In our research of past trends in cruise pricing (there are spreadsheets involved), we knew that Royal Caribbean would post Happy Hour specials for January sometime in November. We knew based on the prices from the year before, that an inside room on a Voyager class ship such as Mariner of the Seas would sell for about $599. That’s very tempting, but we’d have to wait until a just few months before the cruise before knowing what the specials would be. We were also concerned that cheap airfare could be difficult to get with such short notice. We’d never last waiting.

During this period of time, we investigated itineraries on different cruise lines. As much as we love Royal Caribbean, their itineraries seemed a bit repetitive. Holland America Line (HAL) had a great itinerary on their Vista class ship called Westerdam. The ship stopped in some interesting ports, such as Turks and Caicos, Tortola, St. Maarten (our most favourite port of all!) and Half Moon Cay, a private island. I was immediately drawn to this itinerary. I was campaigning hard for this cruise.

We had never cruised with Holland America before and their Vista class ships were supposed to be great. Strangely however, the particular sailing that we were interested in was sold out. All other sailings around that time were available, but this one week that worked out best for us had no availability. I was disappointed; I was really getting revved up about a new cruise line, a new ship and new ports. One day while Lee was doing his daily cruise browsing, he noticed that some rooms had opened up for this week on Westerdam. We booked an inside room and got put on the waiting list for a balcony. I never expected we’d get one, and had satisfied myself that an inside room was the best idea for us considering prices and our budget. One evening, as we sat in a local coffee talking cruises, Lee pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket; it was a booking confirmation for a balcony room on Westerdam. Some balcony rooms had appeared on-line and Lee snagged us a VF level balcony and offered to pay the upgrade. Holland America’s customer service was not much help; these balcony rooms that were showing up on Internet sites like icruise.com, HAL’s web site, but were not showing up on Holland America’s own internal reservation systems. Weird! Using cruisecompete.com, Lee was able to get a better rate on the room and got us moved up to a VA Guarantee balcony room. Somehow, our initial desire for a cheap inside room turned into a higher level balcony. Interestingly, even though this cruise was sold out, there were only 1,848 passengers on Westerdam the week of our cruise, making it the smallest ship we have been on so far.

We convinced our friend Jeff to come along, and since he didn’t want to pay the 100% single supplement, he asked our other friend Bruce to come along as well and share the room. Jeff and Bruce managed to get a better rate on their room by booking with a group rather than HAL directly.

Since our original plan was to go on Mariner of the Seas out of Port Canaveral, we had booked air fare to Orlando with that in mind. We actually paid for these tickets on Air Canada, a different situation for us since usually we get our tickets using Aeroplan points accumulated with all my business travel. The airfare was around $484, which is quite a good deal for us to get to Florida. When we ended up switching our plans and booked on Westerdam which left from Ft. Lauderdale, we knew we’d have to drive a few hours to get on the ship. No big deal, it’s only a three-hour drive away. Air Canada tinkered with their flights and our direct flight to Orlando was eventually cancelled by the airline. They rebooked us on some other flights that were not very convenient. Lee called up the ticketing department and got us moved to better flights to Orlando with a direct flight from Ft. Lauderdale back home to Ottawa. This was going to be great. One flight and we were going to be home. I love the fact that Lee can be quite a smooth talker when dealing with customer service people over the phone. We should have been charged for such a major itinerary change, but we got it changed for free.

Friday, January 19th 2007, Leaving Ottawa

We rented a car from Alamo for our time in Orlando and the drive to Ft. Lauderdale. We got a great price on a small SUV, $32 per day with no extra fee for dropping it off in Ft. Lauderdale. We found that the earlier you book a rental car, the better the price. It’s just a reservation, so we could have cancelled it if something better had come along. The vehicle was a Pontiac Torrent. It only had 430 miles on it when we got it, and it had the great new car smell. We had booked a hotel many months ago through Priceline and got the Wingate Suites near the airport for $40 per night. It was a great hotel; very clean, well maintained, and included breakfast. The ride from the airport was less than 5 minutes.

Before checking in to the hotel, we drove to a Winn-Dixie grocery store to get provisions. HAL allows you to bring you own wine on board, so we decided to buy some for the cruise. We applied for their savings card which gave us a discount on the wine, PLUS, if you bought six bottles of wine, you saved another 10%. Screamin’ deal! We also bought a case of water and some diet soda for Lee. We stopped into Target and Wal-Mart looking for some specific items not available in Canada. We got back to the hotel at 10pm. When Lee opened up his luggage he found that was one of his bags had gotten wet. The clothes in that bag were SOAKED. Not damp...they were ring-out wet! Even the stuff in the middle was wet; the bag must have sat in a puddle for a long time. We spread his clothes around the room to dry off before hitting the sack.

Saturday, January 20th, DisneyWorld

One of the benefits of flying into Orlando two days before the cruise was that we could spend some time there. Lee was mental with happiness at the thought of spending the day at DisneyWorld. We got up early this morning and hit the road to be there in time for the park opening. The hotel was less than 30 minutes from the gates to the park. We paid $10 for parking and got a spot super-close to the entrance of Epcot. Lee had pre-paid for one-day park-hopper tickets which would allow us access to all the theme parks for the day. He had a specific itinerary in mind so we could see all his favourite attractions. The park was not very busy; according to one of the security people we were chatting with while we were waiting in line, the parks had been quiet since New Year’s Day.

We got through the park gates, but the attractions had not yet opened. We had to wait behind a rope for the rides to open. Our first stop at Epcot was Soarin’. In this attraction you dangle from handgliders in front of an IMAX screen showing aerial scenes of California. I got a bit panicked when I realized that the row we were sitting in would be the highest one in the theater, but it was fine once our row took off. We then went to the Mission Space attraction which simulated a flight mission to Mars, then to Test Track where you ride vehicles though a bunch of simulated automobile tests. We also stopped by Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, a 3-D experience. It is totally outdated and kind of embarrassing for Disney to keep running this attraction. Universe of Energy with Ellen Degeneres was tons of fun, I loved the audio-animatronic Ellen shooing away the lizard with a stick.

We had lunch at the Electric Umbrella at Epcot. We started off the meal by sitting outside but when a bird swooped down and stole food from Lee’s tray while we were sitting there, we decided to move inside. The food was pretty bad and quite expensive.

After lunch we hopped onto a shuttle to get to Animal Kingdom. This was my first time at this park, and I was quite impressed. Disney has built an entire jungle in the middle of a Florida swamp. We saw the Bug’s Life 3-D show, which was fun. We stopped and picked up a FastPass ticket for the Safari before heading over to see the Dinosaur attraction, which was very exciting and scary. The FastPass was a brilliant idea; when we returned to the Safari attraction, we walked right up to the front of the line, ahead of several hundred people. I was hesitant of doing the new Himalaya roller coaster and by the time we got around to trying to get a FastPass for it, they had stopped issuing them and the line was way too long.

We still had more parks to see, but the day had been pretty long so far. We both agreed to throw in the towel. We had parked outside of Epcot, so we walked from MGM through the Boardwalk area towards the car. It was a clear night, and the walk was very pleasant. We did one last ride on Spaceship Earth before leaving the park. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the Florida Mall to check out a few things at Macy’s. This mall is huge.

We did have one casualty during the day. Lee’s digital camera was dead. The LCD screen at the back was all distorted and you could see no picture. That meant you could not tell which mode you were in, what the settings were and so forth. We removed the memory card and tossed the thing in the trash, it was of no use to anyone in that shape.

We got back to our hotel room a bit after 9:30pm. Lee’s clothes were now dry, so we packed up his bag, tucking bottled water and soda into all the nooks and crannies. We finally hit the sack around 10pm. We had to be up early on Sunday for the drive to Ft. Lauderdale to get on the ship.

Sunday January 21st, Embarkation

Our wake-up call came on time at 6am. We ate breakfast in the hotel and hit the road by 7:30am. We had asked a few friends who live in Florida about the best way to get from Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale and they recommended taking the turnpike. They estimated a three-hour drive. We pulled into the Alamo lot at Ft. Lauderdale airport a little after 11am in time to meet Jeff and Bruce. While waiting for the shuttle to the cruise port, the bus driver told some lady that the bus would not be going to the port until noon. Then, noticing how long the line was, he let us on and we got to go to the pier right away.

The ship had started boarding already. Since we had completed our embarkation forms on-line, we joined the Express Check-in line. This line up was about a hundred people long. The line for people who did not complete their forms on-line was empty. We made the mistake of showing that we had completed the forms beforehand. They would not let people join the regular line if they had done on-line check-in. We should have just thrown out the forms we had printed and joined the faster non-express line.

We stepped onto the Westerdam at noon. Our rooms would not be available until 1pm, but we had our traditional embarkation scampering to do. The first task at hand was to change our dinner table assignments. Even though our travel agent had told us that our reservations were linked, our table assignment was different than Jeff and Bruce. Perhaps the problem was with the fact that Jeff and Bruce had booked their cruise with a group and their group had been seated together. We were the second group to talk to the Maitre D’ and he got us assigned to a table for four at the 6:15pm seating. That was perfect for us. We split up and Lee and I then went to the Front Desk to register for the HAL Culinary Arts Center cooking class. We also stopped by the spa to sign up for the Hydropool and Thermal Suite. They only sell a limited number of passes to the facility and we were told by previous passengers that they often sell out quickly. Lee also booked a “just-in-case” massage appointment for the last sea day. Even though it was not 1pm yet, we snuck into our room and dropped off our bag before heading to meet Jeff and Bruce at the Lido buffet for lunch. The buffet line was mayhem, it was crowded and slow moving with very little seating available since everyone was sitting around waiting for their rooms to become available.

Our room on Westerdam was 8016, a VA category balcony on the Navigation deck. The room was typical balcony room for a cruise ship; one nice feature however was the large amount of storage space. There were drawers under the bed and a cupboard over the couch which added a lot of storage space. There were three closets in the room, one with shelves and a safe. Another nice feature of the room is the bathtub, though Lee used it once and he said it was hard to bathe in such a short tub. The small couch in the room folded out into a bed for a third passenger in the room if needed. The coffee table’s height was adjustable and the seat at the desk had storage space within. When we asked to get the mini-bar cleared out, they just moved the bar contents into that space. The bathroom was stocked with Elemis bath products from the spa. Lee really liked the bath gel, so we left a few dollars for the room attendant with requests for extras. One issue we had with the room by the end of the week was noise. Since our room was below the aft pool area, there was a lot of noise from deck chairs being dragged across the floor above us as they would setup the chairs in the morning and stack them at night. As well the bing-bong of the elevator could be heard from our room all night long.

Our attendant Thudy popped by shortly after we got into the room to introduce himself, he was very nice but we had a few communication difficulties trying to explain that we needed to get some clothing pressed. Lee decided to get the unlimited laundry package for the week. At $45, we ended up saving quite a bit. We did however end up with a lot of extra laundered clothes that we ended up bringing back home and rewashing. Lee had some underwear laundered, they got returned in a little basket, wrapped in tissue paper. His panties have never been treated so well. An unlimited pressing package is also available for $30. Our attendant also had us select the fruit we would like in our fruit basket. They refill the fruit basket every day when you eat the fruit. I think we ate one banana and one apple over the whole week.

Jeff and Bruce booked an inside room on deck one. Their room was HUGE. It was square shaped, with the bathroom taking up one corner. That left an L shaped room, with the beds in one side of the L and a large sofa in the end of the other L. There was tons of floor space. Considering that we would not be able to open any of our luggage on the floor of our room, they could have opened all their bags at the same time in all the floor space they had.

After lunch, Lee and I went on an expedition looking around the ship and taking some pictures. Our ceremonial first drink of the cruise was enjoyed in the Crow’s Nest bar on the top deck of the ship. The drink menu on the ship was great, with a large selection of interesting cocktails. All the cocktails are made with fresh ingredient instead of pre-made bar mixes. Over the week, I enjoyed many nice drinks, including the Ultra-Strawberry Lemonade, the Tropical Cable Car and the Grapefruit Cosmopolitan. You had to be careful though, many of their drinks had sours in them and you could end us with some bad belly burn if you had too many.

Eventually, we returned to our room to unpack and get ready for the muster drill. The muster drill was uneventful and quick. After the drill we brought our life-jackets back to our room and went up to the aft pool area for the sail-away party. We got drinks and ended up paying for stupid collectible glasses without realizing it. It was quite windy out on the deck and the clouds were a bit threatening. The crowd was light for the sail-away party, not too people participated. The activities staff gave away a few prizes during the party. They asked people to present certain items; the first person to present the item would win a prize. Since I was the first one to present an object with the HAL logo on it (my collectible glass), I won a HAL logo umbrella. Lee was the first to present a digital camera so he won a towel with the words Dam Ships on it.

Dinner time was approaching so we changed and headed to the second floor of the Vista dining room. The dining room has a 5:45pm seating on deck three, a 6:15pm seating on deck two, then an 8pm seating on deck three and 8:30pm on deck two. The dining room is attractive but a little closed-in feeling. There is stunning piece of Chihuli glass at the center of the ceiling over the spiral staircase between the two levels. Our table in the dining room did not seem to be in a great area, as we were right next to a server station. The dining room staff was very considerate though, we never felt like we were sitting near clanging dishes. I admire the precautions that were being taken to avoid novo virus outbreaks on-board. Staff would stand at the front doors of the dining room and squirt Purel into people’s hands as they went in. Our waiter was Verry; he was very efficient and accommodating. His service was very unobtrusive. He was always nearby when you needed something, but never seemed to hover. Dey was the assistant waiter; he was very good at remembering preferences. Rene, the wine steward, was a delight. We had brought our own wine on board and he always kept our glasses full. Dinner was stunning. Tonight, I had a crab salad with avocado and tomato, an appetizer of melon and prosciutto, a delightful tomato and basil soup, and grilled mahi-mahi. For dessert, I had chocolate cake. The food was all delicious and the choices were imaginative and well executed. The portions were decent, but still small enough to allow you to try many different things.

After dinner, we went to the Vista Theater for the Welcome Aboard show. The show included a comedian called Elliot Maxx as well as the Westerdam singers and dancers. The singers were quite weak and the choreography was laughable. I am sure the dancers were talented but the steps they had to do were a joke. Entertainment proved to be one of the weakest parts of this cruise.

After popping into the shops after the show to see what trinkets they had for sale, we stopped by the piano bar. The singer was good; we sat at the piano and chatted with him between songs. We returned to the piano bar several times over the week. The waitress in the bar was Mabel, she was a delight. The next day we ran into her at the pool bar, she remembered our names. While seated at the piano, we started talking to a couple of guys from Atlanta who were part of Jeff and Bruce’s group. Bill and Keith were quite delightful. They did not have a great experience at dinner, as their tablemates did not say a word for most of the meal. We ended seeing a lot of them over the week.

We decided to hit the sack around midnight and we walked towards our end of the ship on the outside Promenade deck. Strangely, the deck was fully illuminated at night. You could not look out at the stars since the lighting was so bright. It seemed very weird to be on deck at night and it to be so brightly lit.

Monday, January 22nd 2207, Sea Day

The ship was rocking all night long. Lying in bed, I could feel myself rolling around the bed; luckily I did not fell nauseous at all. Later in the week, someone mentioned that they were told that one of the stabilizers was broken. That would explain why I have never felt movement like this on a ship before, even though the seas looked somewhat calm. I have read on the Internet message boards that Carnival Corp. (HAL’s parent company) is notorious for not deploying their stabilizers, as a way of cutting costs. Maybe they were not broken, and were just not being used.

The beds on the ship were quite comfortable with a nice thick mattress and fresh crisp linens. The pillows were pretty flat though and need to be replaced. We had set the alarm for 9:30am so we could order breakfast from room service before it ended at 10am. We ordered by phone and the meal was delivered within 20 minutes. We sat outside on the balcony to eat, enjoying the view of the sea. After breakfast, we called to get our tray removed since they had specifically asked that we not put the trays in the hallways.

Before heading down to the dining room for lunch, we stopped by the room to drop off some things. Our attendant had come by already and had cleaned the room, but the breakfast tray was still sitting there. I called room service again to come get the tray. Jeff and Bruce met us for lunch in the Dining Room, which was just as delicious as our dinner the night before. After lunch we popped by the Explorer’s Lounge to loaf and write some postcards. Our little group split up, and I took off to the gym for a bit of a workout, and use the Hydropool and Thermal Suite. The Hydropool is large hot whirlpool with jets in different configurations to massage and relax different parts of the body. The Thermal Suite is a heated room, with scented steam rooms and showers. There are some nice heated tile benches you can lie on. The benches in the Thermal Suite face out to the ocean and you could watch the sun set. It got very bright as the sun came directly into the room. For couples, you could buy unlimited use of these areas for $250. We bought the package, but feel that it might have been better to buy single passes when we wanted to use these spaces. When I got back to the room to get ready for dinner, the darn room service tray was still there. I called once again to have it removed, thinking maybe the request had been misplaced.

Today was the first of two formal nights. There were two dress codes in effect on this cruise: formal and casual. The informal dress code that is discussed so much in the cruise documents and brochures was not in effect on this cruise at all. The evening started with the Captain’s Reception in the Vista Theater. We were served champagne and wine. After the reception we had a pre-dinner drink in the Ocean Bar. Dinner this evening was a jumbo shrimp cocktail, French onion soup, frisé salad, and a great Beef Wellington. Dessert was chocolate soufflé. This was the first food item that was a bit disappointing. It’s almost as if there was half the chocolate the recipe should have called for.

After dinner, we went directly to the theater for the show. We had learned from the previous evening that people come early and seating can be hard to find. The show was performed by the Westerdam singers and dancers. Oh, it was painful. There is no live orchestra so they sing to recorded music.  There was much off-key singing and bad choreography. The show was supposed to feature music from around the world. For some reason, they sang an ABBA song while featuring Venice. The lighting was very poor and the singer was often in a section of the stage with no lighting on it.

Before the show started, Lee had run back to the room for something and ran into our room attendant. The breakfast tray was STILL there, so Thudy offered to bring it to the kitchen. We told him that we had called on three occasions to get it removed.

Tuesday, January 23rd , Turks and Caicos

The excursion took place in a National Park about 20 minutes drive from the pier. Each kayak fits two people and had a clear plastic bottom. The tour took place in a tidal river that at this time of morning was flowing away from the ocean. We did not need to paddle much on the way in to the river as the current would carry you along. There were mangrove trees on each side of the river. We did not see much in the way of marine life in the river. There were little inlets in the mangroves that you could paddle into and look around. It was very quiet and peaceful. Since we had to paddle against the current on the way back, there was a little bit more work involved, but it was not very strenuous. After the kayak tour, we were driven to a beach area when they took people on a snorkel tour onto a reef. There was an important safety discussion, since at one point a few hundred feet from the shore there is a 7000 foot drop. People were advised to stay away from the “dark area” of the water. Lee and I chose to lounge on the beach instead of snorkeling.

When we got back to our room on the ship in time for the 2pm departure, our room was made up, but our breakfast tray was still sitting there. We called room service again to remind them of the tray. Lee and I went up to the Lido restaurant for lunch. In the pool area, they had a taco/fajita/nacho bar set up which I grabbed lunch from. Lee got lunch at the buffet, but since everyone was back on board now, there was no seating the buffet area or in the Lido pool deck. We walked around and found a table on the aft pool deck. The rest of the afternoon was pretty lazy, including a nap by the pool and a jaunt in the Hydropool.

Dinner this evening was a tomato and mozzarella salad, corn chowder, lamb shank and berry crisp. Excellent, once again. The table for six next to us was now empty as both parties had moved to other tables. We inquired about moving to that table so Bill and Keith could join us. The crew was very accommodating and the Maitre D’ even printed out a new table reservation card for Bill and Keith. The great thing was that we could keep our service staff who we were really enjoying.

I was a bit worried about the evening’s entertainment. The performer was billed as an Elton John impersonator. That is wrong on so many levels. He was a great piano player, but he tried to fake a weird Elton John accent in his voice which took away from this singing. His shtick grew quite tiring quickly. It ended up being another show that I wished would finish quicker than it did.

After the show, we popped back into the Piano Bar for the Name That Tune trivia game. The game was based on television theme songs. The guy would play a few bars of a theme song on the piano and you had to guess the show it came from. Some were very easy, like Gilligan’s Island or the Addams Family. Others tunes were quite obscure, like Friday Night Fights and the A-Team. Lee, Jeff and I killed at this game, we got 33 out of 40, way ahead of anyone else. We won a round of drinks. It was late however and we were heading to bed, so Jeff and I took a bottle of water. Lee chugged a free Cosmopolitan.

We moved the clocks ahead one hour this evening before heading to bed since we were heading into Atlantic Time.

Wednesday, January 24th, Tortola

At 10:30 this morning, there was also a galley tour. The kitchen staff hosts a walk though of the kitchen areas, with stations setup so we could see how they prepare the food for the ship. We begged and pleaded on Royal Caribbean and Celebrity to see the kitchens, on HAL it was a scheduled event. We got to see them prepare some of the dishes that were served that evening, as well as the prep area for the suite guests and the Pinnacle Grill. I really enjoyed seeing the industrial-size cooking pots and tools.

We were due to dock in Road Town, Tortola at noon, so after the galley tour, we went up onto the Promenade deck at the front of the ship to watch us pull into port. There was a Costa ship already docked. We did not have an excursion planned for Tortola, so Jeff, Lee and I got off the ship and walked around the town. Road Town is not very large; we found the post office easily and bought stamps for our postcards. Jeff stopped at the local library to use the Internet. Lee and I returned to the ship. We were still not very hungry from our two meals from the morning, so we stopped by the Lido pool and had some tortilla chips and guacamole. There was going to be a barbecue on the Lido pool deck this evening, so the staff was busy moving chairs and setting up buffet tables. We moved to the aft pool area where there was a bit less commotion and swam a bit and loafed on lounge chairs. Jeff joined us and Lee and he shared a bucket of Corona. I went to the gym for a short workout. Bruce took an excursion to go to the Baths at Virgin Gorda, an island near Tortola. He said it was quite nice, with caves and rocks and the like.

I was starting to feel a bit of a tickle in my throat. Not a good sign! The comedian, Elliot Maxx, did a full show in the theater this evening. Of all the entertainment on the ship, he was probably the least awful. His shtick was basically changing lyrics to songs to make fun of how much food people were eating on board, and how old people on OTHER cruise lines are. HELLO! Look at your audience!

I was starting to not feel great, so I decided it was better that I get to bed early to see if rest would help. The boys went to see the Westerdam Idol competition, an American idol type game show. It was held in the Queen’s Lounge, a smaller show venue. This room was way too small for the crowd looking for something to do. Many people who wanted to see the show could not get into the room. As the competition went on for other nights, the crowds got bigger. They should have moved the show to the theater. It just ticked people off that they could not get into the room to watch.

Thursday, January 25th 2007, St. Maarten

What can I say...I LOVE St. Maarten. This is the third time we have stopped here, and I would go back again in a heartbeat. We were already docked on the Dutch side of the island in Phillipsburg when we got up at 7:30am. Sure enough, I woke up with a full blown cold. I had a dry cough and I was stuffed up. DANG IT! The shops were not open yet, so Lee and I went down to the infirmary where I was able to buy a bottle of cough syrup. It was reasonably priced, which surprised me. I thought they would charge a ridiculous markup on medication.

We all met for breakfast at 8:30am, and then got off the ship to catch a cab to Orient Beach on the French side of the island. It was a stunning day, not a cloud in the sky and not overly hot. Radiance of the Seas and Mariner of the Seas were parked at the pier today as well. Lee had tears in his eyes seeing Mariner of the Seas, as that was the ship that he wanted to go on, I had convinced him to go on Westerdam. The pier at St. Maarten is very well organized. Line up under the name of the beach you want to go and everyone piles into cabs. The fare is divided based on how many people in the cab; the fare to Orient Beach was $6 each.

Last time we were at Orient beach, we went to a really fun restaurant on the beach called Baywatch, run by a couple from New Jersey. We took the gang there for lunch and it was delightful. Cheryl, one of the owners who serves the tables, is hilarious. Bruce and she took turns teasing one another. Everyone really liked the place. The only problem with Orient Beach is that you must pay to use the washrooms. Only a few of the restaurants have their own washroom. If renting a chair on the beach, make sure that you have access to a bathroom. Our over-tanned French lady gave us little tickets so we didn’t have to pay to pee.

After lunch, Lee, Keith, Bill and I took a walk and ended up on the nudie side of Orient Beach. There were some scary sights. We took one last dip in the ocean and gathered up our things. We wanted to stop in Phillipsburg to do a bit of shopping before getting on the ship. There was a cab waiting, we had him drop us at the shopping strip in town. Lee and I found a screaming deal on Bailey’s for only $14 per litre.

After walking for a while, it was getting to be time to get back on the ship. Lee and I hopped on the water shuttle to go back to the pier, the fare is $3. As we were getting off the water shuttle, we ran into Bruce who had walked from town. I was bushed, I tried to take a nap but it wasn’t working. Instead, I went to the café and got a coffee to see if that would perk me up. The coffee at the Windstar Café is excellent. I was getting the Americano, basically a watered-down Espresso. They have delightful treats at the café as well. They sell a coffee card for $20 or so, that would give you ten drinks of whatever you wanted at the café, whether it be lattés, cappuccino or others. I found out afterwards that you could get smoothies with the card as well. If I had known that, I might have gotten the card.

Several months ago, we pre-paid for dinner at the specialty restaurant on the ship called The Pinnacle Grill. Since we pre-paid, the cover charge has gone up from $20 to $30, we didn’t have to pay the new rate. We juggled our reservation a few times once we got onboard since we were trying to make sure that we avoided the magic show in the theater that we had heard was dreadful. Lee was not crazy about the décor of the room, but I thought it was nice. They have a section of seats that are on the atrium, outside of the main room. We made sure we were inside the restaurant and not at one of these balcony seats where anyone walking by can watch you eat. The restaurant’s specialty is Sterling Beef. The selection of dishes reminded us a lot of Chops on Royal Caribbean. The restaurant was maybe a third full; the service as a result was very attentive. For dinner, they presented us with some little amuse-bouche to start the meal. I also had crab cakes, a great rib-eye steak with asparagus and scalloped potatoes and not so great crème brulé. The restaurant serves a selection of flights of Washington State wines that were nice. The tastings are very small though; you get an ounce of four different wines for $12 and up. We were a little surprised by this as HAL pre-sells these flights of wine on their web site and they are advertised as 2.5 ounce glasses of each wine. The meal, which would have taken a few hours at Chops, was done in a bit more than an hour. We had pre-paid for the meal, however, they did not present us with any bill or give us the opportunity to tip. The food was good, but was not very inventive. We were just a little bit disappointed that we missed a meal in the dining room. The choices were just more interesting in the dining room.

Friday, January 26th, Sea Day

I did not have a great night’s sleep, so I tried to sleep in as late as I could. Lee was up early as usual, but disappeared at some point after I had fallen back to sleep. While I slept in, he had gone down to the Promenade Deck to participate in the On Deck for the Cure event. People could register for $15 and then walk 5km (9 laps of the promenade deck) in honour or memory of a loved one with breast cancer. The cruise line provides t-shirts, bracelets and refreshments for participants. Lee came back to the room as I was waking up at 10am. Oh, it felt nice to get that extra sleep in. The lovely man that he is, Lee brought me some cereal and fruit from the Lido buffet for breakfast since he knew I had not eaten anything.

It was another slow-moving morning, not that there was much left of the morning at this time. We spent some time sitting on the Promenade Deck listening to our books on our iPods. When we got back to our room, we found that our disembarkation luggage tags had been left in our room. We had been assigned the Brown 3 group tags. We checked the list and found out that we would not get to the airport in time for our flight with that disembarkation time. We popped by the Front Desk and exchanged them for Red 3 tags that would get us off the ship around 9:30am.

Bruce and Jeff joined us for lunch in the dining room. While Lee was waiting for us to arrive at the entrance to the dining room, he started talking to an older gentleman who was waiting for his friends. When it appeared that he had been stood up, he asked if he could join us for lunch. Ralph was very chatty; he was part of the gay group that Jeff and Bruce were with. He was in his 80s, his partner who was in his early 40s was on the cruise as well. Ralph told some interesting stories about being gay and in the military in the 40s. After lunch we spent the afternoon by the pool relaxing.

Surprisingly, the evaluation surveys had been left in our room when we returned. We still had another whole day of the cruise left, how can we evaluate them with so much time left! (hee-hee) On the form they asked us to evaluate the private island, but we hadn’t even been there yet. To encourage people to get their forms in early, there was going to be an early bird draw for those who dropped their evaluations off by the end of the day.

We all moved to the theater for the show. After several nights of bad entertainment, we had our fingers crossed that the show of this evening, Stage & Screen, was going to redeem them. No such luck, the show was horrific. It was like I was watching a high school production of a musical. The lighting was misdirected, the singers were off-key, the choreography was amateurish and the song selections were uninteresting. We were all disappointed. My cold was really bogging me down and I did not have much energy. While Jeff and Bruce went and danced the night away in the Northern Lights disco, Lee and I headed to bed. I had a great night’s sleep this evening, so I don’t regret missing the fun with the gang.

Saturday, January 27th, Half Moon Cay

The last full day of the cruise was going to be spent at Half Moon Cay, HAL’s private island in the Bahamas. Our experience at Labadee on Royal Caribbean was great, so we were looking forward to a beach day at this stop. The ship approached the island around 8am. Since there is no dock at this island, tenders were used to shuttle people between the ship and the island. We had breakfast in the Lido restaurant, and ran into Bill and Keith on our way out. They were supposed to meet Jeff and Bruce in the dining room for breakfast, but they were ready much before their scheduled meeting time, so they went up to the Lido instead.

We were instructed by the staff to go to the Queen’s Lounge to pick up tender tickets to go ashore. When we went just before 10am however, there were no lines for the tender, and we were told that tickets were not be needed. The tender boats were quite large; there were two going back and forth between the island and the ship. We had arranged beforehand to rent a clamshell, a canopy which fits over two beach chairs for shade. The guys had rented clamshells as well. It took Bruce and Jeff a long time to get to the island since the tenders had started to become quite busy and by the time they found us on the island just before 11am, all the clamshells around us were full. We tried to save one for them, but two bitchy queen types insisted on taking the one we were trying to save and the attendant made us move our stuff. The water at Half Moon Cay was nice and clear but was a bit on the cold side. We also rented floating mats which are always nice, but since it was a bit chilly so we didn’t stay out long.

Lunch is served on the island at a facility close to where we were sitting. The line-ups were quite long and slow moving. I am not sure why the line moved so slow, there was not much at the end of the line that required any thought. They served hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled chicken, grilled fish, ribs, corn on the cob and a bunch of salads. The food was quite good. There are quite a few covered gazebo-type buildings with picnic tables for seating. It is a bit of a maze moving between the structures and you almost want to leave a trail of bread crumbs so you can find your group if you go back to the line to get a drink. They had a few bars setup, service was very fast. After a leisurely lunch we returned to our chairs to relax. Lee and I took a walk along the beach to take some pictures and look around.

In our room was a copy of our room charges for us to verify before our final statements were issued. All of Lee’s laundry bills had shown up on his statement instead of the one-time unlimited laundry charge. He went down to the Front Desk to get the issue rectified. When he had called to order the service originally, the clerk was supposed to get him to come down to sign the order. Since that was not done, he got charged for every laundry order. They modified the charge to show the unlimited laundry.

I was quite sad to be eating my last dinner on Westerdam. I had been enjoying the meals so much. Tonight, I splurged and enjoyed two appetizers, Asian spring rolls and shrimp cocktail, a Greek salad and a really good parmesan crusted chicken. A few nights before, Bruce had commented to the Maitre D’ that he was surprised that we had not had a tall multi-layer chocolate cake on the dessert menu during the week. The Maitre D’ had arranged for Bruce to get his chocolate cake. It wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, but it was very nice for him to arrange something special for us.

We really enjoyed the service we had from our dining room staff. Our wine stewart commented that we did not have a bottle of red wine tonight, we told him that we only had one bottle white wine left. He left for few moments and came back with us a bottle of red wine with his compliments. How nice is that?

It was with a sense of dread that we walked back to the theater for final show. This show was going to include acts by all of the performers during the week. Since I had not liked any of them, I was wondering why I was going to put myself through it. Even Lee, who usually can find some redeeming qualities in just about anything thought it sucked. I did make an attempt to leave, but Lee felt that it would be rude to get up and leave in front of our friends. It finally ended and we did one last victory lap around the ship before finishing up our packing at putting our bags outside our door by 11pm. We kept only what we would need in the morning and hit the sack with sadness in our hearts knowing that the cruise was coming to an end.

Sunday, January 28th, Disembarkation

We had set the alarm for 7:45am, but both of us were up earlier that. We arrived into port a bit after we woke up at 7am, so after showering, we went up on deck to see all the other ships docked in the port. We met Bill and Keith for breakfast. The kitchen staff must have been busy doing something else this morning, the portions were very small compared to other days of the cruise and service was really slow.

The airport was very busy, especially since you can not get through security until 2 hours before your flight. We thought that was weird, until we found out how small the boarding gate area was. It was packed tight with people who were leaving on flights within the next hours; if there were extra people in that space it would have been mayhem. There was a problem the day before with a flight to Toronto being cancelled, so there were a lot of people who were on standby trying to find some way to get home. Our flight was going directly from Ft. Lauderdale to Ottawa, we did not have any problems and we both got great exit aisle seats. Lee’s neighboring seat was broken, so he did not have someone sitting next to him. Our friend Melynda was at the airport to pick us up and we arrived home just after 4pm. It was remarkable how unflustered you can be when you do not have to rush to make connections. We got on one flight in Florida and got off in Ottawa. Such a pleasure!

There were many things that I loved about our HAL cruise including:

1. •The food was fantastic. In fact, the only meal that was disappointing was our dinner at the Pinnacle Grill. The quality was good; the menu was just not very interesting. The service was quite rushed, especially weird since the place was only a third full. Maybe the staff was bored?
   
   

2. •Service was friendly, efficient and non-intrusive.
   
   

3. •The beds were comfortable with nice mattresses and good quality bedding.
   
   

4. •There was not much smoking on this particular cruise. The only place we noticed cigarette smoke was in the casino. It’s nice to not have to leave a bar because of freakin’ smokers.
   
   

5. •The cabins have been designed to maximize storage space. We did not have much clutter in our room since there were so many places to hide things.
   
   

6. •The bar menu was varied and inventive. Cocktail service could be slow at peak periods, but at other times it was very quick. Most bars served little hors d’oeuvres before dinner.
   
   

7. •I love the fact that you can bring your own wine on board without having to hide it in your luggage. I’d be happier if they didn’t charge a corkage fee. Even if we had paid the corkage fees, we’d have paid a less for wine that if we had bought it from the cruise line.
   
   

8. •The taco and fajita bar by the Lido pool was a good idea. There was a good mix of ingredients you could use to make up different dishes (tacos, fajitas, nachos…)
   
   

9. •Since HAL skews towards an older crowd, there were very few children on board.
   
   

10. •Even though there were a couple large groups on board, we did not feel at any time that these groups had taken over the ship.
    
    

11. •The one-price unlimited laundry deal is great. Laundry is expensive on this line, but with the unlimited deal, you could get everything ironed and laundered for a reasonable price.
    
    

12. •I didn’t hate the Lido buffet. That says a lot, since usually I’d rather bleed out of my eyes than fight off the crowds in the buffet on other lines.
    

Of course, there were some things I didn’t like about the HAL experience:

1. •There was a lot of movement to the ship even though we were sailing on relatively calm seas. I was stumbling around for days after getting home as my house seemed to tip and rock. Someone mentioned the stabilizers were broken. I don’t know if that is true, or if the cruise line had made a decision not to deploy them (something Carnival Corp is infamous for). In any case, I now know I will not get motion sick on a cruise ship when it rocks a lot.
   
   

2. •The nightly entertainment was atrocious. I felt like I was at a third-rate theme park. Lighting was particularly bad, with featured singers on stage in the dark. The choreography was laughable, sometimes the dancers would walk across the stage, do a spin and walk off for apparently no other reason than to use up time between costume changes. I understand that HAL does not produce their own shows. If they do hire an outside company to put these things together, it is time to find someone else. The only performer I enjoyed was the singer in the piano bar. He never did play Anne Murray though (hee-hee)
   
   

3. •The décor of the ship is bland and uninspiring. The few pieces of art in the ship were dull with lots of objects collected from older ships. What was up with those fuchsia and blue benches in the hallways near the elevator? They were beyond tacky….The fresh flowers were the exception. They were a nice touch.
   
   

4. •We knew that HAL catered to an older crowd. I didn’t realize how old this actually was. HAL had made a big deal about their Vista class ships catering to a younger market. Not sure if they really accomplished this from what I have seen on Westerdam.
   
   

5. •What is up with the cruise director and performers making fun of the staff all the time? Yes, we know that English is not their first language; this does not mean you can ridicule them. The cruise director’s comment about “This is not a fairy boat…” during the last night’s show was totally inappropriate, particularly when he knows there is a group of gay passengers onboard.
   
   

6. •The activity schedule on the ship was thin. When “signing out a board game from the library” is listed as a ship activity on an already sparse schedule, you know things are bad.
   
   

7. •The chairs by the Lido pool are packed in so tight that it can be difficult to move around with tripping on other chairs. Lee tripped on as chair leg and fell onto a lady while trying to maneuver the obstacle course of chairs. She acted like he walked up to her and slapped her across the face.
   
   

8. •Getting our room service trays removed was a struggle, even after calling multiple times for them to be picked up. Two days in a row, our breakfast trays were not removed until dinner time, and one time that was done by the cabin attendant.
   
   

9. •Completing the Express Check-in forms did not expedite our check in process since we had to stand in such a long line. If we had not completed the forms on-line, we could have walked right up to the counter to be looked after. Where does the Express part come in for this scenario?
   
   

10. •We heard the bing-bong ring of the elevator all night long.
    
    

11. •The Thermal Suite did not justify the premium they charged. The door on one of the steam rooms did not close properly and people were using wet towels to wedge it shut. The heated tile benches were barely warm. The aromatherapy showers did not have any scent to them.
    
    

12. •The spa services provided by Steiner are a complete and total rip off. The run in with the spa worker over Lee’s online purchase of spa service ensures that I will never again purchase any service from a spa operated by Steiner on any cruise line.