One word: fabulous. The ship, the crew, the food, the atmosphere. All of it was absolutely incredible (well, except for the aforementioned coffee). This is the smallest and oldest ship in the Holland America line – and since we’ve never been on any other HAL ships, we can’t compare it – but if experiences on any other their other ships are 1/2 as good as what we’ve experienced here? We’re sold.
Were there downsides? Sure – “the kids”, while a fun and cute moniker for us, it did totally differentiate the rest of the clientele. And of course with that clientele comes a certain type of entertainment. We realized we were starved for music when we actually looked forward to going to the theater 1/2 an hour early to listen to the piped in music, because, well, it was current stuff! The Rosario string quartet was excellent, please don’t misunderstand us, but just not our style (we were NOT going to sit in the little narrow lounge every night before dinner with the retirement contingent regardless of how good they were). We can’t complain about the production staff – that’s for sure – 5 singers, 2 dancers – probably some of the best we’ve seen at sea. They didn’t even try to put on big production shows, just sang with their beautiful harmonizing voices and did some excellent simple dancing – fantastic. Went to their show every night.
But those downsides didn’t put a damper on the many, many upsides. All in all – an excellent 15 days across the Atlantic and a very sad departure day for us – even though it’s just the beginning of our next adventures.
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