Copenhagen River Cruise

Posted on April 20, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

river cruise boat in Nyhavn

For what turned out to be our one full day in Copenhagen since our flight got cancelled the day we were supposed to go and we had to spend a night in Seattle (at the airline’s expense) and fly out the next day we started out intending to take the hop on hop off bus tour, which we had booked the night before. We walked out toward the waterfront where the map showed stops for the HoHo bus, but when we found one the driver said he was doing a different tour that day and that the regular one wasn’t running. So we just ended up walking around town instead, which probably worked out to seeing more than we would have on the bus anyway. (We did get a refund for the bus tickets, but through the card, not the booking site whose help link went nowhere.)

little mermaid statue

After not getting on the bus we walked along the waterfront a bit and came across Copenhagen’s famous little mermaid statue. She more has what looks like legs with some fins at the foot end than a full mermaid tail as they are usually depicted. The statue has been there since 1913. It has been vandalized and restored a few times. Shortly after the mermaid statue we walked by Saint Alban’s church.

Saint Alban’s Church

Later we came across the king’s palace when it was nearly time for changing of the guard so we stayed for that. They had two little rocket shaped booths at each door, one on either side. Only one door had two guards, and both booths were facing with the open end forward there. The other doors had one or no guards, with the back of one facing forward if there was just one, and both booths turned around for any door with no guards. These guards would alternately stand in front of their booth or march a bit away from it and back. They all did the standing and marching in unison regardless of how far their door was from any of the others.

palace guards

When it was time for the change some cops cleared a path where the new ones needed to go. They came in with quite a large group, some of which were also a marching band. The newcomers marched nearly all the way around the square before stopping for a bit. Then the band members played some songs while the others stood stock still. After the band marched away some of the others marched to each door where two would surround the current guard while one of the two inspected the booth. Then they went back to the line and a different soldier (or two for the door that had 2 guards) came out and stood facing the guard who’s time was up before taking their place. The one leaving joined the group which then marched to the next post and repeated the whole thing until a replacement was left there. That was done over again at each door until every guard was changed.

Nyhavn

After that we walked some more and came to Nyhavn, a canal with colorful buildings along the edges. One side had a whole row of cafes, each of which had outdoor seating just like all of the other ones we had seen around town. Indoor seating was also available at some if not all of them. The story we heard on the colorful houses was that illiterate sailors of old would know which house they were to stay in when they came to port because of the color.

river boat restaurant in Nyhavn

There were also ticket booths where people could book canal cruises in long, wide, flat-looking boats. Some of the bridges aren’t very high above the water which is why the canal boats can’t be very tall. There was more than one company with that sort of boats. We booked with the one at the end of the canal right after one of their boats had just come in so we got right on as soon as the previous group disembarked. It had both indoor and outdoor seating. We picked indoor since it was very cold. There was a heater running along the side of the ship by the floor under the windows, which was great for hand-warming. I needed that badly since my hands were so cold all my fingers had turned red even though I was wearing gloves.

inside the canal boat

The boat sat there a bit while more people got on and was nice and warm inside until it was ready to leave. Then in spite of the fact that outdoor seating was available, several people opened up the window next to their seat and let in all the cold. One of them eventually went outside, but left the window wide open to keep on freezing all the people inside who would have preferred to be warm.

replica of Michael Angelo’s David

The boat sailed up the canal passing all of the things we had walked by on the way there, though this time there was narration to say what they all were. It stopped near the mermaid statue so people could see it, but the view from land for that one is better than from the water. As the boat passed by the replica statue of Michael Angelo’s David the guide commented about it being a perfectly proportioned man. When we walked past that same statue earlier we had thought the head, hands, and feet looked overly large and other bits of the naked statue kind of small compared to the rest of the figure.

bridge over the canal

Then the boat turned around and seemed to be going back to where we started from until it took a turn into a side canal and went through a bunch of other little canals past things we had not seen before.

about to go under a bridge

It cruised under a whole bunch of bridges of various heights. Some of them it barely squeaked under while others had a bit of room to spare. One rather tight corner just past a bridge had a series of tires hanging on chains to prevent boats from scraping the sides.

the rules only apply to people who follow them

The tour guide said if the tides are too high then they can’t do tours as the boats won’t fit under the bridges. Regardless of how many times he warned people they could not stand up outside when passing under a bridge he had to tell someone (often the same person) at each and every bridge to sit down if they wanted to keep their head attached to their body, though he did not put it quite that bluntly. By the last bridge he did say that one last photo would be their very last photo if they didn’t sit down, though he managed to say it without showing too much frustration.

we passed by buildings the guide identified as luxury apartments

The canal tour lasted for one hour and was a good way to see a bit of the city and get a different view of things than you see from land. Also a chance to warm up sitting next to a heater on the boat after walking around town in the cold. Things it passes by include the Geiflon Fountain and a bunch of buildings on land – The Citadel, the opera house, Amalienborg, the Royal Danish Theater, Christianborg Palace, Christianshavn, Church of Our Savior, and Freetown Christiania.

canal in Copenhagen

The longest bridge we saw crossed a very wide canal. We walked over that bridge later. It had separate lanes over most of it for bikes and pedestrians, but in some places they kind of crossed. Watching out for bikes is very important because they go very fast and don’t stop for pedestrians. In some spots it’s amazing they avoid crashing into each other.

watch out for bikes on this Copenhagen bridge

When we walked across the bridge we saw boats passing under it, including canal tour boats.

canal tour boat about to pass under the big bridge

The canal tour company we sailed with is called Stromma. They also have sailings from another nearby dock, including longer tours. In addition to providing canal tours, the company also has 2 Seabins Ocean Dustbins in Nyhaven that suck down litter out of the water including particles as tiny as 2 millimeters. These bins collect 2 tons of garbage each year. They also installed 20 biohuts within the Copenhagen harbor to provide food and shelter for small fish for a greater survival rate of those fish.

walking across the bridge

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025
Posted in Day Trips, Europe | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Panoramic Vienna

Posted on April 18, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

church in Vienna

Vienna, Austria

Vienna is the capitol of Austria with a population of over 2 million people. Currency is the euro. 1 euro at last check was equal to $1.10 USD. That is likely to change in the dollar’s current downward spiral. Vienna was home to the world’s first psychologist, Sigmund Freud, and visits by Mozart and Beethoven. Vienna has a dry continental climate with warm summers and cold winters. The temperature varies from winter lows of about 27 degrees F to summer highs of about 79 degrees F. Average annual rainfall is close to 24 inches with July generally the wettest month and February the driest. Its history dates back over 2000 years from early Celtic and Roman settlements to the capitol of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria was annexed by Germany during World War 2. It was not part of the Soviet Union, but was occupied by Soviets after World War 2. It remained neutral during the cold war per a 1955 treaty granting its independence and joined the European Union in 1995. Tourist attractions in Vienna include palaces and cathedrals, concerts, museums, historic buildings, an amusement park, and a zoo. And of course the Spanish Riding School and its famous Lipizzan stallions.

building in Vienna

Vienna River Cruise Port

Viking Skirnir docked in Vienna at the main river cruise port near the Imperial Bridge (Reichsbrücke). From there it is a 10-minute walk to the nearest U-Bahn (metro, underground, or subway) station called Vorgartenstraße. This station is on the red line which goes to the city center. Tickets are available in machines at the station for single journey or 24-hour passes that also include busses and trams. Cash may be required for payment.

Viking ships were stacked up to 4 deep with ours nearest land. Just behind it there were more Viking ships, then a row of river cruise boats from many other lines stretching down the side of the river for quite a distance so it is quite the popular port for river cruises. Most are likely just Danube River cruises rather than the voyage all the way from Budapest to Amsterdam that our ship was on.

bus photo

Panoramic Vienna Tour

Viking provides a tour at each port that is included in the price of the cruise. Sometimes there are additional tours people can pay extra for. The included tour for this port was called Panoramic Vienna. It started with a bus ride around town with a guide pointing out major sites that we saw in passing. When the bus tour part of the excursion finished it stopped relatively near the Hofburg palace, though not right at it as we had to walk a bit to get there.

Hofburg Palace

After disembarking the bus everyone followed the guide through town while she talked about some of the things we passed, and a lot of history about the Hapsburgs who ruled Austria for over 600 years.

there are a lot of details near the roof of palace buildings

Viking provided an audio system called Quietvox in which the guide has a unit that broadcasts and everyone else has one to listen. Each guide has a different channel which people on their tour group tune in to so even if you get close to another group from the ship you hear only your own guide unless you switch to a different channel.

horse statue

The Hofburg palace included many buildings and covered quite a large area of the town. One of the statues on the grounds of a rider on a horse was the first horse statue ever built that was balanced on only two of the horse’s hooves without using the tail or anything else to help hold it up.

inside the church

The guided part of the tour ended in a shopping area near a very tall and ornate church, which people were allowed to go inside for free. That was to be the meeting place an hour and a half later for anyone wishing to take the bus back to the ship, which we did not do. Inside the church it had huge stained-glass windows and very ornate details. Looking up and to the back of the church there was an enormous pipe organ sprawling across that entire end of the church on a balcony above the entrance.

pipe organ in the church

Many of the old churches we saw on this trip had the same set-up with large pipe organs on a balcony high above the main floor of the church.

Lipizzan mare and gelding

Near to there we saw several carts with two horses each waiting to pick up passengers. We asked a driver with two white horses if that was where the Lipizzan mares went since the nearby riding school only has stallions. He said his horses were indeed Lipizzans, but that only one of them was a mare, the other being a gelding. First time I’d ever heard of a Lipizzan gelding.

Lipizzan stallion in the courtyard at the Spanish Riding School

While there are far more geldings than stallions among male horses of most breeds it’s just stallions that are ever mentioned pertaining to Lipizzans, though it’s probably just a small number of the breed that actually end up at Vienna’s famous Spanish Riding School. Perhaps gelding is the fate of individuals unable to perform all the difficult maneuvers required of the stallions in the riding school. Of course there have to be mares in a breeding facility or they’d soon run out of stallions to ride. Stallions for the riding school come from the Piber Federal Stud in an Austrian village called Piber.

stallion on the monitor

There was a pay-extra excursion offered on the ship to see the stallions perform, but we did not do any pay-extra excursions, just the ones included with the cruise. We did walk past the facility where we could see some horses in their stalls, and one got walked across a courtyard. There were a couple TV monitors by the walkway that showed stallions performing.

towering church and Christmas market

The Christmas market near the church was not due to open for a bit when we got there so we visited a nearby Lindt chocolate store and a couple souvenir shops while waiting for it to open. Apparently a lot of people must confuse Austria with Australia because a popular item at the souvenir shops appearing on t-shirts, hats, and other things was a sort of street sign like yellow diamond with a silhouette of a kangaroo that said no kangaroos in Austria.

Even the cashier at one of the stores was wearing a t-shirt with that logo. Oddly though it was late November and quite cold outside there were no sweatshirts in any of those shops, just t-shirts. They did sell warm socks, hats, and gloves though.

stall at the market near City Hall

The Christmas market there was bigger than it looked at first glance as the booths wound around a corner. From there we walked to city hall where there was a bigger Christmas market, and we went through another one along the way. Vienna has a lot of Christmas markets.

double carousel at a Christmas market in Vienna, Austria

The Christmas market near city hall had a double-decker carousel in the midst of the many booths selling food, hot drinks, Christmas ornaments, gifts, and other trinkets. A lot of the booths in the various markets had the same items as each other rather than handcrafted things specific to only one booth.

oldest Ferris wheel in the world that is still in operation

The oldest Ferris wheel still in operation is in Vienna at Wurstelprater amusement park about a mile and a half from city hall.  The cabins that you ride in actually look like little cabins and each one holds 6 or 8 people comfortably, though more could squeeze in.

inside the Ferris wheel

The Ferris wheel was built in 1897 in honor of the 50th year of Emperor Franz Joseph’s reign. It stands around 213 feet tall and is located near the entrance to the amusement park. With a diameter of about 200 feet it is nearly as wide as it is tall. Its name is the Weiner Riesenrad. A lot of things in Vienna are called Weiner because in German Weiner means Viennese. It’s also associated with sausage because of wienerwurst, a sausage originating in Vienna.

view from the Ferris wheel

The first pod that stopped in front of us while we waited to get on had tables and chairs in it. Some people got out, then an attendant went in and cleaned off all the tables while the ride sat there. Then it moved on and an ordinary one with a bench in the middle came down, which we were allowed into. It has windows on all 4 sides, of which the middle ones on the longer sides will open for people to take unobstructed photos. The bench is wide enough to for people to sit back to back on both sides. Nobody sat for long though as everyone stood near windows. There were only 5 people in the overly large car so we could move around from one window to another to get photos from different places.

view of the little Christmas market at the park from the wheel

The wheel only goes around once before you have to get off. It’s more about the views and riding the oldest Ferris wheel still in use than it is about actually having a fun ride. It stops frequently and sits in one spot for awhile before moving onto the next one so there is plenty of opportunity for photos from all directions. Once you get to the top there is quite a nice view of the city. There’s also a good view of the amusement park in which the wheel resides. The park has a lot of other rides including several roller coasters and a more traditional Ferris wheel. There’s also some little rides for very small children.

giant pretzel booth

The amusement park is not too far from the port. The weather was cold and winds that were predicted to be quite heavy that afternoon started picking up while we were at the top of the wheel so we didn’t spend a lot of time looking around the booths at that park’s Christmas market before heading back to the ship, though we did stop there long enough to have a hot drink and share a giant soft pretzel. European wheat is different from the wheat in America and not nearly as likely to bother non-celiac people with gluten sensitivities to American wheat.

Christmas decorations on a street in Vienna

Taxis and Ubers were readily available in the touristy areas of Vienna so anyone not wishing to walk from place to place had those options in addition to public transportation.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025
Posted in Europe, Skirnir, Viking | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Oosterdam Obstructed View Balcony Cabin

Posted on April 11, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

view of Antarctica from obstructed view balcony

Cabins of the same category are mostly the same from one to another on any given cruise ship, but there are always some within a category that are different. The most obvious difference is accessible cabins, which are usually larger and if fully accessible will have features like roll-in showers and some things lower down like the seamail box outside the door and the clothesline that pulls across the shower. Sometimes there are other differences as well.

Oosterdam in Puerto Chacabuco, Chile

On a lot of ships you find ocean view cabins with partly or fully obstructed views, but it’s not so often that there are obstructed view balcony cabins. The Oosterdam had some though. Being obstructed view they are a slightly different category than standard balcony cabins, and with obstruction comes a lower cost. Obstructed ocean view cabins are generally found behind lifeboats or structural features of the ship. With Oosterdam’s obstructed view balcony cabins it’s the part under the railing that goes across the balcony itself. Generally that is see-through plexiglass, but in these cabins it’s a metal wall. Above the railing there is nothing obstructing the view.

deck 4 open bow on the Oosterdam with a view of Antarctica

The obstructed balcony cabins on the Oosterdam are found near the bow on deck 4. Deck 4 on this class of Holland America ships has a big open balcony where passengers are allowed to go when the ship cruises through scenic places. The metal wall around the bow extends back to the balcony cabins near the bow on that deck.

obstructed view balcony

Furniture inside the cabin is high enough to see over the wall when sitting on it, and there is nothing blocking the view if you stand on the balcony. The only things you can’t see is whatever you would see through the plexiglass that regular balcony cabins have instead of the metal wall. Anything seen above the plexiglass is the same. You can even see the view over the wall when sitting on the deck chairs out on the balcony. Just not the water up close that is usually seen through the plexiglass. Besides the lower price for being obstructed, the benefit of this sort of balcony is that it is nearly double the size of a standard balcony so you have lots of space to stretch out in the deck chairs – which are accompanied by a foot stool for doing so. There’s also a small table on the deck. Standard balconies don’t always have enough space to stretch your feet out before they come in contact with that plexiglass wall.

bathroom cabin 4020

When you first enter the room there is a bathroom on one side and closets on the other. The bathroom has a tub/shower combo so it is slightly larger than bathrooms where there is just a shower. Bathtubs are standard in most cabins except interior and accessible on Holland America. On many cruise lines only suites have tubs. There’s a cabinet above the sink with three shelves inside and a mirror on the door. The space above the sink is also a mirror. A rack above the toilet holds the towels. There’s a shelf running along the wall underneath of the sink that is the biggest storage space in the bathroom. Also some room on the counter to put a few things.

separate shampoo, conditioner, and body wash

It has 2 glasses in holders on the wall as well as two other wall mounted holders that might have been intended to hold soap, but since there is liquid soap in a container mounted on the wall that isn’t necessary so they can be used for other small items. A bottle of hand lotion is mounted on the wall next to the hand soap. The shower has separate shampoo, conditioner, and body wash mounted high enough to be convenient for taking a shower, but too high for taking a bath as you have to stand up to reach them. Nice to have all 3 and not the nasty all-in-one garbage that some ships have. Speaking of garbage, there is a small garbage can in the bathroom and one that has separate sections for garbage and recyclable paper in the main cabin area.

closets

There are 3 closets. Two of them have hanging bars and fold-down shelves that you can put down to use or leave up and not use if you have things that need more space to hang down. There’s also a fixed shelf above the hanging rack. The third closet has shelves and the cabin safe. Some shelf space is taken by lifejackets. Little fleece blankets and bathrobes were also on one shelf in that closet. I have not seen the little blankets in a cruise ship cabin before, but this was a cruise to Antarctica.

view of the room from the balcony end

There’s a curtain you can pull across to block that little hallway from the main cabin area, which is nice at night because there’s a motion light under the closet that will light up if anyone walks past it and also a small light that stays on in the bathroom even if the brighter light is off.

room from the door end

There are 2 large hooks mounted at the top of the wall between the closet and the TV, which is set within a larger wooden frame. The far end of that wall has a desk which has the small refrigerator underneath it and some open space with a cushioned box you can store things inside of as well as use for a stool. There is a mirror above the desk with a light on one side. It has four 115-volt USA style outlets to plug things into and two 220-volt round ones. The hairdryer which is found in a cupboard on the side of the desk uses the round one. There’s also a make-up mirror and wine glasses in that cupboard. There’s an ice bucket and glasses on the desk and if you requested ice on the paper that was in the cabin at check-in the steward will fill the ice bucket for you. The refrigerator comes full of mini-bar items that you have to pay for if you use, but we ask the steward to clear those out and then we can put whatever we want in it.

towel elephant with chocolates for eyes

As is standard on cruise ship cabins, the bed can be set up as one or two. There is a nightstand with two drawers for each bed or each side of the bed if you have it set as one. Each nightstand has a USB port above it and there is also one at the desk. The wall above the bed is a mirror and there is a little reading light on either side. On the other side of the room across from the desk there is a small couch with pillows. In between there’s a little oval table and one chair.

Doors on cruise ship cabins are usually magnetic, but on the Oosterdam the magnetism wasn’t very strong on the door. We had a small door magnet, but it kept sliding down or even falling off when the door opened or closed so we ended up putting it on the much more magnetic frame around the door. The walls in the hallway next to the door were also far more magnetic than the door itself. That is not always the case. On some ships the door is the most magnetic thing in the room.

magnets are useful on cruise ships

Any wall space that isn’t covered by something is magnetic. Magnets are quite useful on cruise ships. We bring magnetic hooks which work for hanging things on the wall in the cabin as well as for holding laundry lines over the tub when there isn’t any structure to tie them too. On some ships the shower or bathtub walls are very strongly magnetic, but on this ship they are pretty weak so it took several magnetic hooks to hold up a line with wet laundry. We also bring small magnets to keep all our paperwork organized on the wall. Holland America uses digital tickets for excursions, but we still have things to hang like a print-out of the itinerary for the cruise, any info we need for anything else, and the daily newsletter of things happening on the ship.

making use of magnets and structures on the shower walls to hang lines for drying laundry

Holland America does not have any self-serve guest laundries and it is expensive to send laundry out for the crew to wash so we bring soap that is intended for handwashing laundry and some extra clotheslines since the built-in one that pulls across the tub doesn’t hold much. One of my lines is made from several braided lines so a bit of the clothes goes between the lines and it doesn’t need any clothespins and the other has built-in clothespins, but it’s still useful to bring a few for use on the built-in one that is just a string or if I have more line space than built-in clothespins on that line. When you get to 4 stars in Holland America’s loyalty program, which takes 200 points, you get free laundry service.

cabin art

Artwork in the room consisted of a painting of nothing. Just a bunch of colors thrown on canvas. One bit sort of resembled a sunflower, but it would take a lot of imagination to make much of anything else. With some imagination it’s possible to see things like ice, snow, or even the sea, but none of those things are actually there. A painting of nothing is better than one of a sinking ship, which is what was in our cabin on the Zaandam.

merpent tile art

The bathroom had a couple decorative tiles. One was a single tile depicting a couple of what looked like old-fashioned Dutch people in an old sailing ship. The other was a double tile with a merpent. That is a cross between the ugliest mermaid ever and a sea serpent. It had a sea serpent tail with a human body top half. The person part was mostly facing forward except that the part where it joined the tail looked like a big bare butt. Above that it had 6-pack abs, naked boobs, and a seriously ugly face with horns on top its head. Maybe it was some sort of mythical old sea god or something. It was also blowing a giant seashell horn. If it didn’t have the boobs it would look more male than female, but those were undeniably female.

This room was located above the theater. We could hear the nightly shows through the floor if we were in the room during performances. We did not hear any of the daytime events in the theater, just the main shows of the evening. The other noisy thing was when it was windy outside it would whistle through where the balcony door didn’t quite seal shut even if it was locked. If it was really windy – which it often was on a cruise to Antarctica – we could sometimes hear the dividers between balconies rattling too.

Overall it’s a nice room and I would book this category again given the opportunity since you get a larger than normal balcony for a lower price.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025
Posted in Holland America, Oosterdam | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tahiti Beginner’s Dive

Posted on April 4, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Noordam in Tahiti

Our cruise from San Diego to Sydney, Australia on Holland America Noordam had an overnight port stop in Papeete, Tahiti. We booked the cruise through Vacations to Go. When you book through Vacations to Go they offer shore excursions at some of the ports that are through local companies at that port rather than through the cruise ship. I’ve done a lot of snorkeling, but only one dive and that was years ago at the Great Barrier Reef. Like the one I booked in Tahiti, it was a beginner’s dive where someone looks after you the whole time and you don’t actually learn to read your air supply or how to do anything else on your own, unlike taking a certified diving course where you learn to do everything for yourself.

I don’t know who writes up the information they send people for these sorts of tours, just that it isn’t Vacations to Go, but somewhere more local to the tour. Unfortunately like so many others this tour advised people to bring insect repellant and sunscreen. There are of course no mosquitoes or any other sort of biting insects under the water so it’s extremely bad advice. I’ve never seen a mosquito at any tropical beach or reef either. Anything that kills insects also kills coral. When going anywhere that has coral, bug spray should be banned rather than recommended.

Visitor’s Center

As for sunscreen, when recommending that for any excursion venturing into tropical waters they should specify that it is reef safe because chemical sunscreens are harmful to coral. Coral has enough problems these days without the people who come to admire it unknowingly poisoning it. Most people don’t have a clue that those things are harmful. One drop of chemical sunscreen in the water volume of an Olympic sized swimming pool is all it takes to cause harm so bunches of tourists slathered in it while descending upon a reef are definitely a problem. Luckily mineral based reef-safe sunscreens are becoming much easier to find than they once were, though sadly I have yet to see one in an onboard cruise ship shop. (When mentioning that on the Noordam they said that the stuff in their shop was reef-safe even though the packaging didn’t say so, but the ingredients listed on the bottles said otherwise.) Even better than reef-safe sunscreen, wearing a full-body UV swimsuit prevents the need to wear any sunscreen at all over most of your body and it doesn’t wash off so it protects you longer than any sunscreen ever could.

One advantage of excursions booked through outside sources rather than through the ship is having a much smaller group of people. There were only 4 people on the dive excursion. The other 3 had booked through a couple of different sources. One of them got there on his own. The other 3 of us were picked up by the dive company, called Fluid, right outside Papeete’s Visitor Information Center, which is just across a busy street and down slightly to the right from the port. The one who wasn’t picked up was a certified diver, but the other 3 of us all did the beginner’s dive.

Fluid dive center on the dock

Before we got on the boat we were outfitted with wetsuits, masks, and fins. Both the mask and fins were nicer than the ones I have, but I don’t know what brand they were. Tahiti is a French-speaking country. None of the guests on that tour spoke French, but all of the dive crew spoke at least some English. The main guy spoke it best so he gave all the pre-dive instructions. Once you are under the water all the communication is done with hand signals so the language there doesn’t really matter as long as you understood the explanation and remembered what the hand signals were and what they meant.

dive boat at the dock

They had enough crew to assign each guest their own guy. For the certified diver it was just a dive buddy because you never want to dive alone. For the rest of us it was more of a dive babysitter who each individually led us around to all the things to see under the water and constantly checked to make sure we were OK, as well as keeping an eye on the gages on our tanks. Most of the time I didn’t see any other divers while we were under the water, but sometimes I saw other people. Not all of them were from our boat.

guide on the dive boat

Experienced divers can put their tanks on before rolling off the side of the boat, but for the three inexperienced ones our helpers each put the tank on their person after they got into the water. Before going under we practiced breathing with the air tank because they want to make sure you are comfortable with using it before you go under the water. I was comfortable with it right away so we didn’t spend much time at the surface before going under. It’s not that different from snorkeling except that you carry the air in a tank on your back rather than getting it from a tube above the surface. They also explained how to clear your ears every meter or so when going down initially or when going deeper once you have gone under. Otherwise your eardrums could get quite painful.

The others went in on the opposite side of the boat from me so I didn’t see how they all went down or how long it took them to adjust to the breathing, but my guy took me to the anchor rope at the bow of the boat and we used hands on that to get under the water. At least I did. He probably just swam down. The tank was on a vest that could have air added or removed at the press of a button if he wanted us to go deeper or shallower. After we swam around partway down for awhile he added a couple weights on me and we went down to the bottom. It was mostly sand, but there were some small coral reefs, a crashed small airplane, and a couple of sunken boats. Oddly enough there was also a table and chair with something that looked like an open algae-covered laptop computer sitting on it.

sunken airplane (internet photo)

The place we went was called the aquarium, but it was out in open water and not in a tank at an actual aquarium. Probably called that because of all the fish that live there.

sunken ship (internet photo)

In one spot somebody had arranged dead bits of coral into a heart. Unfortunately coral worldwide is dying off and this was no exception with more dead bits of coral scattered about than live reefs. Besides bug spray and chemical sunscreen, reefs face many other dangers including damage from storms, pollution, and rising ocean temperatures. Things like overfishing affect them as well because there is a natural balance among the things that live on the reef and removing too many fish can allow suffocating algae to grow. Crown of thorns starfish also can damage reefs. Not all algae is damaging to coral. The small polyps that together make up the whole coral each live with a symbiotic algae that provides much of their food source, but becomes toxic when the ocean temperatures rise too high. Then the coral expels it and becomes bleached. It can’t live long without it though so if the water stays too hot for very long the coral dies. Coral reefs are the base of the food chain for much of the other life in the ocean.

clam (internet photo

I saw lots of fish below the sea. Some brightly colored, some not so much. Some were parrot fish and some were puffer fish, but I don’t know what all the rest were. I saw a couple hermit crabs in snail shells, the first pointed out by my guide and the second I just spotted. The other people did not see those, but one of them saw a clam.

puffer fish (photo from snorkeling in Morea, but I saw the same kind of fish on the dive)

My guide found a dead sea urchin shell on the bottom, and later I could see some of the spines of a live one hiding in some coral. I didn’t take my camera under the water because I didn’t know if the dive would exceed the limit of how deep the camera can safely go. I thought there’d be a lot more photos of the unique objects at that site online than there actually are.

people returning to the boat after diving

After surfacing they took our tanks off in the water so we didn’t have to climb up into the boat wearing them like an experienced diver would. Once onboard we were offered pineapple juice and cookies before heading back to shore. It’s a fun way to have a chance to go scuba diving if you are not a certified diver.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025

 

Posted in Holland America, Noordam, Pacific Ocean & Islands, Ports of Call | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Enchanted Princess Premium Suite

Posted on March 28, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Enchanted Princess in Saint Thomas

Enchanted Princess has several different types of suites, though there are not a whole lot of most of them onboard. The biggest are the sky suites There are only two of those. There’s also only 2 each of owner’s suites and window suites. Unlike most suites, the window suites don’t have a balcony. Other types include penthouse which there are the most of not counting mini suites, then premium. There are eight premium suites, found in the front corners of decks 9-12.

Balcony on Premium Suite D121

Premium suits are about 554 square feet each including a lengthy balcony running along the side of the ship from end to end of the suite. The balcony is furnished with chairs and tables.

view from the bedroom window of suite D121

These suites have separate bedrooms from the living area. The bedroom has a sloping wall and a slanted window with a forward facing view. People can look over the bow as well as see what is in front of the ship from there. The bedroom has a desk and chair and lots of open floor space. Also a closet.

bedroom in premium suite D121

The bedroom is more spacious than some other entire cabins.

premium suite bathroom

The bathroom is also spacious and much nicer than those found in standard cabins.

premium suite living room

The living area has a couch, table, desk, and chairs. It also has a mini-fridge under a countertop as found in the standard cabins. A sliding door opens onto the balcony.

entryway to premium suite

Suites come with amenities not included with standard staterooms. Suite amenities on Enchanted Princess include priority embarkation, priority tender, priority line at guest services, priority shore excursion reservations, access to the elite lounge with complimentary hors d’oeuvres, upgraded room service menu, exclusive reserve dining and priority reservations for specialty dining venues, reserved theater seating, access to the concierge lounge and concierge service, one free mini-bar set-up with free bottled water daily, and free laundry service.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025
Posted in Enchanted Princess, Princess | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Zaandam Vista Suite

Posted on March 21, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Zaandam Vista Suite

Vista Suites on the Zaandam are comparable to what is typically called mini suites on most ships. Zaandam does not have balcony cabins so the only way to have a balcony is in a suite which makes the Vista suites the balcony cabins of that ship. They are larger than the ship’s inside or oceanview cabins as well as slightly larger than most standard balcony cabins on ships that have them.

balcony with a view of Canada Place while the ship was docked in Vancouver

The balcony is about twice the size of the veranda on most ship’s standard balcony cabins. It came equipped with 2 chairs with footstools that slip under the chair when not in use and a small table.

jetted tub in the bathroom

The bathroom is equipped with a jetted tub. While few cruise ships have bathtubs anywhere other than suites, Holland America has them in everything from ocean view and above and suites have jetted tubs. The bathroom also has the standard 3 shelves for storing things and a row of pegs on the inside of the door to hang things on. The tub has separate dispensers for shampoo, conditioner, and bodywash and there’s dispensers for both soap and hand lotion by the sink.

row of closets by the room entrance

The vista suite has lots of storage space. It has 4 closets, two with hanging bars at the top and 2 with shelves. One of those also has a low hanging bar and one of the ones with a top bar also has some optional fold-down shelves. There were enough hangers already in our cabin that we didn’t need to ask for more, which is quite rare on a cruise ship. One of the closets had bathrobes on a shelf, something we often have to ask for. The desk area has 3 sets of 3 drawers and the nightstands have 2 drawers each.

desk in the vista suite

The big drawers under the ends of the beds only had a tiny bit of stuff in them rather than being full of spare bedding as they sometimes are – at least at the beginning of the cruise. Later the steward had more stuff in one of them. A lot of the ships we’ve been on recently have had those big drawers at the ends of the beds, but the stewards nearly always have stuff in them so they rarely ever count for passenger storage space. There’s still room under the bed for luggage storage even with that drawer taking up a lot of the underbed space. There’s also a couple shelves above the desk. Suites on the Zaandam also come equipped with a set of binoculars, which can come in handy for wildlife spotting on an Alaskan cruise.

living room area

Besides the bed, which can be set up as 1 queen or 2 twins, the room has a couch a table, and a small refrigerator. Upon arrival the refrigerator is set up as a mini bar. If you don’t want to buy those things you can ask the steward to remove them. Which is always a good idea since they want a fortune for each tiny thing. Better to have empty space in the refrigerator so you can put things you want there.

vista suite

There are some hooks on the wall which is nice for hanging coats, especially since the walls on this ship are too magnetically weak to add magnetic hooks. A magnetic hook will stay on the wall by itself, but they just slide down the wall as soon as you hang anything on them. Even on the door a magnetic hook could only hold very lightweight items. The walls were magnetic enough to hold up paper for anyone who wants to post the itinerary or something on the wall. The old printed excursion tickets would have been too heavy to hang on Zaandam’s wall, but on this cruise the excursion tickets were digital in the app – and you didn’t even need that to check in for an excursion because they could just scan your key card instead. There were no paper reminders of excursions provided so unless you printed out the itinerary that included them before leaving home it was all digital in the app, including excursion reminders.

the stewards made different towel animals each day including this bear

The TV on the wall across from the bed was somewhat smaller than the wooden frame it hung in, but big enough. The safety video for the muster drill kept saying text this and text that, but texting things was not actually required so that was probably old information that had not been updated or removed. The safety video had to be played through to the end on boarding day to unlock the TV and make any other programming available.

Zaandam in Vancouver

Various things said to go report to your muster station to have your card scanned as soon as possible after boarding, but they did not actually have anyone at those stations to scan cards until they announced for everyone to go there when it was getting close to all-aboard time. Muster stations on this ship are out at the lifeboats, whichever one is assigned to your cabin. Information posted on the inside of the door says where the muster station is and maps out routes to get there.

a sinking ship might not be the best art choice for a cruise ship

The artwork in our cabin was a painting of a sinking ship – not exactly the best art choice for a cruise ship! Initially we thought there were no USB ports in the room, but then I found one hiding on the backside of the base of a lamp. The cabin had 3 outlets, which is 3 times better than the single one found in some older ships. With a 3-outlet plug and a clock with 2 USB ports we extended that a bit and had enough places to plug things in.

the stewards got a towel owl and a couple ducks along with their tip

If you happen to stay in Vista Suite 6147 on the Zaandam I hid a little stealth black duck behind the TV that blends in well enough that it isn’t likely to get found by anyone who doesn’t know to look for it there unless someone repairs or replaces the TV or is a really thorough duck searcher. I haven’t found a duck in any of the cabins we’ve stayed in yet, but usually leave a couple for future guests somewhere the steward isn’t likely to look. I also leave one for the steward, but that’s out in plain sight with the tip. We left two for the stewards on this ship since they worked in pairs. Also a towel owl, which is one I commonly leave for stewards because it’s my own creation so not one that they make, or at least not that I’ve seen so far. It’s a pretty easy one though so once they’ve seen it they might start making them. Possibly some already have.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025
Posted in Holland America, Shipboard Life, Zaandam | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Rosenborg Castle

Posted on March 17, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Rosenborg Castle

Prior to our European river cruise on Viking Skirnir, we spent a couple days in Copenhagen, Denmark before moving on to Budapest where the cruise began. We stayed in a hotel called Wakeup Copenhagen-Borgergade. The hotel had a great location within walking distance of a lot of Copenhagen’s attractions, but the room was tiny and the bathroom weirdly surrounded in frosted glass instead of actual walls.

not the entrance

The closest attraction to our hotel was Rosenborg castle, which was just a few blocks away so we went there the first day we arrived after checking into the hotel. We got there late enough to get a room on arrival, but on departure day we did make use of the hotel’s luggage storage lockers which they have available for guests who need somewhere to put their things for awhile before checking into or after checking out of their room.

statue in the rose garden outside of the castle

Rosenborg Castle was built from 1606-1634 as a summer palace in the country for King Christian IV, who died there in 1648. This one was his favorite castle. It may have been a country estate at the time, but the city has grown up around it now. The castle remained in use as a royal residence until 1710. It was also the place where the Danish royals stored their greatest treasures since about 1660 – treasures which they could show off to their guests as a mark of their wealth and position. The castle became a museum in 1838.

decorated ceiling

Apparently the royals of that time liked very ornate things as just about everything in the castle is quite ornate. All of the ceilings have at the very least paintings. Most have structural décor as well.

ceiling art

They really seemed to like paintings of people who were naked or nearly so as that was the topic of much of the ceiling art. Even when it looks at first glance like there’s one where the people all have clothes on there might be some nude people somewhere in the painting.

room with fancy tapestries on the walls

The furniture, dishes, and even keys on display are also very ornate. Some of the walls have massive tapestries. Much of the castle is within the area tourists are allowed to go, but some spaces are not. The self-guided tour winds through several floors of the castle as well as a couple additional spaces accessed from outside. At the desk where tickets are purchased there’s an option to scan a QR code for audio to compliment the self-guided tour and there are informational brochures available in quite a variety of languages.

winter room

On the ground floor a room called the Winter Room was undergoing renovations, which appeared quite necessary considering some of the exposed inner walls showed quite large gaps and cracks. According to the brochure this room contains 3 secret music channels which are likely some sort of tubes or open space in the walls where music could be heard in the room from musicians playing in the basement. The room labeled as Christian V’s chamber in the brochure has a mouthpiece in a windowsill which they assume was used for communication with a hall at the other end of the castle.

king’s toilet

Besides all the ornate decoration of the castle itself and objects within it, there are also many portraits of the former occupants in various places around the castle. One small room on that floor was completely covered in tile except for a wooden commode in one corner, which is labeled in the brochure as Christian IV’s toilet. This was the only bathroom in the tour, but the brochure says the castle has 3, each of which has its own chute to the moat. There was nothing else in the bathroom, but since this castle predates indoor plumbing they may have had a pitcher of water or something for hand washing. Or else they just didn’t care since it also predates the discovery of bacteria and back in the day even doctors inadvertently spread disease through unwashed hands.

Marble Chamber

A room called the Marble Chamber had marble everywhere.

room in the castle

After visiting the 9 rooms on the ground floor, the tour continues up a stairway to the first floor, which has 14 rooms. Throughout the castle Some areas are set with furnishings as they would have used them. Others have displays of things like dishes, jewelry, small statues or other ornamentation – or some of each. Most are open or just have some things roped off, but in a few rooms all of the displays are behind glass.

royal fishing tackle

One of the rooms on this level has mirrors all around the walls, ceiling, and even part of the floor, which gives the impression that you are looking down through many levels when looking at the floor part, though it is really just the floor and ceiling reflecting each other. Although this room is the least ornate, mirror glass was quite expensive at the time the castle was built so a room full of mirrors was an impressive extravagance. Just about everything in the castle has extravagant decorations. Even things like fireplaces, cabinets, beer steins, chess pieces, and weapons. They even had fancy fishing tackle.

throne room

The second floor, which is the third one visited since the first was called the ground floor is a long open room with the king and queen’s thrones at one end and another throne at the other end.

trouser wetting chair

Near the other throne there’s a chair called the trouser wetting chair from 1673 that would trap the unsuspecting victim who sat there and dump water on them while making fart sounds and then leaking to the floor as if they were wetting themselves. A very strange thing to have, but pretty impressive technology for way back then.

castle in a glass case in a castle

Some of the statues in the castle depict horseback riders in saddles without stirrups, but not all. There were 2 very ornate saddles on display in the basement which looked like they were made from fabric rather than leather. One was a wedding saddle which also had no stirrups. There were all sorts of artworks in glass cases throughout the castle – even a castle. Definitely not a model of Rosenborg Castle since the little one looks nothing like the real castle.

portrait of a prince hanging above toy cannons

The basement held numerous displays of weapons from various eras from swords to guns – most with ornate decorations like everything else in the castle. It had some instruments that look like big circles, but were used to calculate the positions of the planets and to predict eclipses. The planetarium equipment was from 1682.

ivory sailboat

Other things found in the basement included giant kegs and a storage area that still has many bottles of ancient wine. Also a display of ivory and amber items. There was quite a large sailboat made from ivory and a whole army of chess figurines that look like they’re made out of gold. On the way in there’s a portrait of a small child next to 3 miniature cannons – war toys for royal boys.

king’s crown

The treasury held crowns, crown jewels, and some more swords. The centerpiece is Christian Iv’s crown from 1596 in a glass case. The crown jewels include 4 sets – pearls, rubies, emeralds and diamonds. Information there said diamonds could only be worn in Denmark by the sitting queen.

winter room undergoing renovation

The brochure lists 11 different kings of the castle from 1534 to 1863. All of them were named either Frederik or Christian with 6 Frederiks and 5 Christians. I’m not sure why the first Frederik who is listed as Frederik II was included since it says he died in 1588, which was before the castle was built for Christian IV, who is the second one listed. The last one, Frederik VII, lived both before and after the year it says the castle became a museum.

fancy floor in the castle

During the same time period there were 17 queens. Their names had a bit more variety, though there were 3 named Sophie (and one with Sophie as a middle name), 3 named Louise, and 2 each of Caroline and Charlotte. The rest didn’t share names other than there was an Anne and an Anna, and 3 with the middle name Amalie. One of those was Charlotte Amalie, which is the name of the city where cruise ships port in Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands.

Linden tree

Overall there’s quite a lot to see and you can take as much or as little time as you want to go through the castle. The extensive grounds around the castle are like a park with a flower garden, lawns, pathways, and some statues. Also lots of locals walking dogs. Some of the trees have crazy pod things that look like big burls where a group of branches grows. The whole tree is covered in what looks like burl-type growths. That appears to be from pruning since all of the pruned linden trees we saw had those, but unpruned ones did not.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025
Posted in Day Trips, Europe | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Danube River Cruising

Posted on March 14, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

the biggest locks

The Danube is the second-longest river in Europe. Stretching from Central through Southeastern Europe it runs from the Black Forest south into the Black Sea. Only the Volga River in Russia is longer.

in a lock waiting for the back gate to close

Early in our river cruise on Viking Skirnir we passed through a set of locks, the first of over 60 on the journey. We were told the first one was the largest lock of the entire journey.

sunrise at the top of the locks

At first all of the locks started out with the water low, then raised us to a higher level. About halfway through the cruise we started going into high water and getting lowered instead, though that was on other rivers farther into the cruise. On the Danube they were all going up as we worked our way from the start of the journey in Budapest to the end in Amsterdam.

bridge on the Danube River

We passed under many bridges on our journey. The ones on the Danube were high enough for the Viking longship to pass under easily, but later in the journey there were some low bridges where everything on the top deck including the pilot house had to fold down in order to fit under them.

sailing past a town

The Danube wasn’t just historically an important means of transportation for the area, it still is. It’s not just river cruise boats sailing there, though there are a lot of them. Many different companies that we’d never heard of before we saw their ships on the river. There’s also plenty of barges still transporting cargo by river.

mistletoe in trees on the riverbank

In some areas trees full of mistletoe dot the banks of the river.

passing by a town called Weißenkirchen in Austria

Picturesque towns and the occasional castle dot the riverbanks with countryside and vineyards in between. And of course churches. No matter how small the town it has at least one church. Often more.

Spitz an der Donau, Austria

One day we had scenic sailing through a UNESCO World Heritage area along the Danube called Wachau.

a castle perched on the hill above Spitz au Donau

The scenic area included castles as well as picturesque towns.

Schönbühel castle

Schönbühel Castle was built in the 12th century. It sits on a rock about 40 meters above the Danube River.

another riverside town

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025
Posted in Europe, Skirnir, Viking | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

San Antonio Chile Cruise Port

Posted on March 7, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

view of a hillside by the hotel

We arrived in San Antonio, Chile a couple days before embarking on Holland America Oosterdam for a cruise to Antartica. We really only needed to come to Chile one day ahead to get there in time for the cruise, but since flights sometimes get cancelled or delayed we figured better safe than sorry and booked one for an extra day ahead. This flight had no issues with both the first and connecting flights leaving right on time. We have in the past had flights that were delayed or cancelled though and once nearly missed a cruise because of a delayed flight. It’s also nice to have some extra time to visit the port city before the cruise.

view of the port from our hotel window

Money in Chile is the Chilean Peso. $1 USD is currently worth $929.31 CLP. A dollar was worth over a thousand Chilean pesos when we were there in January and has declined more just within the last week so that won’t likely be the correct amount for long. Although price tags looked high, due to the value of their money things there were actually pretty cheap. Temperatures in San Antonio average 42°F to 71°F and rarely fall below 35°F or climb above 75°F. Average annual rainfall is just under 33 inches.

Oosterdam coming into port in the dark

Some years back we took a cruise that went from Valparaiso, Chile to Sydney, Australia. That time we spent several days in Santiago which is where the airport is before going to Valparaiso. Since we had already done some tours from Santiago this time we just took a taxi straight to San Antonio from the airport – which is over an hour away. There is not an airport near the cruise ports in Chile. Luckily things in Chile are pretty inexpensive compared to a lot of other places, including long taxi rides. As it turned out there is a lot more for tourists to do in Santiago and Valparaiso than there is in San Antonio. There aren’t a lot of people who speak English in San Antonio. Even at the hotel there weren’t very many employees who did so anyone planning on spending much time there would benefit from learning to speak some Spanish before they go.

view of the hotel from the promenade

We stayed in a nice hotel called Enjoy San Antonio. The hotel part of the building is perched atop of a much larger building that houses a casino, parking garage, shops, and a couple restaurants. Hotel rooms start on floor 7, which is where ours was. The room was quite large and had ample storage space and a big bathroom. They did not supply washcloths, just towels. They did have separate body wash, shampoo, and conditioner for the shower as well as soap and hand lotion at the sink. The hotel provided a shuttle to the cruise ship for a small fee.

sea lions and dogs on the beach

From our hotel room we had a lovely view of the harbor. We could see sea lions on a beach. They had some time to rest peacefully in the morning until people with dogs showed up. Then the dogs and sea lions would bark at each other until the dogs eventually chased some of the sea lions into the water. A promenade along the shore had a lot of little booths selling things and some restaurants and a fish market. It was quite a busy harbor with a fishing fleet and harbor tour boats near shore.

view of boats and the hotel from the promenade

There was a whole flock of other boats too so some were probably pleasure boats. Between that and open water there’s a commercial port with different areas for loading or unloading container ships, car carrier ships, and the sort that carries grain. Some of the berths have enormous cranes for unloading the containers. The one for grain ships had a piping system that extends from shore to the ship. We saw our ship come in from the hotel window, though where it docked in the container port was behind another ship and some containers so not much of it was visible from the window after it docked.

dancers on the promenade

Other than walking along the promenade or the small beach and visiting the shops and restaurants there’s not a lot to do in San Antonio. There’s a dock on the promenade where you can walk down and get harbor tours on the spot, which only cost $4 per person at the time of our visit. The harbor tour just goes around the commercial harbor. All of the dialog is in Spanish. We saw a lot more sea lions on the tour than what we could see from the hotel. If you google things to do in San Antonio, Chili most of the tours take you to a different area. Some of them go to Valparaiso, which is more than 50 miles away.

view of the port from our hotel

The port in San Antonio is a commercial port rather than a cruise port. It has berths to unload multiple ships at a time and many giant cranes. There is a small terminal building which is where busses or shuttles take cruise ship passengers. On boarding day we saw a lot of busses going to and from the port all morning. They were dropping off new passengers coming straight from Santiago for the cruise and picking up disembarking passengers from the previous cruise to go back to Santiago for their flights home.

seagull by the promenade

Prior to the cruise we were sent an email from Holland America saying that there is nowhere to sit indoors at that port. Boarding was not to start before noon. Boarding times were assigned by deck and people warned not to show up before their assigned time. Since the assigned boarding times ranged from noon to 3pm that was not really feasible for most people. Anyone coming straight from the airport on one of the many busses gets there when the bus gets there. Coming from our hotel the shuttle times ranged from 9am to 1pm. Checkout time at that hotel was noon. Other hotels probably had similar schedules.

chairs in the terminal building

The information we were sent about the port was false. The port building did have some folding chairs set up for indoor seating. There was even a little coffee shop in the port building. Boarding likely started as soon as the prior group of passengers finished disembarking as is standard at most ports. We booked the noon shuttle from the hotel because our boarding passes said that our boarding time was noon even though our assigned deck was for 2pm. When we got there the line was pretty short. The chairs were empty. People were already boarding so any early arrivals from before boarding started had already been cleared out of the waiting area. Nobody checked what our assigned boarding time was or cared.

luggage drop

The first thing you get to after being dropped at the port is the luggage drop. Anything that is not small enough to carry easily should be dropped off as you will have to board a bus before going to the ship.

people walking to the terminal building

Important information we were not provided with prior to check-in was that they required the paper you are given at the airport in Santiago when you go through customs. The hotel required that as well. Nobody tells you that you will need that little slip of paper for anything when they hand it to you at the airport. Nobody tells you that you will need it when you book the hotel or cruise either. They also required a printed boarding pass. People who brought a printed one got through check-in faster as those who did not have it had to go through another line to get one printed before they could go through the line to check in for boarding. That is the first time we have seen printed copies required in years, but luckily we do always bring a printed copy as a backup just in case. Usually we don’t need it since the one in the app on phones is normally sufficient. Speaking of which it’s always a good idea to screenshot that boarding pass in the app so if there isn’t any internet at check-in you still have the photo. Not that it was of any use in San Antonio, Chile, but elsewhere it is.

google maps location of the terminal building

Assuming you have all of the required documents (which includes passports) check-in is pretty speedy. If you did it online you go to a kiosk and there is someone there to help you. If not you go to a desk where there are also people available to help. Once that is completed you go through security, which was very fast since we got there after the line of people who arrive before boarding time cleared. If you don’t like lines don’t arrive at cruise ships before boarding time or right when boarding starts because there are always long lines then. If you get there a bit later getting through the process is usually pretty quick.

snack bar inside the cruise terminal building

They took our passports at check-in and gave them back near the end of the cruise. Before the first Chilean port there is a form to fill out that is supposed to be brought to shore in all ports in Chile. The passport number is one of the things required on the form. The instructions sent to the cabin also said that a photocopy of the passport should be brought to shore, but there was no warning of that prior to the cruise and the front desk will not make you one. At least they didn’t on my cruise. They just contradicted the written instructions saying it wasn’t needed. They will give you your passport number to write on the form since they have the passport and you don’t. Nobody at any of the ports ever asked for either the form or copy of the passport.

busses waiting to take people to the ship

After going through security at the terminal people go outside of the building and are on their own to find the busses, which are just beyond the corner of the building. Several busses loaded at once and when one filled it left. There was a steady stream of busses going from the port terminal building to the ship.

busses at the gangway

The distance is not far, but it is a container port and people are not allowed to walk through container ports. The bus drops people right at the gangway. It also brings over some of the luggage. Luggage arrives fairly randomly to the room. Although we dropped 3 bags together, the one small bag came to the room within a couple hours of boarding, one suitcase came a couple hours later, and the other suitcase not until many hours later after we had gone to dinner. A lot of other people in the dining room line were saying they also had some of their luggage but not all of it so that seemed to be pretty standard.

Oosterdam leaving the dock

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025
Posted in Holland America, Oosterdam, Port Cities, South and Central America | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Tahiti Van Tour

Posted on February 28, 2025 by LBcruiseshipblogger

Noordam in Tahiti

Following our missed port in Kiritimati, we arrived in Papeete, Tahiti at noon, a couple hours ahead of Holland America Noordam’s scheduled 2pm arrival. We had nothing planned for that day, but found people with signs for bus or taxi tours just outside of the port gate. We signed up for a taxi tour which took 8 people and was to start about 15-20 minutes later. The taxi in this instance is a van.

van and driver

When the van arrived people piled out from a previous tour, passengers from Ovation of the Seas, which was already at the dock when we arrived. The driver was a little old lady who appeared to have thought she was done for the day – and did not seem pleased to get sent out on another tour. The last time we were in Papeete we took a bus tour. The driver then was also a little old lady. That one spoke clear English and was a wealth of information and fascinating stories. This one spoke enough English to get by, but not enough to keep up a narrative even if she’d wanted to, which she did not seem to want to do anyway. It probably didn’t help that some of the passengers were Germans who spoke very little English themselves. Being a part of French Polynesia, Tahitians speak French.

flower at one of the tour stops

The first thing the little old lady did was point to me and a German lady as the two smallest people and said we had to sit up front as the seats there were smaller. The one by the window was a normal sized seat, but the one in the center was barely wide enough for a very skinny 5-year-old. She pointed me to that one so I felt like an airplane passenger who is far too large for the seat that they purchased for the entire 4-hour tour. I had to scoot off the end toward the driver’s side for the other lady to fasten her seatbelt, and then scoot over the other way or lean sideways on one butt cheek to fasten mine – which then dug into me the whole way where my rear hung over the edge of the seat onto the apparatus that holds the seatbelt between that seat and the driver’s as there was not enough room in that tiny seat for me and the German lady didn’t share any space out of hers. Mostly she kept a hand in the small bit that could have made enough room for me to nearly fit in the seat. She had plenty of room in her seat and could have put that hand on her lap, but she never did. Probably on purpose. Not to mention her rear was probably actually a bit smaller than mine. The leg room for my seat was about 4 inches wide so my legs did have to hang over into her area. That seat was probably intended for either a dog or a very small child whose feet don’t hang out beyond the end of the seat. Definitely not for an adult.

flower at the grotto

Normally all the seats in a tour van are big enough for an adult. This tour should have been limited to 7 people rather than 8. All the other last minute taxi or van tours we’ve been on also had a careful driver that we felt safe riding with. I’m not sure if this lady always drives like a maniac or if she just wanted to get a tour she obviously didn’t want to do over as quickly as possible. She would pass on blind corners or when there were oncoming cars not all that far away. She was quite fond of using her horn. There were a few bicyclists and scooter riders that we flew past with no room to spare. Every time we saw a dog on the side of the road I’d hope it moved out of the way quickly because she wasn’t slowing down for any of them. Luckily she did not hit any, though when some birds waited until the last minute to fly away she said something along the lines of if they were in the way it was their problem if they got ran over. She appeared to feel the same way about dogs, bicyclists, pedestrians, and scooter riders as well. John was happily chatting away with other passengers in a nice comfortable full-sized seat farther back blissfully unaware of any of that. He liked that tour a whole lot more than I did.

map of Tahiti

The driver said at the outset how much time we would get at each stop, repeating it at each place before letting anyone out of the van. She was quite cranky when the German seat hog lady came back a bit late at the first stop, but snapping at the German lady didn’t do her any good. The German lady came back late at every stop so she either didn’t care about the time allowed or wanted to make sure she was back last so she wouldn’t have to get into the van before me and be stuck in the teeny tiny seat.

Grotte De Maraa

The tour made a complete circle around the main island, Tahiti Nui, but not on the smaller bit, Tahiti Iti. There’s just one main road around the island so traffic was pretty busy in town, but not so much farther out.

it looks much bigger with a person in it

Our first stop was at Grotte De Maraa, a place the tour guides all refer to as the grotto. What appears to be a small water-filled cave at the bottom of a tall greenery-shrouded cliff is actually significantly bigger than it looks. Although it wasn’t raining, water dripped off the plants and into the grotto. The site had some honeybuckets near the entrance and a small souvenir shop. There are more trails there besides the short one leading to the grotto, but we didn’t have time to explore. We’ve also only ever seen just that one cave there, but if a person had more time to explore the site has three. The cave doesn’t look nearly as big as it actually is unless there is a person in the water. That person then appears tiny in relation to the grotto.

waterfall at Vaipahi Water Garden

Next we saw the a brief glimpse of the Vaipahi Gardens, also called the Water Gardens of Vaipahi. A short path led to a small waterfall. There are several paths through the garden, but we only had time to see the waterfall. The garden has about 2.5 acres of trails with over 75 species of plants as well as ponds, bridges, and archeological relics.

pathway leading to the waterfall and Viamahuta Falls

Later we went to another waterfall located in Fa’aurna’I Valley. The second waterfall we saw was significantly larger than the one at Vaipahi Gardens. The one we saw there was called Vaimahuta, located at the end of a short trail beyond a bridge leading away from the parking lot.

bridge from the parking area to the trail at Viamahuta Falls

A side trail had a sign to two more waterfalls, but since we had just 15 minutes at that stop and the sign said it took 20 minutes to get there we did not get to see those.

lighthouse at Point Venus

Our 4th stop was Point Venus, which has a tall lighthouse from the 1800’s and monuments to Captain Cook, missionaries to Tahiti, and people from the Bounty. It also had a beach where locals were surfing. There were a bunch of outrigger type canoes parked on a different section of the beach and people paddling more of them into shore. A big building at that beach looked like it may have been a restaurant or something.

outrigger canoe

It seemed like pretty much everywhere in the south Pacific has a monument to Captain Cook. Point Venus got its name because of an observatory he had there in 1770 to study Venus’ trajectory. The lighthouse there was originally built in 1867. The top story was added in 1953 and it got electricity in 1973. It is still in use today and now aids planes as well as ships having had lenses for aerial navigation added.

gift shop at the blowhole

The last stop was Arahoho Blowhole. When we went there on our last visit to Tahiti, the blowhole was next to an old washed-out road that had been replaced by the tunnel the road now passes through. This time much work had been done there with a walking path and edge walls where the old road had been, and a gift shop at the entrance to a parking area that had some picnic tables.

Arahoho Blowhole

Besides the blow hole at the edge of the sea, there’s a smaller inland one a short distance from the shore, which had also had stuff coming out of it on the last visit, but just made noise this time. It was quite damp around that area though so maybe it still blows when there are bigger waves or higher tides.

cove by the blowhole

After the tour we were dropped off inside of the outer security gate to the small parking area at the port, but outside of the one you walk through to get back to the ship. I was happy to make it back in one piece without the van having crashed or ran over anything, and to get out of that immensely uncomfortable seat.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2025
Posted in Holland America, Noordam, Pacific Ocean & Islands, Ports of Call | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment