view of the Noordam from a trail

Bridal Track Coastal Walk

Following a rather bouncy tender ride to shore, a couple small busses waited to take our group on a shore excursion from Holland America Noordam up a steep hill to the entrance of Norfolk Island National Park. We were met there by our guide, Lilly, her dog Bella, and her helper whose name I don’t remember. Bella was by far the most popular member of the group. She looked like a somewhat overweight yellow lab. Norfolk Island belongs to Australia though it is located 877 miles (1,412 km) from mainland Australia and is not geographically part of the same continent.

lineup at the shoe cleaning station

We didn’t get far along the trail before coming to a shoe cleaning station. They don’t want foreign contamination in their forest so you first run your shoe through a set of brushes that clean the bottom and both sides, then step into a shallow pool of disinfectant.

baby Norfolk pine

The needled evergreen trees there are Norfolk Pines, something that is a miniature tree in a pot people have as a houseplant back home, but are giant forest trees in their natural habitat. There were some young ones of houseplant size though. There were also some fern trees reminiscent of ones we have seen previously in Australia’s Blue Mountains, a prehistoric sort of tree leftover from dinosaur days. Norfolk Island has its own endemic species of fern tree said to be the tallest in the world as well as a second less common species of fern tree more closely related to the ones on the Australian mainland.

fern trees

Along the way the guide sometimes stopped to talk about the fauna and flora of the island. There are no native mammals, or any of the marsupials that mainland Australia is famous for either. There are however invasive rats and mice that are hard on the native bird population. Birds are what they have for wildlife, birds and insects. No reptiles either and no poisonous spiders. Some of the birds are native and some are not. There are also feral cats that wreak havoc on some of the bird populations. The worst mess was from feral pigs that once roamed the island in great numbers having been left behind by humans and then multiplying, but those are no longer there. They have not had such luck removing the rats, though there were quite a number of rat bait stations along the pathway.

sea view through Norfolk pines

Their apex predator is a small owl that was once so close to extinction they had just one female left. An imported male has brought the population up, but now they are hybrid rather than pure and the gene pool is small. The native parakeet was also down to just a few breeding pairs, but has come a long way towards recovery now. The owl is more likely to eat small songbirds than to help control the mice, and it’s probably too small to eat the rats. The songbirds are also threatened by rats and cats so the comeback of the owl is not so good for them. Islanders are divided on whether bringing back too many owls is a good thing or a bad thing because of them being one more predator for also threatened small songbird species. The owls are of course a natural predator to those other birds where rats and cats are not.

lower trunk and looking up toward the top of a big Norfolk pine in the forest

The hike took us mainly through the forest, but there were some bits along the coast out in the sun. We had some distant views of our ship from several places at the coast. There were some broadleaf trees and other plants native to the area, and some with long skinny leaves. Some of the Norfolk pines were huge with massive trunks. Though the forest looked as if it had always been there, a lot of the plants were actually relatively recent restoration plantings of native plants because the feral pigs that once overran the island rooted up much of the native vegetation. Some of the plants along the coast are an invasive species from Africa.

trail through the forest

The hike of just over 3 kilometers took over an hour. Partly because of several stops with short talks about the area’s flora and fauna, and partly because of waiting for slow people to catch up. Some just walked slow and others were slowed down by their poor choice in footwear. You would think people who booked a hike through a forest would have sense enough not to wear sandals or flip-flops, but there were people with no common sense wearing each.

sea view from the trail

The hike took us up and down several hills, often steep with a loose gravel path. Good hiking shoes were mentioned in the instructions for that tour as well as bringing water to drink since none was provided. Parts of the hills had railings or ropes to hang onto, but very few people did and some of them slipped on the gravel with one taking a fall, though luckily he did not get hurt. After seeing the same guy slip several more times I did suggest to him that if he turned his feet out and walked like a duck it would give him more stability and he didn’t slip so much after that.

trail to a lookout platform by the sea

Speaking of falls, on the tender returning to the ship one lady who was at the back of her section of the tender got up to try and zip off before everyone else when the crew had their backs turned to her while directing a different area to disembark first. Even if they had been at her section she should have been last since the people at the front would have been directed off before her. The boat rocked and pitched her off her feet, up into the air, and right over since she hadn’t held onto anything. Then of course the crew had to stop unloading anyone else and help her up and off of the tender, stuffing up the whole unloading process for everyone else. This was not someone from the hike, just a random self-centered passenger that happened to be on the same tender back to the ship. Typical behavior of many passengers on this cruise.

Captain Cook monument

Back to the hike, we eventually came out to a lookout area by the sea at the site where Captain Cook came ashore. Pretty much everywhere we went on this cruise had some sort of Captain Cook monument. He really got around. Up on the hillside there was (of course) a monument, and a picnic area with a restroom and parking lot. The busses picked us up there. While we were waiting for the busses to arrive the guides gave a talk about the island’s history, which is also the history of their ancestors. Much of the island’s population are descendants of the mutineers from the Bounty and Tahitian women who all came to Norfolk Island after leaving Pitcairn Island where the mutineers first lived. The guides said that the movie Mutiny on the Bounty is a romanticized version of events that does not give the Tahitians credit where credit is due as they are the ones who would have known where to find Norfolk Island, and that the Tahitian women were the ones who did all the work once they got there. And that those women likely did not actually join the mutineers of their own free will, but were rather probably either tricked into it or kidnapped. Our guides seemed quite proud of their Tahitian ancestors, but the far more famous mutineers not so much.

view near the picnic area at the trailhead were our hike ended

The bus went through the town of Kingston on the way back, stopping at the shuttle stop where the shuttles to town from the port go so anyone wanting to walk around town could get off. All but 4 people did. Our bus was at the back of a line of other busses picking up and dropping off people at the shuttle stop.

picnic area at the end of the hike

Although we were early from the time given as to how long our excursion would take one lady who was still on the bus started loudly complaining to the driver that she needed to get back to the dock and meet her husband who had been on another excursion and was probably already there. The driver explained that he would go back as soon as our bus reached the front of the que and loaded on some of the people waiting there for a ride back to the dock. Then she asked about getting on a different bus, to which he said she was welcome to do so, but would have to go to the back of the line of people out in the shuttle stop waiting. Not willing to do that she whinged so much he ended up going around the other 3 busses that were still in front of us in the que and taking just the 4 of us back to the dock without loading on any of the other people there that were waiting to go back. Poor driver was probably afraid to tell her to either shut up or get off the bus, but giving in meant her selfish rudeness was rewarded at the expense of a bunch of other people waiting for a ride back to the dock. This ship seemed to have had more than its share of people who think the world revolves around them. Quite unlike the Norfolk islanders who were all friendly and helpful.

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sloth

For our port stop in Roatan, Honduras on the Majestic Princess we booked an excursion through Vacations to Go that included a visit to a sloth sanctuary, a horseback ride, and snorkeling. Instructions were provided on when and where to meet for the tour. Since it was not purchased through the ship we had to meet outside of the port area one hour after the ship arrived at the port in Mahogany Bay. We expected a long line to get off the ship so we went down before any announcements and before seeing any other passengers walking down the dock. We had to wait for a short while, but were the first ones off the ship. We were not the first waiting to get off, just the closest to the stairs when the barrier was removed.

bananas near the port

Instructions included walking through the port shopping area and out to the road into the port, passing through the green gate which has the security check for port entrance, and meeting a representative from the tour beyond the gates. There wasn’t anyone directly beyond the gates, but after walking a bit farther we came across a small open area next to the road full of locals with signs for various tours people had booked through outside sources. The representative for our tour was near the back of the group by a banana plant. We were the first to arrive for the tour. There was also a zipline tour meeting with the same representative. Some of the next people to arrive said there had not yet been any announcements, but they had seen other people leaving the ship. We had to wait there awhile and the banana plant came in handy for shelter when it rained a bit.

sign at the monkey and sloth place

Eventually the zipline group left and a few more people showed up for our bus. They walked us up a hill lined with cars, vans, and busses to pretty much the end of the line at the top of the hill. After waiting in the bus for awhile another group gathered from the waiting place boarded the bus. By then it was well past the hour in which people were supposed to arrive and not everyone had shown up. As is usual with these excursions they eventually gave up waiting for people who can’t be bothered to get there on time and left. Most of the people were just doing the sloth sanctuary and snorkeling, but there were a couple zipliners who had missed the bus for that excursion. Pretty much every excursion we have ever booked through outside sources has waited well beyond the time people are supposed to meet. The people who booked it and didn’t arrive on time never show up so I don’t know why they always wait so long since the ones who are actually coming manage to get there on time. Not sure why so many people book excursions they neither cancel nor attend either. They don’t get their money back for no-shows.

sloth in a tree

First we went to the sloth sanctuary, which was for monkeys as well as sloths and also had some birds and a couple of kinkajous. Before going into a monkey cage people had to empty their pockets and take off hats, glasses, dangly earrings, and anything else a monkey might try to steal. There were shelves people could put their belongings on. We were allowed to take cell phones in to take photos.

the monkey really wanted to eat this guy’s phone

The monkeys spent a lot of time hopping from person to person so everyone ended up with a monkey on them at some point. One monkey took quite a liking to one man’s cell phone. It kept trying to eat it and trying to take it. When the phone’s owner kept a good hold on it and wouldn’t let the monkey run off with it the monkey punched him in the face. These were little capuchin monkeys so it probably didn’t hurt.

Hannah and a monkey

They hardly weighed anything and their fur was very soft. They are little thieves though. One managed to get a kleenx left in someone’s pocket and ran right up to the top of the enclosure with its prize. When they say to empty your pockets they mean everything whether it has any value or not. The monkeys were allowed to move about freely within their enclosure. Whether or not they chose to hop on anyone was totally up to the monkey, but the guide did sometimes put a bit of food on people to encourage a monkey to hop on that person.

After awhile the refuge guide said the longer we stayed in there the more likely one of the monkeys would pee or poop on somebody, which is probably their way of getting people to move along, though he did warn us before going in that there was no guarantee that wouldn’t happen. Luckily it did not.

sloth near the roof of the sloth pavillion

We went up a little hill into a large pavilion at the top. 12 sloths live there. The sloths did not have a cage. Some were in the roofed pavilion, which had some leafless trees inside, probably fake or not living. Some of the sloths were in trees just outside of the pavilion, which the guide said grow their favorite fruit. He said one especially speedy for her species sloth disappeared for a couple days once and she now wears a tracker. Sloths may not be so speedy as the monkeys, but they moved along a lot quicker than what their reputation causes people to think.

it didn’t take this sloth long to get from this low branch to one up higher

The sloths did not make physical contact with anyone. They just moved about the trees and structure of the pavilion as they pleased. Occasionally one of the workers brought a sloth into the pavilion from the surrounding area and let it climb into the trees there, but nobody else touched them. He put them down low in an easily viewed spot, but it didn’t take them all that long to climb up higher and farther away from all of the people taking photos of them.

scarlet macaw

After spending some time with the sloths we moved into a cage with some scarlet macaws and one green one. The guide said in the wild they stick with their own color for mates, but not always in captivity. They had some rainbow macaws in another cage that were offspring of the green one and one of the scarlets. Most of the birds could fly, but there was one who had previously been the pet of an owner who had clipped the wrong feathers so it could not. The green one could fly, but was too lazy to fly much, preferring to climb the screen at the outer edge of the enclosure or hop along the ground.

green macaw

One of the red ones came down to sit on people’s heads. When it was done the green one sat on people’s arms. Apparently the red one was jealous of the crackers the green one got because it swooped down from its perch and landed on my head while I had the green one sitting on my arm. It hopped over to the next lady’s head when she had the green one too, but nobody else had two birds at the same time.

two birds at the same time

On the way out we stopped to see a couple of little kinkajous in a cage. They are very cute. The pathway between the kinkajous and the parking area passed several booths selling souvenirs and refreshments as well as a bathroom.

kinkajou

Before we went to our next destination the bus made a brief stop to let the two stray zipliners out at the zipline course. The bus must have gone back to get them at some point after dropping the rest of us off at a little beach resort that had everything else included in that tour because they were back on our bus when it was time to leave rather than returning to the ship with the rest of the zipliners.

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table at the Trattoria on Enchanted Princess

Food is always a major part of cruising and for the most part Enchanted Princess delivered. As is usual on cruise ships there was plenty of food available without a surcharge, but for those who wanted something different or more upscale they also had quite a few pay-extra options.

turkey dinner in the dining room

The main food sources are the usual dining room and buffet. On Enchanted Princess there are 3 dining rooms. People can opt for a set time and table in the same dining room every night, or they can eat in different ones on different days. Reservations can be made in advance which gets people a table without a wait, though the time they want and what is available to reserve may not be the same. When not having the same table and time on Princess cruises we’ve had much better luck having dinner at the time we wanted just doing walk-in rather than trying to reserve a table. If you’re open to a sharing table you get in a lot faster as a walk-in than if you want a private table.

Coq Au Vin

Other than the traditional dining seatings where everyone comes into the same dining room at the same time, reservations are actually counterproductive to the cruiseline getting everyone through in a reasonable time. If the dining room opens at 5pm and someone has a reservation for 5:30 or even 6:00, that table is going to sit empty from 5pm until those people arrive and they will hold it an extra 20 minutes past the reserved time before seating anyone else there whereas if there were no reservations all of the tables would be open to seat people as they arrived and again when they left – and if the service was faster they could turn the tables over a lot more quickly.

Pistachio Dome dessert

The food was usually both tasty and well prepared. If you request speed service or let them know there is an event you want to attend at a specific time they will speed up the otherwise generally slow service for that night. On a back-to-back cruise with other people we tried one dining room on the first cruise and a different one the second time around with a set time and table for each.

dining room lunch

We thought we didn’t have the best waiter the first time since other sections around us always got served sooner, but then when we moved to the other dining room we’d have been happy to get the first waiter back as the new one was not only even slower, but also had a tendency to mix up people’s appetizers or just get the wrong thing entirely. Or serve everyone what one person had ordered even if the others wanted something different. At breakfast and lunch only one dining room was open to the masses. One was not open at all and the third only to suite guests or people who paid extra for reserve collection mini-suites that have some of the perks of actual suites.

lobster and duck

People can make their own changes rather than just going with the standard menu. They do make accommodations for special diets, but even with the regular food you can ask for changes. When they had surf and turf as one option and duck as another we were able to order the surf and turf with duck substituted for the steak.

Princess Love Boat Dream dessert

Menu options change daily in the dining room, but there are a few things on the dinner menu that are available every night, like the Princess Love Boat Dream heart shaped dessert. On more recent cruises they switched that to a pistachio heart that my husband thought was the best thing ever, but I found to be overly sweet and prefer the original one.

one of many food stations at the buffet

The buffet was quite extensive with different sections and different rooms serving different sorts of things. It had a whole room just for desserts, other than at breakfast when that room was full of all sorts pastries. They were rather lacking for gluten free pastries though, offering only bread or muffins that had the appearance and consistency of little hockey pucks. The muffins did improve slightly on the second cruise after I wrote that about their muffins in the survey on the first one, but they definitely could have done much better. Gluten free muffins are actually easier to make than regular ones because you don’t have to worry about over stirring the batter since there’s no gluten so I’m not sure why they couldn’t make decent ones. They must have had a really crappy recipe. I make gluten free muffins at home with a variety of different flours and all sorts of alternations for different flavors of muffins and they all turn out well so it was quite puzzling why the ship’s gluten free muffins were so bad. At breakfast they did have really good gluten free waffles and pancakes. Their gluten free waffles were homemade and just as good as regular ones. Not the pre-made toaster sort many other cruise lines serve.

sometimes at lunch in the buffet one station had a Mongolian grill type option

The buffet had some of the same things each day, but other things that changed from day to day. It did need more drink stations though. The buffet covered a pretty expansive area both in food stations and seating and had just one drink station on each side of the ship. They did have crew people to serve drinks. When it wasn’t crowded you might have an army of them descending on you asking if you wanted anything to drink whereas when it was crowded you might finish your entire meal without anyone coming by to offer anything – and if what you wanted wasn’t what they had standard on their tray you might not get it for awhile even when it wasn’t busy. Either way it would just be easier to get your own so you have what you want when you want it – which could be done, but it was a long enough walk from most of the seating area to the closest drink station that by the time you got back the food would be cold. It worked out better for me just to get what I wanted before finding a seat or to look for a table near the drink station.

tray of goodies at afternoon tea

Besides meals the dining room also serves afternoon tea. The buffet serves late night snacks. The food for afternoon tea comes around with waiters serving it from trays rather than having fancy little 3-tiered tea stands of goodies on the tables.

pizza stand by the pool

In addition to the dining room and buffet, there was also free food in the pool area. On one end there was a pizza stand called Alfredo’s Slice and the Salty Dog Grill, which had hot dogs and hamburgers. The pizza place had a limited menu with what variety of pizza they served changing from day to day. They had pizza by the slice ready to go. If you wanted gluten free or a whole pizza you could order it and then pick it up a bit later. On the other end of the pool area there was a swirls ice cream stand with soft serve ice cream in either a cone or dish. Sauce and sprinkles were optional for the dish. I asked one day if it was real ice cream or the fake stuff and the person working there said they didn’t know.

International Cafe

Sort of in-between free and pay-extra, the International Cafe in the Piazza had free food, but the drinks cost extra. That was the ship’s main coffee bar for specialty coffee, tea, or hot chocolate if you wanted something better than the free stuff in the buffet or dining room. It tended to get a line at times, but the bar next to Princess Live a couple decks up also served specialty hot drinks and rarely had a line, especially near the beginning of the cruise when most people didn’t know about it. There was also a specialty coffee bar in the pastry room at the buffet during breakfast.

Gigi’s Pizza

Enchanted Princess had quite a lot of pay-extra eateries. We were happy with the free food and didn’t try any of them. Even though they had free pizza on the Lido deck, they also had a place called Gigi’s Pizzeria overlooking the piazza where the pizza cost extra and people actually ate there rather than going up a few decks and getting it for free.

decor at the Trattoria

That wasn’t it for pay-extra Italian food though with Sabatini’s Trattoria across the way from the pizza place. That one had fake plants winding all around pillers that were a favorite place for people to hide ducks. I found one there that was exactly the same as one I’d brought so I put mine in the same place the other had been. That was of course when the restaurant wasn’t open.

gelato shop

Other pay extra places include The Catch by Rudi – a seafood place, Crown Grill Steakhouse, and the ultra-special chef’s table or their really high-priced ultimate immersive 7-course dinner called 360: An Extraordinary Experience. There was also a gelateria with an assortment of gelato, sorbet, and sundaes.

O’Malley’s Pub

O’Malley’s Irish Pub was not just one of many bars on the ship, it also served food.

coconut mousse dessert in the dining room

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cabin D148

Royal Princess Deluxe Balcony Cabin D148

The main difference between standard balcony cabins and deluxe balcony cabins on Royal Princess is that the deluxe balcony cabin has a small couch that is the size of a loveseat and the standard balcony cabin does not. Deluxe balcony cabins are slightly larger at 233 square feet including the balcony vs 214-222 square feet including balcony on standard balcony cabins. The balconies on both are about 41 square feet and have two chairs and a small table.

connecting door

As is usual for cruise ship cabins, the room contains two beds that can be separated into twins or set together as a queen. In the deluxe balcony cabins the sofa can convert to a third bed. Some cabins also have a drop-down bunk to accommodate a fourth person. Cabin D148 that we were in happened to be one of the few with a connecting door to the next cabin. Unless you are with the people in the next room cabins with connecting doors are best avoided when possible because you can often hear the people next door (and them you) a lot more easily than through a solid wall, though we didn’t hear the neighbors on this ship unless standing right next to the connecting door.

cabin layouts of deluxe and standard balcony cabins

The deluxe balcony cabin costs more than a standard cabin so you pay more for that small loveseat size couch and tiny bit of extra square footage. Across from the couch there was a small desk with a cabinet enclosing the refrigerator and a drawer above the cabinet with the hair dryer. The two 110 outlets above the desk were set far apart preventing any interference with large sized plugs from one to the other. The room had no USB ports, but I brought a clock that has 2. There was also one big round outlet above the desk, probably 22o volt. We extended our outlet capacity with a couple 3-outlet plugs, which are really only 2 each since they are set closer together than the width of most plugs, but they still double the capacity plus the 2 USB ports in the clock added more charging ability. The desk had one chair and there was a small table between the couch and desk.

couch and painting

There is just one picture in this room which is just colors rather than an actual picture of anything. With some imagination it could be water, a landscape perhaps of farm crops or a golf course in a sand dune by a beach, and sky. A wall TV is mounted across from the beds. Each bed has a nightstand with a built-in lamp, 2 small drawers, and a small shelf. There’s also a motion light at the bottom of it which is very annoying at night unless you cover it up with the spare pillow. There were 4 pillows for 2 beds so that was an option.

desk and mirror

The room has three mirrors with one mirror above the desk as well as a full-length wall mirror, and a mirror in the bathroom. The walls and doors are magnetic which is useful for hanging magnetic hooks and any other magnetic things people wish to hang.

closet

There is a large open closet area with as much hanging space as a double closet in a standard house and a small closet with a door containing the safe and shelves. The closet area adds some nice storage space, but makes the room feel smaller than cruise ship cabins of the same square footage on other ships that have smaller closets against a wall and more open room space.

bathroom

The bathroom is pretty standard for a cruise ship with a shower, toilet, and sink with small built-in counter. There is a shelf running the full length of the bathroom underneath the sink. Also 3 small shelves on one side of the mirror. It has conditioning shampoo and body wash in the shower and body wash and hand lotion at the sink. There is no separate conditioner for the shower so you have to bring your own if you want any.

no separate conditioner

Motion lights in cruise ship cabins seem to be following the trend of headlights (and taillights) on cars. Old cars had lights that were low down and bright enough to see, but not so bright as to blind other drivers. Over the years the lights have moved up higher on the vehicles and gotten brighter so whether you are behind another car or facing an oncoming one either the headlights or taillights are blinding.

cabin D148

Similarly, cruise ship cabins once had no motion lights. Then some started to have some low down near the floor, generally near the bathroom to light the way in case people got up in the night. Occasionally we found a dim one in the bathroom which was the only sort that we actually appreciate because that prevents the need to turn on the bright light – unless of course it only stays on a short while and then goes dark while in there. Next came lights on the bottoms of the nightstands lighting up the pathway right from leaving the bed, and now the last two ships we sailed on had really bright motion lights on the ceiling outside of the bathroom so anyone who gets up in the night or whoever wakes up first in the morning wakes up anyone else in the room with that super bright motion light.

cabin D148

As previously mentioned the ones that are low down on the nightstands can easily be covered up with spare pillows, but the ceiling ones aren’t quite as easy. There is no off switch giving people any option as to whether they want that or not. Kind of like when you buy a new car. There’s no option for one with lights that don’t blind all the other drivers, yet people are annoyed with the drivers of other cars rather than the people who design and build them. Unlike the car which has no options, you can stop the ceiling motion light if you cover it up with a towel and magnet the towel to the ceiling. Generally in cruise ship cabins the bathroom is right next to the door and you can usually see light from the hallway around the door so that provides enough light to find the bathroom in the dark without all the excessive motion lights. I’m sure they are considered a safety feature, but a switch for the option to turn them off if not wanted would be much appreciated.

balcony

This room had a standard size balcony, which in spite of how spacious it looks in the drawing from Princess that shows the room layout is really just big enough for the two chairs and table provided. There’s space enough for two people to sit out there comfortably, but if you had a third or fourth person in the room not everyone could sit there at once. The chair from the desk could squeeze in for a third person, but it would be quite crowded.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

bridge over the Tauber River

Wertheim, Germany

Wertheim is a town in southwestern Germany located at the confluence of the Main and Tauber Rivers with a population of around 24,000 residents. A castle overlooks the town from a hill. The town has medieval historical buildings and is known for glass making and Franconian wine. Some of the town’s buildings have markers showing the extreme height of floodwaters from numerous previous floods. Small floods can be stopped by the town’s floodgates, but not the big ones. Raising the streets nearly 5 feet turned prior ground floors into basements, but still doesn’t keep the worst floods from inundating the town. Wertheim has a mild climate with average winter lows in the high 20’s F to average summer highs in the mid 70’s F, though it does get colder and hotter at times. The warm season runs from June to September, with the cold season from November to March. July is typically the hottest month and January the coldest. The driest part of the year is generally between January and May. Snow is most likely between December and February. Annual precipitation averages a bit over 20 inches each year. Things to do in Wertheim include exploring the old town area, visiting the glass museum or shopping in the town’s boutiques. Glassware and beaded jewelry has been made there since medieval times. Wertheim was known as a successful merchant’s town in the middle ages.

Viking Skirnir in Wertheim

Wertheim River Cruise Port

The port in Wertheim was within walking distance of the town, but a train tram was provided to take people for the scheduled tour. There were also several pick-up times running half an hour apart afterword so people could either go back shortly after the tour or spend a bit more time wandering around in the town and still get a ride back to the ship. Not much though since the ship did not stay there very long.

map at the dock in Wertheim

Wertheim Walking Tour

Viking Skirnir came to Wertheim for a brief port stop of about 4 hours on a cold foggy early December morning. The temperature started out below freezing, but warmed up to about mid 30’s F by noon. Which still feels mighty cold since it is not that far above freezing and the air is damp and chilly in the fog. It also gives the photos a misty distant look since they are taken through the fog. Especially the ones from the start of the tour. It did clear up a little before the end. After we got back to the ship the sun even made a brief appearance between bouts of fog.

train tram

This tour had a unique start different from any of the other tours provided on this cruise. Taking the little train tram instead of walking straight off from the ship or taking a bus was unique to this port. Rather than starting everyone off at once groups were staggered a bit because there isn’t enough room on the train for everyone. We were assigned to the middle one of 3 groups. The stop where the train let us off was next to the Main River within walking distance of the ship. They said it would be about a 15-minute walk to get back, but we didn’t test that out since we got to the return stop when there was a train tram waiting there with seats available. Since the return trains ran half an hour apart if we had missed it we would have walked. There was a path alongside the river so just go until you get to the ship and it wouldn’t be hard to find from the tram stop – as long as you went in the right direction.

all of the Christmas market booths are closed

Wertheim is a pretty small town. The map that the ship provides showed a much smaller area for walking around in than any of the previous places we visited. It was apparently too small of a town to have enough business for the Christmas Market to stay open except on weekends so all of the little booths in the main market square were closed.

Everything was closed at the start of the tour. The yellow building is the bakery.

There was a bakery there that the guide said was the one place in town that provided free restrooms for the public without having to pay to use them or buy anything. I’m sure that free service gets them a lot of business from people coming in to use the bathroom. It was closed when we walked by it near the start of the tour, but open later after the tour was finished. Pretty much the whole town was closed when we first walked through it.

street in Wertheim

The tour guide was a retired Colonel from the German army. He was old, born shortly after the end of World War 2 in a small house in that very town.

Spitzer Turm

Pisa is not the only place with a leaning tower, just the most famous one. We saw one previously on Burano Island in Venice, and Wertheim has one too. Not to mention just about all of the older buildings alongside the canals in Amsterdam are wonky. The leaning tower in Wertheim is a round tower that was once a prison with a door way up high where prisoners and guards climbed a ladder to get up, then prisoners were lowered by rope 30 feet down into the dark with all the other prisoners and no facilities. They stayed there in complete darkness for up to 6 weeks for the horrible crimes of public drunkenness, not paying bills, or being a nagging wife or quarreling women. Apparently it was fine for men to nag or argue as long as they weren’t drunk. The tower is called the Spitzer Turm, which means pointed tower. The lean is caused by 800 years of flooding.

new stairway near the bottom of the tower

The bottom of the tower was the original part made of brick and the top was added later to turn it into a watchtower, with a door and stairway added on lower down than the original one for the prison. This tower is not as tall as the one in Pisa and the diameter is smaller as well.

random doorway in Wertheim

Though there was a German military airport near the town during World War 2, Wertheim got spared from allied bombing, but not intentionally. Only because when the allies flew over to bomb it the day was extremely foggy. It had fog so thick they couldn’t see the ground. Since they couldn’t find the town they didn’t know where to drop the bombs so they left without bombing anything.

stairway to the river

The Tauber River which runs through town is a smaller river than the Main that we sailed in on. Homes line that river. Every so often there’s a seemingly random stairway going down the riverbank into the water. These are leftover from a time when the townspeople used them to get down to the river to wash their clothes.

inside of a half-timbered wall

Much of the original construction of the town is in the medieval half-timbered style and many original buildings remain, with a few newer ones sprinkled in between. There was one house where the one next door had been torn down and nothing new built yet so you could see what it looked like inside the wall of a half-timbered house.

skinniest building in town

The narrowest building in town is very thin, sandwiched in between other buildings on the main market square. The bottom floor is very tiny. It gets a bit bigger as it goes up. The wider parts overhang a walkway that goes between it and the next building. The guide said the lowest story was originally made so small to avoid taxes because at the time it was built buildings were taxed only on the size of the space occupied at ground level regardless of how much space or how many stories they had above.

high water mark

Several of the buildings had high water indicators of previous floods. The river floods often enough that nobody lives on the bottom story in any of the buildings near the river. It’s the same in a lot of the riverside towns we visited. Seems like they would either build up on pilings above the high-water mark or build on high ground farther from the river, but apparently they all just take flooding in stride as part of normal life. There are often shops on the bottom floor so they would have to move all their merchandise whenever a flood is expected.

castle in the fog

Ruins of a castle perch high on a hill overlooking the town. It once belonged to the dukes (or counts) of Wertheim who built it in the 12th century. They aren’t recent ruins. That castle has been a ruin since the 30 years war of the 1600’s. The guide said he played in that castle as a child, though even back then it wasn’t allowed. He said since then some walls have fallen and the interior is not safe. Though the castle was not far away it was barely visible through the thick fog. Our local guide insisted that people are not allowed in the unsafe castle, but information online and from Viking said that partial restoration was done in the 1980’s and people are allowed to go there now. Even a sign at the dock listed castle tours.

the tour ended by a synagogue on a hill

The tour wound through town in a somewhat mazelike fashion and ended not within sight of where it started. Though nothing is all that far there the guide’s directions on how to get back to the market square and train stop were not at all clear. Luckily a friend we were traveling with paid attention to where we started and how to get back there so we didn’t have to wander around aimlessly until we found it.

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Cape Horn

On days when there’s something especially scenic Holland America opens up the front bow so people have somewhere outside to go besides the promenade deck and back deck to see the scenery. The Crow’s Nest observation lounge with its floor to ceiling windows across the front of the ship is also a good place, as is anywhere with a window or people’s own balconies. They have commentary in the Crow’s Nest and on the outside decks, but not other places where people might go to see things.

bowcam view

Commentary is on the bow cam channel in the staterooms too.

sunrise on the way to Cape Horn

Our balcony was on the port side and it looked as if Holland America Oosterdam would pass by on the starboard side so we went up to the Crow’s Nest shortly after 5am to watch from there. All of the seats by the front window were already full, which is not surprising thinking back to having staked ours out for a Panama Canal cruise at 4am and just beating the next people there by a few minutes for a later arrival than what we had here. The coffee bar in the Crow’s Nest did not open until its usual 6am at which time the line was extremely long so we didn’t bother. If somebody really wanted coffee or tea that badly they could have made it to the Lido buffet at the other end of the ship and back long before getting through the line at the coffee bar.

sailing past cape horn

The ship’s path was not displayed on any screens in the Crow’s Nest, but we watched it on the ship finder app on my phone. Ship finder used to be really good at showing all the ships in any area of the world, but it is not so good in some areas now. It might show some ships halfway around the world, but none anywhere nearby even when you can look out the window and see them. It didn’t even show the ship we were on as a ship. It will still pinpoint your current location on the map wherever you are even if it isn’t showing any ships in that area, which was all we really needed for this even if it did show our ship as a current location dot rather than as a ship. There are better navigation apps available.

jaws of the sea

Before reaching the cape we passed a rock formation which the naturalist onboard doing the commentary called the jaws of the sea.

sunrise over the jaws of the sea

Instead of going straight to the cape like we had expected, the ship sailed around the island and rounded it from the other direction so we went back to our room where we had the port side view since that turned out to be the side we would actually see it from. The seats we had chosen in the Crow’s Nest were starboard where the majority of the land mass was at the time as well as the side we would have passed Cape Horn on if we’d gone directly there rather than taking a detour around the island.

clouds over Cape Horn resembling a smoking volcano

It’ s nice to have a balcony for scenic things where you can run outside and get photos, but still go back into the room to warm up or listen to the commentary. It takes awhile to sail around the horn. There was a dark cloud on top of the cliff that is Cape Horn so it kind of looked like a volcano spewing up ash, though of course it really wasn’t.

giant rocks jutting out of the sea by Cape Horn

We sailed past scenic islands and rock formations on the way to Cape Horn. There were some pretty big rock formations near the cape as well.

in the dining room on Cape Horn night

From the times of old sailing ships they say that if you round Cape Horn you are entitled to pierce your left ear to wear a gold hoop and you are allowed to put one foot on the table when dining. If you also round the Cape of Good Hope in Africa you can then put both feet on the table and get a tattoo of a square sailed ship on your chest.

land passed after rounding the horn

The tip of South America is not one solid land mass, but rather a bunch of islands. Cape Horn is a high cliff on an island called Hornos Island, which is the southernmost one. There is a flatter land mass stretching out into a point that has a lighthouse, the farthest southernmost church in the world, and a monument. If you can afford the small ship expedition sort of cruise with zodiacs they will go to shore there weather permitting, but the regular cruise ships just look at it from the ship.

buildings near Cape Horn

One family lives at Cape Horn. There’s a lighthouse keeper who is a member of the Chilean navy with the applications for the voluntary position only open to married men who move there with their family. They stay for one year and then a new family takes over.

Australis ship and its zodiacs

We saw a ship from the Australis line near the structures sending people to shore. They had said we would get close enough to see the stairway up to the monument, but apparently that ship was blocking the way because we didn’t do that. Of course they were actually using the stairway rather than just sailing by to look at it like we would have done.

Cape Horn

Our ship turned there to give people on the starboard side a view of the lighthouse and other structures, but when rounding the cape itself people had to be on the port side to see it.

pilot boat zipping past our window

Local pilots sail with the ship as it passes around the horn. We sailed quite a way north to the pilot station where the pilot boat came to pick up the local pilots off the ship before turning south again to head across Drake Passage to Antartica. Pilots may be the reason for circling the island since we had to pick one up somewhere.

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tour boat

While staying in San Antonio, Chile for a couple days before embarking on a cruise to Antarctica on Holland America Oosterdam, we took a harbor tour available on the spot at a dock along the waterfront promenade. After walking down the stairway leading to the dock we found a couple men sitting on a bench who take the money for the cruise. Like the majority of the people in San Antonio, neither of them spoke English. John and I each know a few words in Spanish. Not enough for a conversation, but enough to manage a transaction, though for that it probably wouldn’t even matter since both sides know what the other wants and they were sitting under a sign with the price of 4000 pesos, which was about $4 USD per person at the time, though it would now take nearly $4.50 USD to equal 4000 Chilean pesos.

buoy in the harbor

They have a whole fleet of little boats that run the harbor tours. Some are very small and open with no shelter at all, while some are bigger and have a canvas cover over most of the seats. Others are somewhere in between.

double deck tour boat

We even saw one double deck boat. After paying they direct you into whatever boat is sitting at the loading spot at the time. The one for our tour happened to be one of the bigger single deck boats. There were a few people on it, but not many. As we boarded a young lady handed us life jackets and said something in Spanish. Probably telling us to put them on. All of the life jackets said Pamela on them, so that was most likely the name of the boat.

waiting for the boat to fill

Most of the people already on board were on the port side and the seats there were pretty much full. There was nobody on the starboard side. A family of 4 just ahead of us were getting into the middle seats, but one of them stood in the aisle for a very long time and wouldn’t move until we finally asked if we could get by. I don’t think she even realized we were there. She had a cute tiny little dog. There was a bigger dog along on the ride too so apparently they are allowed. When we could finally walk down the aisle we went to the back where we could have a view from the back of the ship as well as the side. At first the ship listed to port, but as it sat there for awhile while more people came to take a tour the starboard side eventually filled and the boat straightened out as the weight evened up.

sea lions on the beach and a grain ship unloading

For awhile there was a large school of tiny fish between the boat we were on and the one tied up next to it. Eventually the boats drifted together and the next time there was space between them all of the baby fish were gone.

captain

It took awhile for enough people to wander down to fill the boat enough to start the tour. Once both rows of outside seats were full the captain boarded without waiting for the whole inside row to fill as well. The girl who handed out life jackets came around with a camera and took pictures of everyone. As best we could figure out they needed to have a photo of everyone on board for liability reasons or something. Her phone translation said required for registration. Buying the photo after the tour was optional.

small container ship with small cranes

Once the tour got underway she put the camera down and picked up a megaphone instead. She had a running commentary throughout the tour, but since it was all in Spanish we don’t actually know what she said.

fishing from a fishing boat at anchor

It was a bit of an unusual boat tour. Usually they go to scenic sights or looking for wildlife. This one meandered through the harbor, I assume talking about the different ships we passed. First we went by fishing boats at anchor, one of which people were fishing off of right there in the harbor while it was anchored up – and catching fish too.

big container ship with big cranes

The boat went around to all of the different docks so I assume the commentary was about whatever ship happened to be there and how the loading and unloading works for that particular dock and type of ship.

car carrier

One was a car carrier with sides much higher than any of the container ships. Trucks loaded with cars would periodically drive down the dock away from that one, but since we were not on the side by the dock we didn’t see them unload though I would guess they probably just drive them off the ship and onto the truck. That ship did not have any cranes on or near it.

hotel we stayed in from the tour boat

The next ship back had its own cranes onboard, but no visible containers or anything. If it had anything left on it to unload it must have been inside the hold. The captain seemed to indicate that was the spot where the Oosterdam would be the next day so if there was any more loading or unloading to do they would have to finish it up before then. The process seemed to take quite awhile since all of the ships we saw stayed at least overnight if not longer. We could see a lot of the slips where ships were from our hotel room, but unfortunately not the one where the cruise ship docked. We had been hoping the Oosterdam would dock where we could see it from the hotel.

giant cranes

There were 4 enormous cranes between two berths with ships, but no ship at the cranes. On the other side of that little inlet there were some container ships. The smaller one had smaller cranes unloading it and the bigger one had some of the giant ones. At the time we passed by those cranes were pulling things up out of the hold from below decks near the middle of the ship while the outer ends still had containers piled high above the surface.

sea lion on top of the pedestal bit below the hull

We passed by the back end of a partially unloaded ship that had a sea lion and some birds sitting way up high on some sort of structure hanging below the hull of the ship. While the birds could easily fly in and out of there, we figured the sea lion must have gotten up there before they started unloading the ship when it sat lower in the water and would now have a very long drop to get down unless that ship was loaded up again before it left port.

tetrapods

A lot of the edges of the harbor had tetrapods, which are t-shaped concrete blocks piled up along the shoreline. These are used to prevent erosion and protect structures – like the docks they are placed around. The end of the outermost dock had some larger concrete blocks, which made a nice resting place for sea lions. Seagulls and sea lions were the only wildlife we saw on that tour. We also could see them from our hotel room. Sea lions liked the beach near there except when dogs chased them off, and seagulls were everywhere.

sea lion

On the way back to the dock we saw some more sea lions in the rocks at the end of another dock. It was a pretty short tour, but then again it was also really cheap. Most people did leave a tip at the end.

little mermaid tour boat

Many of the tour boats looked a bit worse for wear. As we were disembarking one pulled in next to us that was about the same size as ours, but painted up all fancy with characters from the Little Mermaid.

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display cake

The food on Holland America ships is similar from one ship to another, but there were some differences on the Nieuw Amsterdam from other Holland America ships I’ve sailed on. The buffet was arranged a bit differently with a refrigerated case taking up space in the central walkway/drink station. That made an extra place to obtain things like fruit and juice at breakfast or dessert at lunch or dinner, but it also eliminated some counter space. Other ships used that counter space for a tray of muffins and pastries in the early morning before the buffet opens, but the Nieuw Amsterdam only had fruit and cereal available. They could easily have solved that by opening the curtain at one of the pastry stations next to that area early where there were already an assortment of things stocked, but they never did.

buffet seating

Another change to the buffet is having taco and nacho type offerings at a station within the buffet instead of at a serve-yourself taco bar out by the pool and having a separate pizza place out on the back deck rather than serving pizza from a station at the buffet. In the morning they had regular waffles and crepes at the station that on previous ships used to make gluten free crepes out front. They recently changed that to pancakes, which this one made behind the scenes. The gluten free crepes they used to make were a whole lot better than the pancakes that they make now, but they won’t make gluten free crepes any more even though all they’d have to do is spread the dough out thinner. They did not make any gluten free baked goods in house at all on this ship and in the dining room people had to order gluten free in advance for any meal, not just dinner.

Tamarind sign

An additional difference on the Nieuw Amsterdam was a third premium restaurant in addition to the Pinnacle Grill and Canaletto that all of their ships have. The new one was called Tamarind. It served Pan-Asian food at dinnertime. It’s located at the center of deck 11 and accompanied by a sushi bar and an Asian themed bar with great views. Tamarind is available on only 5 of Holland America’s ships.

Tamarind bar

In addition to Nieuw Amsterdam it can also be found on Rotterdam, Nieuw Statendam, Koningsdam, and Eurodam. These are the larger ships of Holland America’s fleet, though nowhere near the megaship size some other lines have.

Canaletto

As previously mentioned, Nieuw Amsterdam also has Holland America’s standard pay-extra restaurants Canaletto and the Pinnacle Grill. Canaletto serves Italian food. It’s open at dinner only and located in a corner of the buffet seating. That works out well for the buffet as the seating area is open for anyone to sit there at breakfast and lunch when the buffet is more crowded and that corner of seating is restricted to Canaletto customers at dinner when more people eat elsewhere.

Pinnacle Grill

Pinnacle Grill is the upscale steakhouse and has its own space that is open for lunch and dinner. The lunch menu is different from the dinner menu and about half the price. The ship also had Holland America’s standard free Dive- In Grill next to the pool. Well at least the food there is free. You have to pay for it if you want a milkshake to go with the burger and fries. The Dive-In will make gluten-free or beyond meat burgers on the spot without having to order the previous day like you do in the dining room.

standard afternoon tea

You can also ask for gluten free on the spot at afternoon tea, but it’s pretty pitiful. The regular afternoon tea has the little 3-tiered tray with sandwiches, scones, and sweets on different tiers. Gluten free they bring a little plate.

gluten free afternoon tea for two

To share for 2 people they gave us one plate with 2 tiny very dry egg sandwiches with barely any filling and one big blob of chocolate. That’s it. What a disappointment. It wouldn’t be that hard to put together something nicer without even baking anything or putting much effort into it. They could add things like mini muffins which you can buy ready-made and some macarons, which are made with almond flour anyway so they’re always gluten free. (Macarons are the little fancy sandwich cookies, but coconut macaroons are often gluten free so they would work too.)

pork meatballs that were raw in the middle

The dining room food was generally good if refraining from ordering pork. At least I didn’t have any luck with it. I ordered pork 3 times. Once as an appetizer and twice for the main and every time it ranged from undercooked to nearly raw so after the third strike I did not order anything with pork again on this cruise.

pork dinner looks good, but is way undercooked when cut open

Other people at our table managed to get pork that was actually cooked all the way. It was just me that kept getting it undercooked. Kind of the opposite of an MSC ship we were on once where whatever I ordered for dinner was cooked perfectly and whatever my husband had was way overcooked. Even when we both ordered the same duck meal on that MSC ship mine was beautifully golden brown and his had the color and consistency of old leather.

this gluten free puffed pastry was the only GF baked item all cruise that didn’t come straight from a package – and it was delicious

Other than pork they did a good job with the mains and appetizers, but gluten free desserts were an issue.

one of many renditions of the flourless chocolate cake

If ordering anything chocolate it was always their flourless chocolate cake with various different toppings rather than whatever it was supposed to be. The flourless chocolate cake is good, but it’s nice to have some variety in cruise ship desserts rather than the same thing over and over. Pies were just the filling in a jar served like pudding, which was at least something different each time. Since we are just limited tolerance rather than celiacs we had better desserts sometimes up at the buffet where we could get things the way they were supposed to be. In the dining room it’s all or nothing on gluten free because anything else confuses them. They probably have to treat everyone who asks for gluten free as if they are a celiac to prevent causing anyone problems.

vegetarian dinner

There’s always a vegetarian option on the dinner menu. One night it was cauliflower steak, which sounded better to me than anything else on that night’s menu. It was pretty good.

turkey dinner in the dining room

One night after disappointing dining room desserts we went up to the Lido buffet to see if we could find something better and they had an assortment of cakes made with different types of booze. They were moist and delicious and some of the best desserts we had all cruise. We didn’t try all of them, but shared little pieces of a few different ones and they were all good.

lots of cakes at Cake Me Away

The other good cake day is when they have Cake Me Away one day at lunchtime in the buffet. They have quite a variety of fancy cakes for that. Their gluten free offerings were pretty bad, but any of the rest that we tried were good. They had that twice during our cruise because even though we had booked it as one cruise the last few days was sort of like a back-to-back because a lot of people got off in San Diego and new ones got on just from there to Vancouver. Which meant a chance to try some different cakes the second time around.

chicken dinner

The other special dessert thing they had was chocolate surprise one evening which is where you hang out on deck 2 and wait for the galley crew to come out with trays of a variety of different chocolate treats. Finding the door they come out of is the ideal way to see the entire selection on some ships, but on this ship there seemed to be quite a lot of each thing so at least some of the trays of each thing managed to make it all around the deck. They had little chocolate muffins, white chocolate fudge, dark chocolate macarons, and chocolate covered cheerios, raisins, almonds, and peanuts. Each item comes out one at a time and when all of the trays of one thing are gone they come out with the next treat.

dining room tacos

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spa balcony cabin

On the Luminosa, we had a spa balcony cabin, which is similar to a standard balcony cabin only it comes with extra perks including use of the thermal suite and is listed as having nicer amenities. Pictures show the interior décor of Carnival’s spa cabins in a green and blue color scheme, but ours was red and yellow so apparently they did not redecorate the spa cabins on the Luminosa when it switched from Costa to Carnival.

towel turkey

Spa cabins are supposed to come with upgraded amenities, but the shower still had conditioning shampoo instead of separate shampoo and conditioner so it was a good thing I brought some from home. It did have body wash separately so it wasn’t quite an all in one. There was bar soap for the sink rather than liquid hand soap. The bathrobes said cloud 9 on them and the provided beach towels were soft yellow ones that said serenity so they were serenity deck towels rather than the main pool deck towels standard cabins receive.

wall hooks and magnetic hooks

The cabin had ample storage space with 3 closets, 2 of which have hanging bars and one with shelves. As is usual on most any cruise we had to ask the steward for extra hangers. There were 3 empty drawers in the desk as well as 2 that had some stuff in them – like a hairdryer and laundry bags and forms. There were 2 built in wall hooks, and with magnetic hooks we added more places to hang things. The refrigerator came empty so we did not have to ask the steward to clear out mini-bar items, but there were two water bottles on the desk with price tags on them. Because we are returning guests the steward took the pay tags off and said we were entitled to have them for free. That perk may change in the near future though since Carnival’s overhaul of their loyalty program will soon take the earned status away from everyone who has not made diamond by the end of the summer and base it on money spent in a 2-year period rather than points accumulated from all past cruises.

balcony

The room had a cupboard with two fairly good-sized shelves and and two open small shelves next to it. The nightstands were quite small, but did have a tiny cupboard with 2 shelves inside each one. The framework of the couch under the seat has a couple loops sticking out of it and pulling on them I found 2 large drawers, empty and available for storing stuff. One of them could probably hold nearly as much as all of the drawers in the desk combined.

cabin 8224

The room has a king bed that can be separated into two, a chair at the desk, a full-sized couch, and a larger than average balcony with two chairs and a small table. Since this was a spa cabin we expected a very comfortable mattress. but this one almost felt like sleeping on the sort of carpeted floor with some kind of matting under the rug. Cruise ship beds are usually a lot more comfortable than that. The floor felt like its flat carpet was directly over a hard surface with no matting under it at all so the bed was somewhat softer than the floor in this room, but a softer mattress definitely would have been nice.

bathroom has 2 sets of shelves on the mirror

The bathroom is standard cruise ship size – small with a small shower. It does have a fairly long counter and a set of 3 shelves on each side of the mirror above the bathroom counter for a total of 6 rather than the standard only 3 on one side found on many ships. There is not any storage space under the counter. Some ships do have a shelf there, but this one did not. The center area underneath the sink is closed off with just a trash can at one end and a small shelf area filled with spare supplies like Kleen-x and toilet paper at the other.

magnets are useful for keeping paperwork organized

Most of the cabin walls are magnetic. The door can hold a strong magnet, but not a weak one. Door décor on week magnets hung just fine on the walls around the door, but not on the door itself. Of the magnets I had only the strong hook magnets could hold things up on the door.

wall art

The room has a pretty big mirror over the desk and a small TV hanging on the wall next to the mirror. There are a variety of different lights around the room. Wall art in our cabin was 3 pictures that looked like watercolor to me, though I’m no art expert. One was a tulip, one a vase, and the other the sort of abstract design that you can find to look like something if you stare at it long enough. It also had a little oval table by the couch.

using an adaptor to increase the available outlets

The biggest drawback of the room was that it had only one American and one Australian outlet and those so close to each other that even a small plug going into the American one was crowded by a smaller than average adapter in the Australian one – of which I plugged a plug extender into, though the 3 are spaced close enough that with most items you can only actually use the outer 2. This gave us 3 outlets to plug into rather than just one. Luckily electronics are OK on different power. My clock is not so it got the one American outlet. There were also some USB ports on one of the nightstands.

We were in cabin number 8224 which is located right at the opening for the stairway and elevators. We thought it might be noisy there when we saw where it was, but we didn’t hear the elevators from inside the room at all. Occasionally there was a group of people with loud voices waiting for the elevator and we did hear them.

cabin door

The location of our cabin door was pretty handy for duck mailboxes since anyone going up or down the stairs could see it. The spa was just above us and the gym one more floor up. The entrance into the Lido pool area was also on the deck above us so it was an area where people would go. We got a lot of ducks traded in our duck mailboxes, but sometimes people took them without leaving one. Sometimes people left a duck without taking the one that was there and one day somebody put a ship on a stick (Carnival’s version of a trophy) on top of mine, which I figured was an award for having the best duck mailbox since mine was homemade.

ship on a stick on the duck mailbox

The only other duck mailbox on the ship was just a few doors down from ours. It was the little yellow sort you buy online like what John had. (I would not recommend those, they break easily.)  The people in that cabin took theirs down for much of the cruise due to a couple kids who constantly raided all of the duck mailboxes without ever leaving any ducks in trade. Those kids were probably somewhere between 10 and 14 so definitely old enough to know better, but since they often had a grandmother with them who not only allowed, but actually encouraged their bad behavior they aren’t likely to ever learn any respect for other people’s things. If they leave it empty then the next person who comes along to trade a duck won’t get one. One of the people in a nearby cabin caught them in the act and gave them a pretty good lecture so after that we got a lot more ducks in the mailbox rather than always finding it empty, and a lot of other people had fun trading them too. We even found one lady who just liked to look inside and see what was there. Duck mailboxes bring enjoyment to a lot of people.

ducks we either found or acquired in the mailbox

Our cabin steward was the friendliest one we’ve ever had. He was also a good steward. It was a 22-day cruise and we had a different towel animal every day. Overall it was a good cabin in a good location. The fact that cabins in our area stayed dry when a leaky pipe flooded some down the hall made our location that much better.

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island tender at Cascade Pier

Norfolk Island, Australia is more than 1000 miles from mainland Australia. It’s of volcanic origin and about 5 miles long and 3 miles wide. None of the animals associated with Australia are native to the island. Neither are its venomous spiders and snakes. Other than domestic animals and creatures of the sea, Norfolk is mainly home to birds and insects. The highest elevation in the island is about 360 feet above sea level. The coastline mainly consists of cliffs. Tourism is the island’s main industry.

Norfolk Island Map

About half the island’s residents are descendants of the mutineers from the bounty and some Tahitian women that the mutineers brought with them to Pitcairn Island where they lived before being relocated to Norfolk Island. Prior to that the island was used for two different sets of convicts. One as Sydney was first being settled, which turned out advantageous for Sydney’s settlers since food was more easily grown on Norfolk Island at that time, and the second time for repeat offenders. Before that the island was not inhabited full time, though it did have some historic artifacts from Polynesian visitors. The rest of the population mainly comes from mainland Australia and New Zealand.

view of the tender pier from the ship

It’s a tender port with a couple different dock options, of which the one best suited to the day’s weather will be used – if the tenders can make it in at all. Sometimes the sea is too rough and the port gets skipped. This is a port with a high likelihood of getting skipped, but luckily the seas were not so rough to prevent us from coming ashore on our scheduled port day there. The docks are located at Kingston and Cascade.

Cascade tender pier

Tenders come out to the ship from the island rather than using the ship’s tenders at this port. The tender crew is also from the island and were far more skillful in docking their tenders than the Nordam’s crew had been with theirs. They managed to dock on both ends without crashing the tender into the ship or the dock, and made it to the dock on the first try. Neither of those things were likely when using the ship’s tenders. They also knew how to tie a proper knot to the cleat on the dock, another thing that sometimes escaped the ship’s tender crew.

shuttle bus near the dock

Holland America Noordam anchored out near the pier called Cascade, which is a remnant from the whaling industry of the past. Cascade is just the name of the pier. There’s nothing else there. Free shuttle busses wait to take people to the nearby town of Kingston. Other busses wait for tours booked through the ship.

mermaids on the rocks

Mermaids aren’t normally seen from the Cascade pier, but there were a couple out on the nearby rocks entertaining the crowd waiting for the next tender to arrive. The entertainment of the crowd was incidental though. The mermaids were a couple crew members who like to pose in mermaid costumes and were really there for their own enjoyment. They didn’t swim in their costumes at that location because the sharp rocks and harsh waves were far too dangerous for swimming in that area.

shore excursion bus

Kingston has all sorts of shops and some restaurants. There is a visitor’s center and another tour place where people can go to book tours. Both are a bit of a walk from the shuttle stop. I just saw them from the bus and don’t know if they book last-minute tours for cruise passengers or if they are just there for people staying on the island. There were a couple last-minute local tours available right at the shuttle stop as well as a few local crafts for sale. One of the tours from the shuttle stop went up a mountain, the other to the Kingston pier.

view from the national park

Ship’s excursions offered at this port included a fish feast, golf, a hike in the national park, a visit to a botanical garden, museum tour, 4×4 adventure, glass bottom boat tour, liqueur factory, historical tours, and a scenic drive. Whether a ship’s excursion or just the shuttle driver to town, locals are likely to share a bit of island history. All of our drivers and tour guides mentioned that they personally are descendants from the Bounty. Locals are quite friendly and go out of their way to be helpful. Someone we met on the ship left their jacket on one bus and another driver on a different bus tracked it down and brought it back to the port for them.

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