Cruise Stories

carved fruit display

There’s always a variety of things to do on a cruise ship. Some ships have more things to do on your own and others more scheduled activities, but they all have some of each. Standard on every cruise ship are things like swimming pools and hot tubs. Holland America Niew Amsterdam has 2 public swimming pools. There’s also a hydrotherapy pool for people who pay for the thermal suite in the spa. The ship also has hot tubs next to the public pools. Usually pools on the Nieuw Amsterdam are open in the daytime for people to swim in as they wish, but occasionally there’s a scheduled event at one of the pools. The back deck pool is always outside, but the main Lido pool has a sliding cover so it can be inside or outside depending on the temperature and weather.

back deck pool

Holland America’s ships aren’t the sort that have waterslides or rock-climbing walls, but they do have a lot of scheduled activities. There are also some things you can do on your own on the ship.

casino

There’s a pretty extensive casino with lots of slot machines and some table games.

ship’s art

Even just exploring all of the public areas of the ship is fun to do. There’s all sorts of different artwork to see while wandering about.

outside promenade deck

The promenade deck goes all the way around the ship, which is a nice feature on Holland America’s ships that not all ships of all cruiselines have. It’s a popular place for people to walk around. There’s also some deck chairs on the promenade deck which are prime choices for lounging in the shade since most of the ship’s deck chairs are out in the sun on upper decks. We spent a few lazy afternoons lounging in the deck chairs with a book and a daiquiri there. We also took quite a lot of walks around the promenade. We did try the gym, but the promenade was preferable for exercise. The gym has a view if you happen to be in the row by the front window, but the promenade has fresh outside air and a better view.

library

A fairly new feature on Holland America’s ships is a new library that has quite a variety of books organized into different sections like romance, sci-fi, mystery, young adult, and non-fiction, among other categories, There’s even a book exchange where people can leave a book they brought and finished and take one that someone else left there. The actual library books of course have to be returned before disembarking the ship.

it’s not really a book of chemistry lessons

I usually just read ebooks in the kindle app on my phone. It’s been years since I read an actual physical book. My sister and I thought it might be fun to read the same book at the same time so we visited the library and found something they had more than one copy of. When my sister picked one called Lessons in Chemistry I said I didn’t want to read a textbook, but she said it was actually a fiction story someone had recommended to her so we started with that one. It did turn out to be a good book. The library had several copies when we checked it out, but none left by the time we brought our copies back so apparently other people liked it too. Next we tried one called Lost in the Never Woods, which turned out to be an odd take on Peter Pan with a dark ending. Not a favorite for either of us. She also read some other books from the library. I read some of my ebooks at times when the phone was a lot handier than an actual book. Which is actually always, but I did find time enough to read two physical books during the 3-week cruise.

art class

Holland America ships have art classes. I had not paid any attention to them on previous cruises, but Linda likes that sort of thing. They offered watercolors, doodling, origami, adult coloring, dam dots challenge, and calligraphy. Watercolors were by far the most popular. We tried everything except calligraphy. She wasn’t interested in that one and I have a hard time writing legibly with a normal pen. Sometimes I can’t even read my own writing. The art teacher was Nora from Norway. She was entertaining as well as talented and made the art classes fun. I was always better at crafts than at art. For the most part Linda’s pictures were better than mine, but I made some passable artwork and there were even a couple times in the watercolor classes where my picture turned out better than hers. The instructor’s samples tended to outshine pretty much everyone else most of the time though. We painted what could be either sunrises or sunsets in the first watercolor class. Cruise ships are a good place to watch real sunrises and sunsets as they are often quite pretty over the water.

sunrise

In the past the art classes were always first come first served. They tried something new on this cruise where people had to go half an hour before the first class of the morning or afternoon to sign up for any classes they wanted to do in that section. Of course the line started forming at least half an hour before that. It was still first come first served since whoever was at the front of the line could sign up for all of the classes for that session if they wanted to. So it just meant people had to spend extra time going to the sign-up rather than just to the class and maybe give up something else they would have liked to do at that time just to wait in line to sign up for something happening later. People could still walk in last minute if space was available, which there often was in the afternoon so we only ever waited in line for morning sessions. On the flip side, if the people near the front of the line filled up the class then people near the back spent all that time waiting for nothing whereas if it was just walk in until all the seats were full it wouldn’t have taken that chunk out of their day to just peek in the room and see no space available. Nobody liked that system, not even the art teacher since it also took extra time out of her day so hopefully whoever’s dumb idea that was in corporate will get enough complaints that they go back to just being first come first served when the class starts.

line dancing at the orange party

Some of the other classes offered included ballroom dancing, line dancing, tai chi, pickleball, yoga, and tech for travelers. We tried the line dancing a couple times. Even if you’re not very good at it it’s really good exercise. Holland America always has an orange themed day once during the cruise. Orange is the color of the House of Orange-Nassau which is the royal family of the Netherlands. On this cruise the orange day coincided with the actual King’s birthday celebration in Holland. On Holland America’s orange day people dress in orange at dinner and then there’s an orange party in the evening. They opened the orange party with line dancing, with dances people learned from the lessons. We only went a couple times to the lessons and only knew one easy dance, but Linda did a pretty good job following along on some of the more difficult ones that came after.

cornhole game

Bridge, mahjong, poker, and pickleball games were all on the schedule. Also sometimes other cruise games like cornhole, shuffleboard, and a series called traditional games that started with an egg walk and had other games to follow with daily and overall prizes. The shuffleboard and cornhole games were out on an upper deck available for anyone to play whenever they weren’t in use for an official competition.

ping-pong tables

Same with the ping-pong tables on the Lido deck. I think pickleball was more scheduled because so many people want to play it, but I could be wrong about that since I haven’t ever tried it. Other games included daily trivia offerings and nightly game show contests.

game show

One night we tried the game show which on that day was a game called Tripod. We’d never heard of it and mainly went to see what it was. It turned out to be a word game. People were divided into two teams which the guy in charge named oink and moo. We were on moo. One person from each team sat in a chair facing the rest of the team. A word came up on a screen behind the two and whichever team’s turn it was had to come up with a one word clue from which they could guess the word. Sometimes one word was enough such as when kangaroo was the word, Australia brought a correct guess. If they didn’t get it in one guess the other team could try to steal. Usually a second clue was enough like when beach didn’t get the right answer adding build from the second team got the right answer of sand castle. Three was the most clues it took, which got the point for that round back to the original team. Oink won by one point.

theater show

Other daily events included afternoon movies, afternoon tea, and nightly theater shows. There was also music each evening at several different bars each offering a different sort of music. Judging from the crowd size the piano bar appeared to be the most popular.

lecture

Previous Holland America cruises we’ve taken had guest lecturers. Some on itinerary-related subjects and others on random things. There were no guest lecturers on this cruise. Instead the cruise director gave several presentations on itinerary-related subjects. She also had a lot of other duties to perform. She introduced the nightly shows and had other activities she was in charge of as well as whatever regular cruise director duties involve. I hope they paid her well since she had to work so hard. She also did the port talks, which on previous cruises were either guest lectures with things about the port or shore excursion staff talking about different excursions offered at that port. Usually some of each. There were also health or fitness related lectures offered at the gym, something the cruise director didn’t have to do since the gym staff took care of those.

just a few of many towel animals by the Lido pool

Besides daily activities there were also some one-time events and activities. The towel animal takeover on the Lido deck on this ship went beyond the usual conglomeration of towel animals covering the Lido deck. They added in fruit carvings, origami, baked bread animals, napkin folding, and a sales event with merchandise from the ships shops set up in booths on the Lido. Eventually they handed out some cake and fruit samples at the fruit carving booth, but it wasn’t open yet when we went through there to see all the towel animals. They were also still working on the fruit carvings then.

bread animals

Other one-time events include cake me away where there are all sorts of fancy cakes at the buffet during lunchtime and chocolate surprise where some of the waiters wander around with trays of various chocolate treats to hand out to people at all of the public areas on deck 2 at a specified time in the evening. They come out with trays all of one thing and then the next wave has trays of a different thing until they get through all of the various little treats. Another day they had a fun carnival on the Lido deck where they had all sorts of different games set up. People could play the various games for fun or to try and win tickets for prizes.

Think the team that built this boat is from Canada?

The biggest competition of the cruise is the ship building contest. People could sign up to build little boats that would later be tested in the pool to see if they could float. I’d only seen that once previously on the Oosterdam Antarctica cruise where there were just 3 entries that people made all on their own. On Nieuw Amsterdam they had boat building sessions with crew to help people make their entries and they ended up with a whole lot of teams with quite a variety of different boats. They had quite a few sessions to work on them before the competition. The boat creating sessions were just for the participants, but the trials were open for everyone to watch.

little ships in the pool on a cruise ship

The ship building competition trials took place in the Lido pool. There were 16 entries ranging from small to quite large. Some of them even had life boats. After introducing each boat they all went into the pool, though the first 8 went in way before the rest giving the later entries an unfair advantage had any sank just from time in the pool, but none of them ever actually sank. They were judged on design and seaworthiness. After floating around for awhile they were attacked first with rubber ducks, which did no damage, then with balls and even a watermelon before several of the crew jumped into the pool to make waves. After that didn’t sink any boats they jumped directly onto the swarm of boats, which sent the Toytanic onto its side. It got eliminated though it didn’t actually sink. One of the many boats in the pool launched a tiny lifeboat which floated around on its own. One entry called Spirit Bear lost its top story, but the crew that was trying to sink all of the other boats placed it back on top and it ended up winning first place. Second went to Landlockeddam, a low to the water neon green ship, and third to Canadam Eh, both of which sustained no obvious damage. It was a fun thing to watch, but some of the people put a lot of effort into building those boats only to watch them get destroyed. A little one called Peace of Ship was used to gather the balls and float them out of the pool during clean-up and even full of heavy balls it didn’t sink, but it didn’t get any prizes.

hydropool in the thermal suite at the spa

Both me and the other lady at our dinner table had birthdays during the cruise, but the dining staff did not bring either of us a little birthday cake or sing happy birthday even though several nights they did that for someone else at other tables in the dining room. It could be that they did not specifically include her birthday in their travel info because although they know the date from your info I think they only celebrate if you mention it. I’m pretty sure my travel agent included it though. They did not make any gluten-free baked goods onboard and apparently don’t have any little gluten free cakes in the freezer or anything and don’t acknowledge the birthday if they aren’t bringing a cake. I’d actually have been fine with a regular cake for that, but cruise ship crews don’t separate limited tolerance from celiac on anyone going gluten free so they would never do that.

hiding a duck

People can make their own fun on cruises too. Hiding ducks is something people do on cruises to entertain themselves these days. Finding them is fun too, but that depends on someone else hiding them. On some ships there are a lot of duck hiders, but on this cruise we may have been the only ones. Even if the passengers on a particular cruise don’t know about cruising ducks it makes the crew’s day to find one – and finding one introduces people who previously weren’t aware of cruise ducks to their existence. That’s actually how we first found out about them, by finding one on a Celebrity ship. Cruising ducks started on Carnival and remains most prolific there. On cruises where people are actively looking for ducks we hide some stealth ducks that take more effort to find, but on this ship we left them out in the open where people not actually looking for ducks could happen across them.

puzzles and games in the Crow’s Nest

One nice thing about cruises is that people can do as much or as little as they want. An entire day could be filled with scheduled activities if that’s what people want to do, but if you’d rather just relax in a deck chair and chill out that’s an option too. I like to do some activities, but have plenty of time for relaxing too.  The Crow’s Nest lounge is a good hang out place on Holland America ships. There’s a row of loungers by the front window with a good view, other groupings of furniture, and plenty of tables and chairs for all of the games and puzzles available there. And a bar that had both specialty coffee or other hot drinks and regular bar stuff as well as a few goodies.

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