HAL Navigator.

Sold our excursions can put on extra spaces later, and people do cancel. So put yourself on the waiting list now, and see what evolves later.

Looks like you are visiting primarily UK and "Schengen" countries on this TA cruise. A great itinerary for your first HAL cruise, BTW. Good to get up to speed on this topic - Schengen is basically the EU (European Union - common market) collection of countries now in Europe, that allows one entrance requirement for all of them. You can run into this term "Schengen" at various airport security check lines. Threw me the first time I ran into it years ago, and had to get up to speed myself. "Schengen" is the location where this inter-country agreement was made. No longer individual checks at each European country borders that way it used to be a few decades ago. But just today was a news story about Germany reinstituting border checks, so agree today this can be a fast moving field. Good you are trying to get up to sped ahead of time. Best resource is the website for each country you will be visiting. They will keep you up to date on any visa requirements. No longer automatic that a US passport opens most doors. Also registering with the US State Dept "STEP" program makes more sense in today's volatile world - letting them know where you are, as well as getting automatic notices of any changes in travel safety status. Though today US State Dept just issued a "world wide" unsafe travel notice, so be aware of the politics than can also drive these decisions as well as actual practical travel assessments.

Our trip to Santiago from Amber Cove, with lunch, was very interesting. See lots of countryside as well as delve deeper into the important history of this island, long before it became primarily a cruise port tourist destination.

Serendipity is also one of the underrated joys found in real book onboard libraries. Finding books you had not even thought about reading. Plus being able to quickly thumb through ones that you don't mind rejecting. Some of my most favorite reads were random and unknown titles picked up in past HAL ship libraries.

It does make sense. Happy to see HAL is making a selection of onboard real print books available again. e-readers are not for everyone. Luggage weight and space considerations are real.

Last Noodrem, late seating was 7:30pm, but it is more typically at 8pm. Dinners were about an hour with plenty of time to see a show. We love late fixed dining. Nice sense of ship community at that time.

Thin on non-fiction. Very thin and with a certain political slant. Think about bringing a favorite to donate to the share section, and help build a more diverse inventory. I love non-fiction and current events too, so this lack of serous choices did force me to dip into a few books I would not have picked up but found to be good cruise reads - in the paperback share racks. Thanks to whomever left the Italian detective series "Murder at La Fenice" paperback on the Noordam for a rollicking good cruise read. The historical fiction about Achilles, not so much.

Roll call poster put us on to a website called "Windy" which tracks ocean winds, waves and temperatures in real time. My own impression was smooth sailing all the way - Deck 8 midship. We did the prior 14 days up to Kodiak AK and back to Vancouver where they captain did have to maneuver around some rough seas, but again people were still out and about enjoying the Lido throughout it all. I thought the Noordam sailed extremely well.

HAL pizza at the Lido is more what we call "flatbread" out west. Kind of like pizza, looks almost like pizza, but is just some, flat baked bread dough with stuff on top. But it works for what it is. It is just not pizza. Not sure why it can't taste better - is it the cheese? Is it designed to be heat-lamp proof?

HAL will not work for you. You did your homework and the answers have been pretty consistent. I think you saved yourself a huge disappointment. Just let it be what it is, because there are plenty of passengers who do love HAL's quieter atmosphere. All cruise lines do not need to deliver the exact same product. Thank goodness. We would hate Celebrity, so it is good we can both go our own separate ways.

My idea of HAL cruising: grabbed a book from the newly installed but abbreviated Noordam library, among several interesting hard copy choices, and perched on the very comfortable teak loungers on the 360 degree newly refinished Promenade teak deck. This remains my own favorite HAL vibe. Quiet, at sea that you can see and feel, and curling up with multiple hard copy books that can be read even in the sunlight. Now if they can add downloading audio books on the Navigator, I would find HAL had exceeded my expectations. In other words, plenty of quiet spaces will still offering a reasonable selection of indoor activities for those looking for more direct engagement.

HAL passengers cheered, when they re-installed the onboard libraries.

These are very comfortable loungers, since the leg rest is angled on these old teak classics. Wonderful part of being on this Vista ship. They could use this style in the extra-cost "retreat" cabanas.

I loved pairing those "Distant Land" selections with the cooling, chopped vegetable yogurt raita, also available as a side dishes - along with chopped jalepeño peppers and cilantro. Lots of fun daily choices from the Noordam Lido. Including peanut butter pie and banoffee pie - the HAL classics continue.

It was Fleet Week when we in SF- with a tribute to deceased Senator Diane Feinstein who was 'lying in state" (not technically) at the SF City Hall, since she had initiated Fleet Week as a SF city council person. Groups of well-mannered Navy personnel out having a good time, and showing off some of their ships docked along the Embarcadero. Old advice from my mother circa 1950's, when visiting SF as a teenager with friends in our hats, suits and gloves .........never talk to the sailors!

Close to the HAL Shore excursion HoHo bus route around SF: https://www.sightseeingworld.com/en/san-francisco-tour-map

The oddities of California October weather on this cruise - yes, it was hot in SF, very hot in LA, but we were caught in an intermittent fog bank off Catalina and could not even see the island from the anchored ship at first, while the fog horns blasted every few minutes.

Here is my own SF port stop report on this cruise to our very lively cruise Roll Call group for this cruise, a stop which we faced with no small amount of trepidation. This was also the cruise were at the last minute they took away our planned Monterey and Santa Barbara port stops and substituted San Pedro (LA) and Avalon, Catalina. Agree, over all the cruise was nice surprise and the ship as reported was in lovely condition. ......."SF - the biggest surprise. Inundated by the horror stories of poop city for years, we were expecting the worst and almost did not want to do anything and be reminded of what happened to the city we both knew and loved while growing up in the Bay Area in the 1950's. We did do the entire Hop on Hop Off route and came away very pleasantly surprised how little looked really abandoned and damaged by the vagrant camps. Yes, they were there but not as pervasive as we were expecting while much of the city still did look sparkling and attractive. Our port side cabin had a dazzling view across the city and the Golden Gate Bridge. The commentary on the HoHO was almost laughable and saccharine, but why sell a real experience to day tripping tourists? Yet, there seemed something empty about the streets and parts of Market Street were very much abandoned. The Montgomery Street BART stop was the entry into the financial business district and it had none of its former bustle. Fisherman's Wharf while pleasant, had none of its original fishing port appeal. Probably has not had it for years as the Italian fishing families moved on to politics and real estate development. Yet people were out, strolling and enjoying themselves. Golden Gate Park looked pristine and lovely - again with many families out enjoying its many attractions. Is SF a city that is just too good to die? Or be killed. We came away with a new perspective about its wholesale reputation for urban decay, and can only wish it the best. When the sun went down, out came the hot-rodders probably doing wheelies on the downtown streets so the real story about SF may not really be known or experienced on a single day port stop."