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| Leaving Ft. Lauderdale Breakwater |
The big trip that we had planned in the summer of 2019 that included a cruise of the Danube, a weeklong tour of the London area, and a transatlantic cruise that would have taken us to Iceland and Greenland left a really foul taste in our mouths. Its cancellation and the meager refunds of airfare and tour payments and deposits left us resenting all the money that we spent on “cancel for any reason” travel insurance. But that’s how the insurance industry works. Anyway, we decided it was time to test the waters (no pun intended) with a 21 day cruise of the Caribbean. This was also a concession to Capt. Larry for a warm January since he had been denied a winter of basking in the warmth of the Florida Keys sunshine.
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| Let's Dance! |
Our travel agent tracked down a super deal with all the goodies on a Holland America cruise that went into the southern and eastern Caribbean islands. We had been to most of the ports of call before so we just viewed this as an opportunity to get out of the cold and escape the chores of daily life. We probably should’ve taken a hint from our travel agent when she told us that cruising had really changed over the past couple of years. She said that now all the cruise lines want you to go paperless and do everything from check-in, reservations, shore excursion bookings to Internet hookup electronically through their app. We downloaded the app but really couldn’t figure out how to make everything work. Finally, we figured that we paid our money and they would have to deal with us when we showed up! After all, a lot of the passengers in the crowd that we would be cruising with still use flip phones. We drove to Fort Lauderdale because we wanted to spend a few days with our friends in the Florida Keys after the cruise. The drive over two days wasn’t so bad but the check-in process and embarkation left us physically wilted. All of those “barcodes” that should facilitate the check-in process seemed to do very little. A big deal was made about vaccination status, but no one asked for our vaccination records at the vaccine checkpoint. The barcode of boarding passes that we had printed out were not looked at and were replaced by a request for our cabin number, the printing of two barcoded slips, and the assurance that “these will get you on the ship.”
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| Capping Off a Hectic Day |
The lines were long, the reception area very warm and humid, and we were fuming about all the work and frustration we put into getting prepared to board to no avail. Some of this frustration was quelled when we got to our cabin. We were delighted with our cabin and its preparation. The Rotterdam is Holland America’s newest ship and everything was in tip top shape. Although we were further forward than we would’ve liked, we were bowled over by the spaciousness of our balcony. It seemed big enough for square dancing! We unpacked our luggage and set off to familiarize ourselves with some of the ship’s features. We returned to our cabin and cleaned up for dinner with a really pleasant foursome from North Carolina and two weirdos from Boston. We went to an after-dinner show, had some drinks and listened to a band, and then played 60’s music trivia before turning in for the night. We were exhausted. The next day was a sea day which, after breakfast and our usual walk, was spent almost in its entirety wrestling with the app trying to get our phones and laptop connected to the Internet. On our third visit to Guest Services the officer suggested that we just bring the laptop down to her and she would get everything connected. But she did give us better step-by-step instructions with which we were finally successful in making the connection ourselves. That morning we attended a talk on some of the upcoming shore excursions and booked the excursions with the app! That evening we attended dinner, the captain’s welcome, and another show and entertainment. Tomorrow we make our first port of call Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos.
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