Days 12,13 & 14. 26–28th April Amsterdam – Rotterdam – at Sea - Kristiansand

 Day 12 – Amsterdam to Rotterdam

Today we had our bags outside by 8 am., then up to the lounge to have breakfast. They need us out of our rooms by 8:30 am so they can prepare for the next cruise. Funny how they always call this one of the days of your cruise but you are up and out as soon as they can get you going. Although to be fair, the crew of the Emerald destiny, have been fantastic. We gave our lovely cabin attendant Dina some chocolates to say thank you as we left at 8.

Had a couple of hours in the lounge catching up on my blog and then we were chatting to Allison and David, before we 4 grabbed our suitcases from the end of the pier, said goodbyes, which is always hard when you’ve made new friends. 

We walked into town to brave the many thousands around for the kings birthday celebrations! All the young people and not so young people! are dressed in orange so I wore my bright orange dress today in honour as well. We walked to the main train station in Amsterdam, which was easy - 10 mins. We had researched what we needed beforehand and purchased a ticket to Rotterdam €19p.p. It is really pretty easy here to work the train system out, although some of the Dutch words are pretty long to pronounce!

Onto the train – no problems getting seats and luckily I got one with 4 seats so we could squeeze our cases in. There were tons of older teenagers coming on and off the train all dressed in bright orange, very happy! Most of them had alcohol with them and were drinking, but have to say they were no problem at all - just loud and happy which was fine. 

It took about 1:15hr to get to Rotterdam, then we went to Starbucks and got a lovely hot drink and had a look at the next step to get to the port. It was 4 stops to get to Wilhelminaplein, just had to find the right place as we were going to a different area to go on a Metro. We got out at the other end no problems – was a bit tricky to find where we had to exit and walk to as we didn’t have internet, but we got there fine.

We are sailing on Holland America, the ship is the Rotterdam – the largest of their fleet, but with only 2668 passenger capacity ( this sailing is full), so seems small to us compared to some we have done! Embarkation was pretty painless – it ran like a well oiled machine – our check in time was 2 pm and we were pretty well spot on. It started at 12 pm so probably the messes were already Through. Apparently, 800 passengers stayed on from the last cruise as they are doing the same as us – we are doing Norway in two parts, it’s two 1 week cruises put together.

Got up to our room – 6011 balcony, nice room and outlook. Unpacked our bags so that’s out of the way for two weeks! We wandered around a bit getting our bearings, the ship is a bit strange as instead of having a large central open area, it has more like a front middle and back which are not really connected – not our favourite layout as there’s no big walking track or open area but I think it is mainly because the swimming pool has a closing roof so you aren’t looking down into that area like you normally do with ships that don’t have the roof. 

We were pretty tired tonight and both of us have been sore from the bed on the river cruise. Not sure what it was, but we have both been feeling it, so we grabbed a burger and chips from the deli for an early dinner as we didn’t feel like going to the main dining room. They were very nice except the first lot that came had incredibly hot chilli all over them and blue vein cheese! The sauce was a bit hot for me so got some nice normal ones. We got a couple of smoothies and sat at a table with a built-in chessboard. I can never remember the moves but we had fun trying.

With Holland America they have what’s called a have it all package which includes specialty dining, some excursion credit, OBC, and drinks – up to 15 per person a day!! We will be hard put to ever drink that, however it does also include specialty coffees and drinks, smoothies and water. I would not like to pay for the water each day – around $10 NZ for a 1litre bottle! Discovered later on, down at reception that the daily gratuity of €17p.p per day– So about $57 NZ is being added onto our bill. I had checked these were included in our package, with the travel agent prior to the trip (who honestly has been pretty useless and made a lot of errors). So there is an error somewhere – reception screenshot the confirmation I had via email from the travel agent – I always get it in writing, so they are sending it to head office and we will have to wait and see the outcome. Will be fun to sort out if the error is at her end.

Read up on the bits and piece about the ship, then we went up to the orange party – Holland America always have one on their cruises and because of the kings birthday celebrations they bought it forward to tonight. They had a band playing, which was so incredibly loud I can say without a doubt, would cause pretty instant hearing damage – with the roof closed over the pool and the volume up, it was terrible. There were hardly any people there unsurprisingly. Anyway they finished and then another band that was quieter came out, although still very loud under the closed glass roof. Was pretty disappointing overall, as whenever Danni and I have sailed, the sale away parties have always been really good for at least 1 or 2 “YMCA”s! Anyway that was a flop so back down to the cabin and into bed. 

It’s lovely to be able to do what we want– is quite different from the river cruises where you are working very much around their timetable. There are just so many things to do on a sea cruise and I have to say Holland America have more activities per day than I’ve seen on Royal Caribbean, NCL, MSC, P&O.

Walked 19,000 steps today!

 Had to Borrow this photo from Allison – showing the orange celebrations!

Day 13 – At Sea

Woke up at 6 am- unfortunately this morning! Would so love to sleep in but haven’t managed that yet – boo.

I decided to go sit outside wrapped up in a blanket as it was really cool, and started to read a book which is lovely to do – I always feel so busy at home. I look at my books but find it hard to make the time to stop and do it.

We had showers, then went upstairs and joined the masses to get some breakfast! Found a seat next to a Dutch couple and got talking to them for a while, then wandered around getting used to where things are. We also got some nice hot drinks a coffee and a chai latte, then I grabbed some Domino’s and a Skibo card game and we went and sat at the very front of the ship where it is a bit quieter and played a game of Domino’s. Had a chat with an older lady whose table we were sitting at – she was from South Washington and a lovely lady. Then we went and checked out the library – oh my gosh this is the best one I think I’ve ever seen. It was laid out more like a proper library,  the books had stickers on the spines so that you would take them back, rather than a book exchange type of library. It was so quiet in there with big windows and a few nice comfy chairs so we sat down for awhile and read before going back to our cabin.

Mooched around for a couple of hours then went wandering again before some nice non alcoholic drinks, which were followed by some alcoholic drinks later in the afternoon! when we popped up to the deli to get a Reuben‘s sandwich – they were delicious! We wandered around the outside of the deck watching people play different outdoor games – there are quite a few older teenagers on board who were out playing basketball and beating their parents at different games!

We actually lay down this afternoon and had a 45 minute nap – was so nice and my neck appreciated it! We went to a Q &A session on the stop tomorrow which is Kristiansand. We are just going to wander around in town as it is only small and because our cruise ship isn’t huge and we can go right into the port for the most part without having to use tenders. 

Then onto the dining room and had a lovely dinner before wandering through to the theatre. Grabbed another couple of cocktails and sat down to watch it. The show is old Hollywood type singing and dancing. It was pretty good – Holland America are not known for their shows so much but they did well. I think there are only a couple on over each seven day cruise but they had a really good set up so instead of having to move the seats around continuously in between songs, they project their screen onto the walls, which wrapped right around the seats so you felt like you were in the set with them!

Back to the room and to bed - we have two cabin attendants for the first time on any of our cruises, and they had put in an egg crate mattress our bed which is wonderful :-).

Day 14 – Kristiansand 

Today we docked in the beautiful town of Kristiansand at 7am. We had a continental breakfast in our room – you can get food all day long from a certain menu, complementary with Holland America which is great. With Royal Caribbean, you can get the complimentary breakfast only.

Graeme is coming down with a bug – there are a few people coughing here and of course anywhere you have a lot of people together you get bugs. I have been very careful about hand sanitising when anything is touched or given to me, so we are hoping Graeme doesn’t get worse.

We got off the ship about 9 am and walked around the front dock area – it is so beautiful here. Very crisp and cold in the wind but lovely, with seagulls flying around everywhere with their own seaside sound! Then we walked into town. These small towns rely on the ships coming in, just like Twizel. Bought a couple things in a store that were decent priced clothing and we generally just enjoy the wander around.

Back to the ship where we decided to have a cocktail that had honey in it, the Ginny Hendrix! It was so nice we had another one and then a mojito and a martini for Graeme. Then the bartender told us about chocolate martinis – boy that one was strong so after number 4 we had to go back to the room and have a lie down! :-)

Down to dinner in the dining room – I decided to have crayfish which is $25USD extra but you get two crayfish and it was insanely good. We have $300USD on-board credit to use although we have just discovered that the useless travel agent we had tried, who has been very lazy the whole way through and made lots of errors – has made another one. It is a lesson in making sure you have in writing when things like on board gratuities are being included. 

Luckily, I had written to her when we booked specifically asking if they were included, as they are a significant amount of money at around $800NZD for our cruise – she confirmed they were in the package. Turns out they aren’t and she had made another mistake and they are coming off our on-board credit every day. Have spoken to the team at the service desk and while we could fill in a form and make them take them all off, it wouldn’t be fair as it covers the teams like cabin stewards, kitchen staff and laundry assistants who all ave much lower wages. So we will leave them on and pay the bill and then the agent will be refunding that back.

We were so tired tonight after all our drinkies that we decided not to go to the comedy show or the dancing, but we are tired in a nice way. Walked 8 kms today!