Well, we just found out that a somewhat big group would be on the Alaska cruise we had booked. I heard big groups can disrupt the enjoyment of the other passengers by closing off certain areas of the ship (dining room, theater, etc.) from the rest of the passengers for their exclusive use. We won’t want that, so we switched to a different cruise.

Our new cruise will be:

7-day Alaskan Inside Passage aboard Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam
8/31 – 9/7/2019

It’s a 7-day round-trip from Vancouver instead of Seattle, on a ship that’s pretty much identical to Eurodam. Itinerary is very similar too, except that we’ll have Skagway instead of Sitka, which is a bit of a bummer, since we’ve been to Skagway, but not to Sitka. But I like the idea of going through the Inside Passage, and this ship offers the optional Tracy Arm boat excursion that departs from the ship.

So I think it turned out OK. Just hope no groups will book this cruise!

It will be:
7-day Alaskan Explorer aboard Holland America Eurodam
8/24 – 8/31/2019
(Note: It’s next year (2019) and not this year (2018)…

This cruise has an almost identical itinerary (except for Sitka) to our first ever cruise aboard Norwegian Pearl. The reason we decided to do another Alaska cruise was that:

1. We just wanted to do another cruise!
2. It’s a quick 7-day round-trip from Seattle. (Since we live in Seattle area, no flights involved.)
3. We still work, so we can’t take long vacations every year.
4. Glacier Bay was nice enough that we don’t mind seeing it again.
5. There’s another HAL 7-day round-trip from Seattle, which goes to Sawyer Glacier instead of Glacier Bay, but it’s on Oosterdam (sister ship to Westerdam) and we wanted to try a different ship.

It would be interesting to see how things have changed in the cities we’ve visited before (or how much the glaciers have receded…!)

It’s still a looooong time away… Can’t wait!

We didn’t want to, but alas, it was time to disembark. 😦

But we had one more excursion before our flight home to Seattle. We boarded the bus for our Everglades Airboat Ride tour, which took us to Sawgrass Recreation Park.

They had some rescue animals, like Florida panther, leopards, fennec fox, and snakes. Most of them were exotic pets that the irresponsible owners could no longer care for. It also had some alligators; one albino and one that was humongous. They also had some baby alligators that they let you hold and pet.

After looking through these animals and listening to the caretakers lectures, we went on an airboat ride on the Everglades.

We did see one alligator. Apparently, it was the first one they’d seen in several days, so I guess we were lucky, but we already saw some crocodiles in Costa Rica, so that took some excitement out of the encounter. LOL

After the airboat ride, we were supposed to get back on the bus, which will take us to the airport. However, one lady was missing. We waited for a while, but as we had a couple of people who had a flight that was leaving in less than 2 hours, we had to leave her behind. We later found that the lady somehow ended up following a different tour group… Oh well. Hopefully she eventually found her way to the airport and got reunited with her belongings that she left on our bus.

The bus dropped us off at Fort Lauderdale Airport at around 1 pm. We still had 6 hours to kill, so we decided to go to downtown Fort Lauderdale for lunch. They have a free trolley to the downtown, so we waited for it, but it wouldn’t come, so we decided to just take a taxi. Big mistake. The driver kept getting lost (probably on purpose)… After ending up in a dead end twice, we told him to just get us off. 😦

I thought we were pretty close to where we wanted to go, but because we weren’t quite sure where we started, we got lost. We walked along a pretty canal (with very expensive looking boats lined up), but we couldn’t find any restaurants we wanted to eat at. All the restaurants we passed by were full of loud, drunk people.

We hoped to run into the downtown trolley to take us back to the airport, but it never came, so we had no choice but to take a taxi again. But there were no taxis at the taxi stand. After some wait, one taxi finally came, but there were 2 other couples in front of us in the line. With no other taxis in sight, we decided to share the taxi (it was a van), even though we were all going to different places. We found that one of the couples were on the same cruise as we were, and the other couple was on a different Holland America ship. Small world.

After dropping those couples off at their hotels, we finally returned to the airport. I was hot, hungry, tired, and miserable, and was ready to go home.

As our plane took off, I saw a Holland America ship leaving the port. I couldn’t tell which ship it was (there were three Holland America ships at the port that day), but later confirmed that it was indeed Westerdam. It was nice to get one last glimpse of our ship.

And that’s the end of our cruise. I’ll post more photos and videos, as well as more detailed reviews of the ship and the ports, later.

Today, we sailed the Caribbean toward Fort Lauderdale, passing Cuba.

I’m sad to say tonight is the last night of our cruise… Now we must go back to reality. No more getting multiple course meals served three times a day, no more room stewards to make our beds and give us clean towels, no more stepping out to our huge balcony for the view of the ocean. 😦

We handed out thank-you cards to some of the wonderful crew and said our good-byes, then we packed. On our flight to San Diego, we ended up exceeding the weight limit by 7 lbs. and had to pay extra fee, so we made sure to pack all the heavy stuff in our carry-on luggage. Hope we don’t have to pay extra this time.

Tomorrow, because our flight doesn’t leave till 7 pm and we have quite a bit of time to kill, we signed up for the Everglades Airboat Ride, so I guess we have one last fun left before our vacation ends.

We really enjoyed our cruise on Holland America, and we hope to do another one soon. We’ll probably do a quick 7-day Alaska cruise from Seattle next.

Today was the last port day of this cruise (nooo!)

It was Georgetown in Cayman Islands. It’s a tender port, so we took a tender (life boat) to the shore, while the ship remained anchored offshore.

We took a mini bus to Dolphin Cove. The mini bus appeared to have been a former public bus in Japan, as it still had Japanese signs, like no smoking and wear seat belts. They must have bought the used van from Japan or something.

In Dolphin Cove, we swam with a dolphin. We pet the dolphin, danced with dolphin, got a kiss from the dolphin, got a belly ride and boogie push. It was quite an experience.

After the dolphin swim, we got on a boat and went out to Stingray City sandbar. It’s a shallow water where stingrays hang around, and we were able to touch and feed them.

Tomorrow is the last sea day before it’s time to disembark…

Today was another At Sea day.

The sea was still somewhat rough, and I spent most of the morning and afternoon in bed, watching episodes of Downton Abbey on TV.

The sea got calmer in the evening, and I managed to have dinner in the dining room.

Afterwards, we went to a cocktail reception for suite passengers, but that was a total waste of time. The Cruise Director introduced the Hotel Director, which was the host of this reception. At least that’s what we think she did. The place was loud with everyone chatting and the speakers were facing away from us, so we didn’t understand a word she said.

In any case, that was the end of the reception, and the rest were just everyone chatting. I think most people were just here for the free cocktails. We left to see the tonight’s show, which was a mildly funny comedian.

I really don’t have any pictures to post today, so I’ll post this.

I guess they are switching to a different vendor to run the ship’s shops, and unfortunately, this was the last cruise for the current vendor and they tried to sell off all the remaining merchandise, so we only had limited merchandise, then they closed the shops early. Starting with the next cruise, they’ll have a new vendor and new merchandise, but that won’t do us any good. That was one bummer of this cruise, as I wanted to buy a coffee cup with the ship’s name on it.

The ocean was still rough in the morning, and I couldn’t bring myself to go to breakfast, but I got better when we arrived in Cartagena, Colombia at around noon.

We went on the tour of the “Old Town.”

We first climbed to the top of the Fort of San Felipe de Barajas.

Then a quick stop at Las Bovedas, a handicraft market. The stop was very short, and we had hardly any time to look around.

Next, we took a walking tour of the Old Town. The houses were beautiful with many flowers. According to the guide, these houses are owned by rich people, and most of them only come here on holidays.

The tour ended with a stop at the Church of San Pedro Claver.

The city was beautiful, but it was very HOT, and after we left Cartagena, the sea got rough and I was down again.

Today was the main event of this cruise. Panama Canal!

We woke up at 4, but had some trouble setting up my GoPro for time lapse photos, and by the time we got to the door to the bow, there was a long line of people, and we feared we’d see nothing but tall people’s backs, but I somehow found a space I could squeeze in for a great view.

After sailing under the Bridge of Americas, we got to the first set of locks, Miraflores Locks, and I snapped a few great pictures of the “mules” that guide the ship through the narrow lock.

During the second set of locks, Pedro Miguel Locks, I went down to the Promenade Deck for a different perspective.

Then I went up to the forward deck on Deck 7 as we sailed through Culebra Cut and into Gatun Lake.

Finally, we went through Gatun Locks to the Atlantic Ocean.

Unfortunately, Atlantic Ocean was rough. Combined with that and lack of sleep and lots of heat during the day, I got sick and missed the show I really wanted to see 😦

Today was an At Sea day.

After breakfast, I attended a presentation on history of Panama Canal. Then in the afternoon, I attended another classical performance at Lincoln Center Stage, then right afterwards, there was a “Meet the Artists of Lincoln Center Stage,” and I got to learn a few things about these performers, like where they are from, where they studied, etc. I found that they were from all over the world (two Americans, one Canadian, one Italian, and one Hungarian,) and they just got together a few months ago to perform on this cruise. They have contract with Holland America until May, and once their contracts are up, they’ll go on separate ways again.

After lunch, we went to a show called Billboard Onboard, where two guys play the pianos and sing. They were playing songs from the 70’s today.

After that, we went to see a ventriloquist. He was hilarious.

Tomorrow is the Panama Canal. We’ll be getting up early to get a spot on the bow of the ship, so gotta go to bed early.

 

 

Today, we were in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, along with Coral Princess.

We took a jungle river cruise on Tarcoles River. We saw many wildlife, including crocodiles, iguanas, parrots, many different kinds of birds, and an anteater.

In the evening, we had dinner at Sel de Mer, French seafood specialty restaurant. I ordered Dover Sole Meuniere, and the waiter removed the bones at table side. Fancy! It was very tasty too.

After dinner, when we walked by Lincoln Center Stage, the string quartet was playing Stairway to Heaven, so I stopped to listen to that and Bohemian Rhapsody. 🙂

Tomorrow is a sea day. After 4 port days in a row, it would be a nice break.