Nieuw Amsterdam in Puerto Vallarta

Like most cruises the nightly shows on Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam were a mix of production shows with the ship’s cast and other shows with guest performers. Being a longer cruise there was a higher percentage of guest performers than you would find on a short cruise. The cast usually has 2 or 3 shows per cruise so if it’s a short cruise you don’t need a whole lot of other shows, but the longer the cruise is the more guest performers are required. We did not go to the show every night, but we did go to some of them. Some of the shows we skipped were because it didn’t sound that interesting and others because we just didn’t feel like going that night or had something else we wanted to do instead.

first production show

The first night’s show was called Humanity. It was the same show we saw on our last cruise on the Oosterdam. Cruise ship production shows in the past were generally uniqie to a particular ship, but apparently now Holland America has what they call the One Step Dance Company performing on various ships of theirs rather than the song and dance crew they used to have. The dance group had no singers. They had one show later in the cruise which had a singing part and they borrowed one of the ship’s lounge singers for that. There were 6 performers in the dance troupe. One of the male dancers was injured sometime during the show, but nobody in the audience knew it until the end when only 5 of the 6 dancers came out for accolades at the end of the show,

impressionist singer

The next show that we went to was a girl who did impressions of other singers and performed some of their songs. We thought we had really good seats because we had a full view of the stage, but soon wished we were sitting somewhere that blocked the top of it since there was an obnoxious bright white spotlight that kept aiming at the audience periodically and blinding us whenever she sang so we spent a lot of that show with our eyes closed. After that we made sure to sit in an area where the top of the stage where those lights were was blocked by structure in the theater so we could actually watch the shows without getting blinded by a spotlight in our eyes.

Cello the cellist

The next day’s show was a cellist whose last name was aptly Cello – or at least her stage name anyway. She actually played some rock songs on the cello and not just all classical music – with help from the ship’s back-up band.

production show

Somewhere along the line we went to the second production show. There were only 2 male performers that night so the injured one was still out. That particular show had parts involving each dancer dancing in a different colored spotlight. The lighting was obviously pre-programmed because there was one empty color whenever they did that where the missing dancer should have been.

theater show

Another of their guest performances came from a group called The Divos. They were billed as a Latin singing trio, though they tried to insert some comedy into their performance as well. The next one after that was a guitarist, but we didn’t go to that show.

last production show

Following that they had the third production show of the cruise. The female dancers each stood out in their own way, but the males were the type who just sort of blended in and could have been anyone so we weren’t sure if the third male dancer at this show was the original one who had been injured and was now back or if they had replaced him at one of the port stops with a new guy.

pianist

One night the show was a piano player. Or at least he appeared to be playing the piano. The background music was so loud we really couldn’t hear the piano at all for the most part so he could have just been wiggling his fingers above the keys for all anyone knew. Definitely would have been a better show if they had left out the background music and just had the piano.

Later there was either another guitar player or maybe the one we didn’t go to the other time did another show. Sometimes the guest performers do stay on the ship long enough to do two shows. He was supposed to be a guitar player anyway. He spent a lot more time talking than actually playing the guitar so if it was the same guy we definitely didn’t miss anything by not going to his show the first time around.

comedy magician

The next show was a comedy magician. Comedy and magicians can both be kind of hit and miss as to whether the show is worth watching or not. Sometimes they are really good. sometimes OK, and other times really awful. This one was pretty entertaining.

The last show that we went to was a singing group. They were not memorable for being either good or bad, just kind of there.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

view from Hassans Walls

While visiting with our daughter and her and family in Australia one day a couple of the extended family took us out for the day while Sheri’s immediate family were all at work or school. We went up to the Blue Mountains, but to places locals know and tourists don’t always go. Not that the touristy places are bad because they are great, but it’s nice to see some lesser known and uncrowded places too. We’ve already seen main tourist attractions like Katoomba with Scenic World and the Three Sisters as well as Jenolan Caves, which are the major tourist attractions there. Not to mention a previous visit to another way out of the way spot at Glowworm Tunnel.

Blue Mountains Botanical Garden

We set off up the mountain toward Lithgow on back roads to avoid traffic on the highway. One hill is called Bell Bird Hill, or at least that’s what the locals call it because of the birds that live there who make a sound like the ringing of a bell. We have heard them before, but none were talking this visit.

view from a terrace at the visitor’s center cafe at Blue Mountains Botanical Garden

We made a stop at a lookout point where we could see all the way to Sydney. Smoke in the distance came from a small bush fire in the grass at Londonderry, which had burned about 65 hectacres. It is near Penrith, but not in the area of it where we have gone. The previous day’s record heat of about 100 degrees F and high winds left dozens of small bush fires burning around the state with about 10 still going the next day. Besides the distant fire, the other bad thing at that lookout was all the garbage people had thrown over the railing even though there were garbage cans at each end of the small viewpoint. I don’t know what is wrong with people that think they need to throw their garbage everywhere, but it certainly happens in most areas of the world.

shade canopy tree

We made a short stop at Blue Mountains Botanical Garden at Mt. Tomah, which would be a nice place to spend more time and explore. It has quite a lot of gardens and a visitor’s center with a little gift shop with some interesting merchandise and a little café. The terrace out back of the café has a view looking down the mountain and across a valley to more mountains. The shade roof of that terrace is made from branches of live trees growing up from the sides of the terrace and spreading out through a structure above.

echidna

We took some country lanes and dirt roads out to where we had seen some emus in the wild on a previous visit, but didn’t spot any emus this time. We did see a couple camels in a cow pasture, but they were too far from the road for photos. On a little dirt road we saw an echidna running along the side of the road and stopped to take some photos of it. It did not want anyone to see its face and kept that hidden other than too brief of a glimpse to get a photo, but we did at least get some echidna pictures. Apparently it is rare to spot one in the wild so getting to see that was a real treat.

main walkway at Hassans Walls

We made a view stop at Hassans Wall, which has a little picnic shelter and some viewpoints. It is the highest lookout in the region. The main walkway is a fully fenced paved walkway out to a viewpoint with a picnic table and views overlooking the surrounding area.

where the main pathway used to go out farther

From there you can see a fence where it used to go out farther, but they have made it more contained in order to keep people from jumping off to commit suicide which was a problem in the past, though if somebody really wanted to climb over it they could. From that path you can also see a fence by a smaller less obvious path that isn’t as noticeable from the parking lot as the main one.

parallel paths on the small trail

The smaller less obvious path is a natural trail that looks like it was partly made from water rushing over stone. Part of it has couple of little parallel paths that are both stone and dirt with sort of natural stairsteps in some of the stone. They join together and lead out to a rocky prominence with a little hole in it.

hole in a big rock

If you go through the little hole you end up in a small cave with a big view. It has a fence across the view side which would otherwise be a direct opening to a very long way down for anyone who took one step too many. The inside of the little cave had a lot of graffiti. People have no respect for nature.

coming into the cave

From inside the cave you can see the paved pathway if you look off to one side.

view of the main pathway from the cave

We had lunch at a little Chinese café in Lithgow. It’s a nice clean town now, but in the past it was a coal mining and railroad town choking in coal smoke. The oldest houses are small, but there are bigger newer ones.

view from the cave

Other interesting things near Lithgow include the zigzag railway, once a mining track, but now a tourist attraction with steam trains, Blast Furnace Park which was once a steel production facility, and Black Fellows Hands Reserve which has aboriginal rock art believed to be thousands of years old. Lithgow also has some museums. Lithgow is the last stop for Sydney’s electric passenger trains Blue Mountain line. There are trains that go farther, but not the electric trains that serve Sydney and its suburbs.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

Splendor at Mystery Island

The first time we had a cruise with a scheduled port stop at Mystery Island, Vanuatu we missed the port due to bad weather so for us the island remained a mystery. Finally years later on our South Pacific cruise on Carnival Splendor we made a stop at that port. The weather wasn’t perfect. It was windy and there was some chop in the water, but it wasn’t bad enough to cancel the port stop. For cruise ship passengers the biggest mystery is whether the ship will actually stop at the island since it is a port stop that is often missed due to the weather.

pathway between rustic shops on Mystery Island

Mystery Island is a small uninhabited island near much larger Aneityum Island. Locals believe that ghosts haunt Mystery Island at night so nobody lives there. They come to the island during daylight, but will leave by dusk.

tender pier on Mystery Island

One explanation for the name is from a visit by the Queen of England. It used to be called Inyeug, which means small island. During Queen Elizabeth II’s visit in 1974, a reporter got confused trying to figure out which small island she went to. He called it Mystery Island in the news headlines and the name stuck.

first thing you see off the tender dock

Another possible explanation for the name stems from the military installments built during WW2 when US troops made a runway for the air force. The mystery is said to come from the fact that the air strip was impossible to see from the sea and therefore it took a long time for the Japanese to figure out where all the planes came from.

row of shopping booths

Locals come over from the nearby island when there are cruise ships in port. They set up a large market with many stalls selling colorful clothing, handmade jewelry, and other items. There are quite a lot of booths offering services like massages and hair braiding. The massages there are way cheaper than what the ship charges for them. Some of the stalls sell food, from random snacks to full lunches. There are also booths selling beer.

just a few of many signs offering things to do

Last-minute excursions are available in abundance. Locals offer all sorts of tours including snorkeling, glass bottom boats, village tours on the neighboring island, and many more. Rentals of snorkel gear, beach chairs, and cabanas are also available on the island. Come prepared with cash to do any of those things. They generally accept Australian dollars or Vanuatu vatu. At our port stop some of the locals had signs with prices in American dollars too because there were a lot of Americans on that cruise and they were happy to take American dollars that day.

Zayaks for rent

One of the places rented something they called Zayaks, which were kind of like little floating mats with a clear window where people could put their face to see what’s under the water. Sort of like snorkeling for people who don’t actually want to snorkel.

welcome to Mystery Island

There are also photo ops where visitors can pose with iguanas, pose in a big pot labeled cannibal soup that comes complete with cannibals, or pose with a welcome to Mystery Island sign. Any of these will have a cost for the local photographer stationed there to take the photo with your camera or phone – you can’t just use their props to take your own..

cannibal soup

We went over on the first tender of the day. When we went back to the ship several hours later there were still people waiting for their turn to take a tender over to the island. If you have to get a tender ticket and don’t want to wait half the day to get to the island, be sure to get to the line where you get the tender tickets quite early so you can get a ticket for an early tender – or water shuttle as Carnival for some unknown reason called them on both our recent cruises, though they used to call them tenders like everyone else back when we regularly sailed on that line. The little boats even had the word tender painted on them. This was the first cruise where we had heard that term, but on subsequent cruises on other lines they had also started calling tenders water shuttles even though tender is a lot shorter and easier to say – and the ports using them were still referred to as tender ports.

one of Splendor’s tenders

The Splendor’s tenders were not like the normal closed top ship’s tenders. These had outdoor seating on top with stairways inside the boat leading up to the outside seating. The ship’s info said it took half an hour to tender from the ship to the island, but they must have been including time spent loading and unloading the tender since the actual ride across wasn’t very long.

one of many little outhouses on the island

The island has a bathroom with flush toilets and a handwashing sink near the tender dock. Interspersed frequently along the pathways going around the island it also has quite a lot of little rustic outhouses.

pathway

There are pathways going around the island as well as across it and through the middle. Walking all the way around wouldn’t take long just for the walk, but with frequent stops to look at things or take photos it can take awhile. The island is quite small, just 1.5 kilometers (slightly under a mile) long and 200 meters (nearly 219 yards) wide. They manage to fit a lot into that space while still having lots of room for plants and trees.

island trail

The paths are mainly sand. Most people wear sandals or flip flops or just walk around barefoot, though there were some with closed toed shoes. I walked around the whole island barefoot because that’s better than sand in the shoes even if they are sandals.

beach swing

When we first got to the island we looked briefly at what was near the tender dock. John decided he wanted a massage while Sheri and I walked around the island. We started out in sandals, which we both took off when we started walking along a beach. The beaches are soft sand near the top, but broken coral closer to the water. When we went up from the beach through some trees with a bit of rough ground she put hers back on, but I just kept mine off since it was only a step or two before getting back to sand.

airport building

Most of the infrastructure is rustic huts, but there is a small airport building of sturdy construction left over from WW2 that is still in use with a grass airstrip and a couple weekly tourist flights.

grass runway

Several sources said the island’s best snorkeling was found at the end of the airstrip, but the water there was very rough with a strong current on the day of out visit. A sign on the side closest to our ship said the snorkeling was better on the other side of the island, but the water was a lot smoother on that side so we snorkeled there anyway.

little fish

Although forewarned that it was not the island’s best snorkeling spot, it was still a bit disappointing that most of the coral in that area looked dead. There were some small live corals, but not many live big ones. There were a few fish, but not many. In spite of warnings not to even touch the coral we saw someone standing on it, which was also in the don’ts. No wonder it was mainly all dead and broken. One inconsiderate or careless person can destroy in minutes what took years or even decades to grow. Probably also people out there using chemical sunscreen rather than a reef-safe mineral type. I have only once seen a cruise ship with any reef-safe sunscreen for sale onboard. They always have the harmful chemical kind even though so many of them bring thousands of people to sensitive reefs every day. None of them ever say anything about using reef-safe sunscreen either.

little bar before it opened

On the tender ride over a guy who said he had been there many times before said Survivor Vanuatu was filmed on that island, but he was either misinformed or full of crap and trying to lead us on because it was really filmed on the island of Efate about 200 miles away.

view of Mystery Island from the Splendor

Mystery Island is the sort of port where people could spend nothing and still have fun, or spend a lot and support the locals, or somewhere in between. I’d guess most probably fall into the somewhere in between category like we did.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

kayaking in Saint Thomas

Guided Kayak from Margaritaville

On our port stop to Saint Thomas USVI on Symphony of the Seas we booked a kayak tour from Margaritaville through Vacations to Go, who uses Shore Excursions Group for the tours they offer. These tours use local providers. They are less crowded and often less expensive than things booked through the ship, but sometimes you have to provide your own transportation to the site, as was the case with this tour. The taxi ride added an extra $17 per person in each direction. Even including the taxi fare both ways the per person cost was less than most of what the ship offered for any port and still under $100 per person. Definitely less crowded since we were the only ones on this tour.

getting ready to launch kayaks from the beach at Margaritaville

The excursion description mentions mangroves, seahorses, fish, dolphins, and coral as things you will see through crystal clear water. It may usually be clear, but we came on a windy day. Not so windy as to not be able to go, but windy enough to have some waves that kept the water from being clear and also brought sargassum seaweed to the shore, which the guide said the resort cleans up daily, but this was an early port stop and they hadn’t got to it yet.

kayak on the beach

Before the tour started we asked the guide if there was somewhere nearby we could snorkel after the kayak tour. Instead he brought us to a beach for snorkeling where he said there would be things to see. I don’t think that is part of the usual tour. He did mention not getting many requests for snorkeling.

Hannah snorkeling

We did not go to any mangroves, but that could be because we went to that beach to snorkel instead, or if they are located beyond the little cove where the resort is it may have been that we didn’t go there that day because of the rougher water. It’s also possible that people see seahorses and things in that cove when the water is clear, though the mangroves must either be elsewhere or closer to shore than where we went.

big spiny black sea urchin

The beach was not too far from Margaritaville. The guide did mention there was another one you could walk to from the resort where the snorkeling would be better, but we didn’t go there since we had already snorkeled during the kayak tour. At one end of the beach it was sand all the way up and that was where we went in with the kayaks. Beyond that little spot there was a lot of rocky structure just below the surface. That’s where all the fish hung out. There were also a lot of spiny black sea urchins and some small corals. In some places the water was fairly shallow over the structure so in those areas people have to be careful to stay far enough away not to touch the rocks because you don’t want to touch a spiny sea urchin and get stung.

little red fish

Fish like structure and there were quite a lot of them swimming around in that area. Most were fairly small, but there were some bigger ones. I also saw one really big sea urchin, or at least half of one sticking out from under a rocky prominence. That one was bigger than any urchin I have seen before. Most of the other urchins were quite small.

kayaks

After we finished snorkeling we paddled across the bay to a structure housing a dolphin sanctuary. The dolphins there were born in captivity and brought to this facility from places that have either closed or didn’t have as much room for them to swim. The facility offers dolphin swims and dolphin encounters.

dolphin sanctuary

Looking in from our kayaks we saw someone feeding the dolphins. The dolphins would pop their heads out of the water to get the fish. About the time we all put our cameras away and our kayaks that nobody was paddling at the time started drifted away from that area one of them started leaping out of the water, but nobody got a photo of it.

pool at Margaritaville

Following that we paddled back to Margaritaville. The two teenaged girls with us (granddaughter and a friend) took a dip in the pool there. There was hardly anyone around and nobody would have cared if we stayed to enjoy the resort awhile, but our ship wasn’t in port long that day so we only stayed for a short time.

view of Margaritaville from the kayaks

We weren’t sure how long it might take to get a taxi ride back, but there was one waiting right outside the front door of the resort so we didn’t even have to ask them to call us one or try to find a phone number where we could call one for ourselves.

lizard at Margaritaville

The ride back to the port was quicker than the ride there because there wasn’t as much traffic. We passed by the other port on the way so it would be a quicker journey for people coming on ships other than Royal Caribbean because they all go to the main dock in town, but Royal has their own port outside of town at Crown Bay. Celebrity ships sometimes dock there as well because Royal Caribbean owns them too. Every time we have been there we see lots of iguanas in the rocks at the edge of the water.

iguana at Crown Bay

Overall it was a good excursion. It was just the 4 of us and a guide, not a large group like you get with a cruise ship tour. These sorts of tours always have less people than one booked through the cruise ship. The guide was very nice and quite informative.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

Noordam in Brisbane

If there’s ever a port where it’s a good idea to have something planned in advance, Brisbane is it. The port is out in the middle of nowhere and set up more as an embarkation and debarkation cruise terminal than as one for a port stop as Holland America Noordam made there. There is nothing near this port and no public transportation available. There was a shuttle to town for our ship, but far from free at $25 USD per person. Taxis and ubers are available at the cruise terminal as well.

stuffed animals in the gift shop

If you don’t go into town there’s one small gift shop in the port building and a very short paved walkway alongside the water. Good for getting some nice ship photos, but not nearly long enough to go for a walk.

long gangway

The gangway between the building and the ship is quite long with turns and switchbacks. Long gangways are common at embarkation ports, but this one is longer than average. The gangway is just the beginning of the journey through the port building. Once inside there are hallways, escalators, and many large rooms to negotiate before finally reaching the exit.

inside the terminal building

There are a number of different security people passed along the way out. If a person is lost or not sure where to go next to get on or off the ship the security people can also direct them to where they need to go. Even to the nearest restroom – I overheard someone ask one of them that.

inside the gangway

A busload or more of new crew and entertainment came on board while we were there, and one side of the long gangway was roped off to keep open for them to enter while the bulk of passengers exited.

Brisbane Cruise Terminal

We booked a shore excursion in Brisbane through an outside source. It was to go to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. The ship also had an excursion going there, but theirs took a bus while ours was scheduled to travel by riverboat. Unfortunately it got cancelled and by then the ship’s tour was full so we figured just to see what was there when we arrived. Well we found out what’s there – nothing. No last-minute tours, no visitor information, no anything but the one gift shop unless you take one of the available means of transportation to town and find something to do there.

short pathway

There are things to do in town for people who go there. The city has riverboats for public transportation. There are museums, a science center and some historic buildings. There’s a botanical garden near to the city center that can be reached by public bus.

Brisbane (internet photo)

We did find something quite entertaining without leaving the port. Our balcony was on the port side of the ship, which actually ended up facing the dock at most stops including Brisbane. There was quite a lot of wildlife in the bit of water between the ship and shore. There was a sandy beach at the shore with fields and forest beyond. None of that was accessible to people, but easily reached by birds.

pelicans

We saw all sorts of different birds including a couple of large pelicans. There were also hawks, swallows, some sort of diving bird, a cormorant, seagulls, and some other birds of various sizes. The diving bird caught a fish and the biggest pelican followed it fairly closely for awhile like it wanted to steal that fish, but couldn’t figure out how. Pelicans usually come up out of the water with their catch already gone, or at least far enough that it can’t be seen.

turtle

The water wasn’t very clear, more of a murky green. The birds mostly stayed on top of the water, but if some sort of underwater creature swam near enough to the surface we could see it. We saw a large blue jellyfish swimming around near the dock for awhile (you wouldn’t want to be in the water with that!) We also saw a turtle which surfaced several times near the dock. While we were there the tide went out and then back in. When it was out we could see to the bottom and found that there were three turtles rather than just the one we’d seen near the surface. Birds of some sort or other were visible somewhere nearby at all times.

koalas (internet photo)

Besides the Koala sanctuary, shore excursions through our ship at this port included a winery and glow worm cave, 4×4 forest safari, Australia Zoo, glow worm cave and gold coast, beach day at the gold coast, botanical garden, Island 4×4 adventure, national park with canopy boardwalk, and a shuttle to town. Other than the shuttle to town, all of the excursions were at least an hour’s drive from the port.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

horses in Roatan

On our Caribbean cruise on the Majestic Princess the ship overnighted at Mahogany Bay in Roatan, Honduras so there was no worry about getting back to the ship on time from a long excursion that we had booked through Vacations to Go. After meeting with the guide for the tour outside of the port since it was not a ship’s excursion, we rode the little excursion bus to a sloth and monkey sanctuary where we spent some time with the animals before moving onto the next stop.

beach resort

The second part of the excursion took place at a little beach resort that had a stable for the horse rides as well as boats to take people snorkeling and a little restaurant for the included lunch. It also had places for people to relax and enjoy the beach as well as lockers where people could put their belongings when they weren’t using them, and a separate building with bathrooms and changing rooms. Nobody else on the excursion was doing the horse riding, just the three of us so the rest of them had more time to hang around the little beach area when they weren’t out snorkeling or having lunch.

Pinto

They had a stable full of horses and brought out 3 of them for us. Hannah had a pinto named Pinto. I had a darker pinto named Pinto Negro even though he was actually very dark brown rather than true black. Negro (pronounced nay-grow) means black in Spanish. If his brown patches were actually black instead of very dark brown he’d be a piebald. (In horse colors piebald is black and white and pinto is any color and white.) He does look black in the photo, but he wasn’t really.

Pinto Negro

John’s horse was a dark bay named either Burro or Burl. I couldn’t tell which they were saying. Bay is brown with a black mane and tail. That horse was pretty skinny, though the rest of them were not. There were a lot of little no-see-um bugs. I didn’t get any bites on the ride, but John and Hannah did. Probably because they wore shorts and I had long pants, which are far more comfortable in a saddle than having bare legs rubbing on the leather even if there aren’t any little bugs biting your legs.

the guide walked instead of riding a horse

The ride is all done at a walk and the guide walked on his own two feet rather than riding one of the other horses. We went down dirt road and through a gate. The trail there led down to the beach, passing by an abandoned house before the horses went into the water and walked along the edge for a bit.

riding at the water’s edge

Unlike her mother who grew up riding horses, Hannah had not ridden before other than leading her around on our horses when she came for a visit when was very little and we still had some, so even though it was a slow ride it was quite fun for her. I sold the last of my horses well over a decade ago and hadn’t been on one since we did a horse swimming excursion in Jamaica years ago so it was nice to see I still felt quite at home on one.

snorkel boat

The ride was pretty short, under an hour. Back at the little beach resort we ditched our riding clothes for swimwear. After a short wait we were directed to a little boat that had pulled into the dock.

blue fish

The small boat took us out to the nearby reef, which is a small part of the Mesoamerican Reef that runs for about 600 miles from Mexico to Honduras. We had 2 snorkel stops in different places with the first starting near a shipwreck, which we swam to from where we got out of the boat, looking at different things along the reef on the way.

shipwreck and snorkelers

The reef had several different types of coral and a variety of fish. The guide said the shipwreck was an old steamer of which the boiler was the main part visible above the water. There were parts of the ship scattered about under the sea, and another piece protruding above. A lot of the underwater bits of it were covered with enough coral and sand that it would be pretty easy to miss that they were even part of a ship. Other pieces were still easily visible and more obviously ship parts. It looked to have been there for quite a long time.

part of the shipwreck underwater

After everyone got back into the boat it moved on to a different part of the reef. The second stop was in a place with a lot of large starfish. These were the sort of sea stars that look like a 5-pointed star. They were nearly all sitting in the sand rather than actually on any of the rocks or coral. They were not the crown of thorns type of starfish that are known for decimating reefs.

starfish

The part of the reef where the starfish lived was in shallow water, but it was just a quick swim over the reef to the part called the wall where it drops off thousands of feet nearly straight down. The boat had moved out into the deep water so that is where we swam back to it. The underwater view went from coral and things in the shallows to things clinging to the wall going down until it dropped out of sight to open water where there was no bottom anywhere in sight. Life jackets were provided for anyone not confident in their swimming skills, but they didn’t make us wear them if we didn’t want to which I appreciated because I don’t want or need any sort of floatation device when snorkeling.

drop-off at the wall

Back at the little beach place we were served lunch with a choice of fish, shrimp, or chicken along with some rice and beans before returning back to the ship.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

Enchanted Princess in Tortola

On every cruise and every ship most passengers will find that there are some things that they like and some things that they dislike. Of course these are not the same things from one person to another. One person’s absolute favorite thing may be the exact same thing someone else dislikes the most. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and this blog is about the things I liked and disliked about Enchanted Princess. When sailing on a cruise each person is given an opportunity to express their opinions in the post-cruise survey, though those often are mainly a bunch of meaningless numbers without many options to tell them what you really think. In fact the surveys are one of my major dislikes since rarely giving people an option to say what they really think makes it feel like the cruise lines don’t really care. Sometimes if you score something really low it will give you a chat box, but sometimes it takes so long to get one it’s easy to forget what you wanted to say.

Hits

self-serve guest laundry

This ship had a self-serve guest laundry. After spending most of our long sailings hand washing in the bathroom sink the opportunity to use a washer and dryer is always much appreciated. Princess ships all have them, but most of our longer cruises have been on other lines.

SeaWalk with and without a person on it

The SeaWalk where you can walk out over the side of the ship on a glass walkway on an upper outside deck and look down to the water is a nice feature. It’s crazy how different it feels if you walk over the glass while looking down through it in the same direction that the ship is traveling vs the opposite direction.

wine tasting

Prizes at the Welcome to Princess newbie party were way better than anything I’ve ever seen at a past guest party. Instead of the usual invite to a past guest party for me since I’ve been on Princess before, there was one to a first-timers event for John, who hasn’t. At that event they had a few different games. The prizes started out with things like free entries to bingo and deal or no deal, but then worked up to way better prizes – $75 spa credit, free dinner for two at any specialty restaurant, $100 onboard credit, and the top prize which John won that turned your loyalty status to their top status of elite and all the benefits that go with it for the rest of the cruise. That extended not only to me as well as him, but also to the second leg of our back-to-back cruise. These benefits included free mini-bar set-up, free laundry service, a dedicated line at guest services just for suites and elites, invites to some the top tier events, and a free wine tasting event for 2 ( at which he included one of the friends cruising with us instead of me because I don’t like wine.) Also 50% off internet and 10% off spa, shore excursions, photos, or anything purchased in the ships shops. We did not get the 50% off the internet though because it wasn’t retroactive and we bought it pre-cruise. We did not attend the top tier event either because it was scheduled at a smoking bar on the back deck of the ship at the same time we had a dinner reservation. We would not have gone for either of those reasons. Regardless, it was quite nice having top loyalty status without actually having earned it.

medallion in a waterproof bracelet

Princess has wearable medallions so there’s no need to deal with ship cards. If you get a waterproof bracelet to put the waterproof medallion in these are really awesome. You can even wear it snorkeling, to the beach, or in the pools and hot tubs. They come on a string, but the bracelet is so much better than hanging it around your neck. Bracelets are available from Princess before the cruise or onboard, but you can get them cheaper by buying them from Amazon pre-cruise. Even the somewhat creepy stalking feature in the app where you can locate your shipmates because the medallion tracks them is extremely useful. The medallion also unlocks the door for you before you even get to the cabin. I’m really going to miss the medallion on all future cruises sailing on ships that still use cards. The bracelet is what made all the difference. I just used the neck string that comes free with the medallion when I had one previously on Royal Princess and it didn’t seem that much better than cards there.

dinner from the dining room

They did not have a night at dinner where people were flinging dirty napkins around which is a huge bonus in my opinion. Some cruise lines have a night where after people have been eating and the napkins are dirty and germy they have some sort of celebration where they encourage people to spin those filthy napkins around over their heads and spread their germs and crumbs everywhere. We were quite happy not to be forced to endure that on the Enchanted Princess.

carpet bowling

Princess Cruises, including the one on Enchanted Princess, have lots of different fun games and activities at the central area called the Piazza as well as in other venues around the ship. All ships do games of some sort, but Princess seems to have more variety and some unique and interesting things not found on other ships – like an egg drop contest, carpet bowling, and bowling with oversized blow-up pins and ball.

dining room dessert

The food on Princess was generally quite good and they had a pretty good variety both in the dining room and the buffet. The buffet was quite extensive with many different sections offering different types of food.

Misses

at casino table games cards and chips circulate around the table touched many times by many people

All the other Princess ships I’ve sailed on prior to this cruise kept indoor smoking confined to one fully enclosed cigar lounge. On this ship the room that was previously a cigar lounge had recently been remodeled into an arcade and they allowed smoking in the casino – which is wide open and spread smoke to other areas of the ship. The casino boarders on one of the decks around the Piazza and some evenings the entire Piazza area would be full of smoke and it even reached as far as the dining room on a deck below the casino at the far end of the Piazza. One of the officers said this was a new thing they were trying on all of their ships, not just this one. We had hoped they would wise up soon and realize that it only takes a few people smoking in an open casino to ruin many other areas of the ship for a whole lot of people, but time has passed now and all the Princess ships we’ve sailed on since had arcades instead of cigar lounges. Which also means all of the people working not only in the casino, but in all of the areas the smoke spreads to are forced to breathe in second-hand smoke day after day for the entirety of their hitch. Going back to the cigar bar would be ideal, but at the very least closing in the casino would keep the smoke confined there. For whatever money they are making from people who like to smoke while they gamble, they are losing it from people who don’t want to breathe in all that smoke. Quite a few from our initial group of 8 avoided the casino entirely due to the smoke when they otherwise would have used it. Some tried it briefly, but left quickly due to the foul air. This was definitely Princess’ biggest miss this cruise. I guess they don’t believe in if it’s not broke don’t fix it because they had the perfect set-up with the cigar lounge that gave smokers an indoor place to smoke, yet kept it contained so nobody else had to breathe it.

people have their hands all over the buttons on slot machines

Casinos are the absolute worst place to allow smoking as far as spreading germs goes. People there are all touching things that everyone else touches, then they touch that cigarette, put it in their mouth, touch their mouth, and then go back to touching things everyone else touches. About as gross as licking an elevator button – or being the next person in the elevator who pushes that button without knowing someone licked it. We talked to a lot of long-time Princess cruisers who were just as unhappy about smoke permeating the ship as we were. Too bad they didn’t just put a few slot machines in the cigar bar. We keep wondering if some high up person at Carnival Corporation is a heavy smoker who implemented these changes because around the same time they also put smoking into the casinos at Holland America which had been non-smoking for years. A lot of people regularly sailing those ships because they were smoke free were unhappy there as well. Carnival Corporation owns both Holland America and Princess. Not quite 10% of American adults smoke so they are making over 90% of their passengers unhappy in order to try and squeeze a little more money out of the other nearly 10% in the casino. Not to mention exposing the crew to long-term health problems due to the second-hand smoke they are forced to breathe while working there. The percentage of smokers varies in other countries with some higher than 10% and some lower. Australia has the right idea banning indoor smoking on all cruise ships sailing from their ports.

princess cruisers lined up on the dock for shore excursions

Even though a lot of princess cruisers are older folks who aren’t tech savvy and may not even use smart phones, Princess didn’t let people complete the registration process online at their website. You have to use their app and their app is not all that functional. It has a lot of issues, which were made even worse for anyone who had updated to a new version of the app prior to this cruise. It had even more issues than the old one.

riding segways on a mountain road on a shore excursion

Their app and website are not always user friendly. Several months after booking excursions without any problems online I tried to book a couple more. They must have updated the site in between because that time as soon as one went into the cart on the computer it logged itself out of the website and said the session expired when I tried to pay. If I logged back in the excursion was no longer in the cart so I tried booking it on the app. When one went into the cart on the app it kept saying there was a problem with the transaction and wouldn’t let me pay, but after putting it in the cart on the app if I logged back in to the website on the computer it would be in the cart there. So I had to use the app to put it in the cart and the website to pay for it. You would think they would want to make things easier for people to give them money. They did fix those issues before the next time we cruised on Princess.

dining room on Enchanted Princess

On the first leg of our back-to-back cruise, we had booked early set time dining at a table for 8 every night. It was confirmed when we booked it, but when Princess updated their app they lost that reservation so we had to scramble for nightly dining reservations right before the cruise. The app no longer worked for making dinner reservations at that point and they had never allowed it online so it involved a many long tedious phone calls from various members of the group. Each call took forever to get through because many other people also lost their reservations and couldn’t fix them online or through the app. We couldn’t fix it with the Matre’d onboard before the first dinner either. Then when we went to get seated at a table for 8 that the dining room had reserved for us that night it had 2 people from a group of 300 sitting at it. Rather than moving them off of our reserved table we ended up at 2 tables for 4 and stuck there for the rest of that cruise. The people from that 300-group sat wherever they wanted and then the crew had to last minute find tables elsewhere for people whose reserved tables they’d taken. That group may have been one reason the dinner reservations many people made months in advance were all suddenly lost right before the cruise. Perhaps they intentionally deleted them to accommodate that group and just told everyone else they had been lost.

the track is just a painted line on the deck

An outside promenade deck on this ship doesn’t exist. Instead of a walkway around the ship there’s just four oversized balconies. Two of those are used as outside seating areas for specialty restaurants so there’s just two for outside space on the promenade deck. The ship does have a top-deck track, but those are always just a painted line around the deck in a high-traffic area with no shade, shelter, or protection from the elements.

theater on Enchanted Princess

The back-to-back info the ship sent to us said both that we had to meet with the room steward for moving our stuff at 9am since we were changing rooms, and that we had to meet in the theater to go through customs at 9am. It also said re-boarding won’t happen until 10:30. All the other back-to-backs we’ve done the meeting time was close to when they thought the ship would empty and people just went out, through customs, and right back in. It turned out that we did not actually have to meet with the stewards so their information was wrong there. We did have to sit in the theater for quite awhile before they took the back-to-backers through customs and then wait a bit on the other side before we could go back in though so they were not very efficient about that.

main pool area and movie screen

There are no pools or hot tubs in the shade on a hot sunny day, and even shady deck chairs are scarce. The chair hogs are out first thing in the morning putting towels on deck chairs on the lido deck as soon as they are set up even though there are signs saying not to save chairs. Those towels will sit there all day while the people may or may not decide to ever actually use the chairs and as usual the ship’s crew does nothing about it. All of the ships need to just go to a policy of if you’re not there it’s not your chair – and add some cubbies for people to put their things in when using pools, hot tubs, or on ships that have them waterslides because as it is there is nowhere but chairs to put your stuff on most ships.

gym

The showers in the gym have a fancy rainshower head, but it takes forever and a day to get any warm water. Near the end of a shower it might start feeling like it is thinking about warming up someday without actually getting very warm. It took a really long shower to actually have the water finally get hot. There are also no washcloths available there, just towels. Unless using the accessible shower there’s nowhere within the shower to put a towel or any clothes where they would stay dry, and no private dressing room for the shower stall either. Getting dressed in the shower stall afterword was not good either since the shower kept dripping for awhile after turning it off and there was not enough space in the small shower stall to avoid the drip unless using the much larger accessible one.

random door pad on Enchanted Princess

Handy as the medallions are, they do have a limited charge. On the 20-day back-to-back both our medallions ran out of power and we had to go down to guest services to get them replaced. It’s kind of a bummer when you get to your cabin and can’t get in because the medallion that opens the door ran out of power. The batteries did not run out for our travel companions on the same cruise who had picked their medallions up at the port rather than having them sent pre-cruise. Having the medallions in our possession ahead of time did not get us on the ship any quicker than them either. Everyone was in the same line getting into the building, then people with medallions went to kiosks while those without went to manned desks. Our friends actually made it through their line first since there were more people with medallions than without in line at that time, but the ship wasn’t boarding yet so we all got on together. This is the most minor of all the misses, more of an annoyance than a problem really.

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

Marksburg Castle

Marksburg Castle is one of many castles along the middle Rhine River. Some are intact, some ruins. Many were once destroyed, but have now been restored. Some currently operate as hotels. Marksburg is a museum. A visit there was the included shore excursion on Viking Skirner for the port stop at Koblenz, though the castle was a separate stop from the city.

wine barrels in the castle

Viking Skirnir stopped briefly about an hour’s sailing or half hour drive away from Koblenz to drop passengers off for a bus ride up the hill to tour Marksburg Castle at the top. While we were there it sailed on to Koblenz where the bus brought us after the tour.

view from Marksburg Castle

Marksburg Castle is well preserved for a medieval castle. Perched high on top of a hill it overlooks the town of Braubach in Germany. It is one of the main attractions of the Rhine Gorge UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s one of only 2 castles in that area never to have been destroyed prior to or during the Napoleonic era (the other is Maus). Marksburg is the only one not to have ever fallen into a major state of disrepair.

in the gift shop at the castle

The castle started as a stone keep around 1100 and expanded into a castle by 1117 both for protection of the town of Braubach and for reinforcement of customs collection. It was used as a protective fortress rather than a royal residence.

some of the coats of arms at Marksburg Castle

Throughout the centuries the castle changed hands numerous times with different counts rebuilding and expanding the castle. As it is now a museum, one of the first things you see is a display of a series of different coats of arms of previous castle owners hanging on a wall near where the tour begins.

you have to be on an official tour to get past this gate

In 1900 it became the property of the German Castles Association, founded only a year prior to preserve historic castles in Germany.  It was damaged by American Artillery from across the river in 1945. Damage was repaired by 1961, but it took until 1980 to finish restoration of all of the roofs.

a peek through the locked gate

Entrance through the castle’s locked doors is allowed only when accompanied by a tour guide. As we were warned prior to the tour, some areas have quite rough and uneven ground and the castle contains some very steep and narrow stairways. Starting from the restaurant and gift shop area there’s a little walk through a narrow corridor before starting the castle tour. Restrooms inside the gift shop area had a charge to use, but there are some outside at the end of the corridor past the gateway into the castle tour that were free.

beyond the locked gate

After passing through the locked gate people venture into the area with the coat-of-arms display. The castle entry from there is through a gate where knights once rode in on horseback. The ground is slate, which is what the rock the castle sits on is made of. It’s roughly worn through centuries of hooves and water.

knights ramp into the castle

What was once a ramp for horses to travel up eventually had stairs carved into it. Those now too are very weathered and worn.

castle blacksmith

Off to one side of the entry there’s a smithy where blacksmiths once shoed horses and crafted amour.

starway between buildings within the castle complex

Inside the castle the floors are much flatter in the rooms. Some stairways are not much different than modern ones while others are extremely narrow and steep or have higher steps than people of our era are accustomed to. The tall tower of the castle was used for a variety of things including a high place for keeping an eye out for any approaching enemies and as a keep for the castle owners to hole up in during an attack.

game table in a window nook inside the castle

Castles along the Rhine weren’t the homes of kings or emperors, but rather mainly of river barons who charged a fee to anyone wishing to pass by on the river. They had chains they could pull up across the river to prevent passage of anyone who didn’t pay. Before the system of many locks that now assist boats up and down as the river changes altitude, chains were also sometimes needed along with tugboats to pull barges upstream before steam engines were invented. People back then had to rely on the natural flow of the river and only travel when there was sufficient water levels. All of the many locks haven’t actually completely changed that as river cruises sometimes can’t make it through all or part of their scheduled route if the water levels are too high to fit under the bridges or too low to float the boat.

dining table

Inside the castle there are furnishings in some of the rooms. There are two long tables surrounded in chairs, one down in the kitchen area where servants ate and one on a higher floor for the owners and their guests.

medieval kitchen

The kitchen area has displays of dishes, a cooking area over a fireplace, and of items used in the daily lives of medieval kitchen staff.

adult and child beds

Up on a level above the one with the kitchen there are furnishings for the family of the castle including a bed too tiny to lay down in. People of the time believed lying down to be a death pose so the nobility did not fully lay down to sleep. They didn’t care so much whether the lesser folk survived though so they slept lying on straw mats.

little garden along a walkway between castle buildings and the outer wall

One room was full of a variety of devices for torture and punishment. People accused of wrongdoing had to confess before they could be punished, but since confession would be tortured out of them whether they were guilty or not they had the option of just taking the punishment or being tortured and then punished. Though the death penalty was an option by hanging for the common folk or beheading for the nobility, it was rare in that region due to a population too sparse to dispose of the needed workers without just cause. Some of the punishment devices were made for shaming them like one that fit over their head and tongue for liars making them unable to talk while paraded through town for others to throw things at them or spit on them. Other devices were a lot more physically painful.

early suits of armor

Another room had a display of armor and knights through the ages starting with a roman soldier with not much more than a helmet and vest from around 400 BC, working through the ages around the room as each figure was more heavily armored than the last up to the final knight from the 1400’s. There was one more figure after that – a musketeer from the 1600’s who stood completely unarmored with a gun in hand. One of the suits of armor was for jousting rather than fighting and conquering. It had a hook that folded down from the front where the knight could lay his lance as he galloped toward the competition.

you wouldn’t want to stand under this bathroom in medieval times

This castle even sported 4 indoor bathrooms, though only 1 of them was on the tour. Their bathroom was a wooden outcropping high on the castle wall where the occupant could sit to do their business while it all dropped to the ground below. That particular bathroom hung above what is now a garden, but at the time the castle was in use it was a guard’s walk where those on lookout duty could patrol. There was a great view of the valley and surrounding area from that walkway, but besides being on the lookout for any danger from below anyone patrolling there probably had to be careful to avoid the spot where they needed to watch out for what might come from above as well. The toilet room was kept locked at night to keep any intruders from entering that way. Though this particular castle was never sacked, others were conquered be entry through the privy.

bar outside of the gift shop

The tour ends where it starts, back at the gift shop and restaurant.

view from outside the castle

Anywhere where you can see beyond the castle walls there’s a great view of the river and surrounding area.

Marksburg Castle

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

the famous Land’s End arch in Cabo San Lucas

We had stops at Cabo San Lucas on both Carnival Radiance and Royal Princess, on which we took back-to-back cruises out of Los Angeles with the Radiance leaving from Long Beach and the Royal Princess from San Pedro. The two ports are quite close together with container port area pretty much extending from one to the other so it’s a short Uber ride from one to the other.

puffer fish by the dock at the port

Cabo San Lucas is a tender port which means the ship anchors offshore and people go to shore in smaller boats called tenders. Sometimes they are the tenders from the ship and sometimes ones that come up from the shore. The shore ones vary in size from one another but are generally larger than the ship’s tenders. In Cabo the ship is not too far from the dock so the tender ride is fairly short. After calling the little boats that bring people from the ship to shore tenders for years for some unknown reason the last couple cruises we were on called them water shuttles, which is both twice as many words and syllables so tender is a lot easier to say.

Carnival Radiance in Cabo

We went there first on the Radiance where I took a snorkel excursion and John went fishing in one of the pangas available at the port with a friend who happened to be vacationing there. We had priority tender on Carnival so we just had to go to the right room at the right time. People who didn’t have priority booked their tender tickets in the Carnival app the day before rather than having to wait in line to get them.

fish and coral from the snorkel excursion

Excursions that leave soon after the ship gets into port meet on the ship have first priority for tenders and go to a tender as a group. but mine was a bit later so I was on my own to get to shore. The Radiance used all port tenders and did not drop any down from the ship.

Royal Princess in Cabo

We didn’t have any plans on the next stop there on Royal Princess so we just took the tender to shore and wandered around the port area looking at the shops. Princess is not good with lines and that includes getting people off the ship in tender ports. First anyone who did not have priority tender (which is everyone who is not elite in loyalty status or staying in a suite) had to wait in a line to get tender tickets a couple hours before the ship was due to arrive in port. If we had somewhere we had to be we would have gone down to get in line at least an hour early, but since we didn’t we went down to the line about 20 minutes before it opened. At that time the line already reached all the way around the ship from the photo area where it started around that level of the piazza and to closed dining room doors where it looped around and headed back the other way.

map at the port

We got into the line just past the elevator bay which was more or less in front of the dining room. In spite of running out of room for people to line up they did not start handing out tickets until the dot of time, not even one minute early. By then the line doubled back to where it started, but amazingly enough the people at the end of the line actually followed the line rather than turning around and going straight to the front. We ended up with tender tickets number 18, which was not called until about an hour and 15 minutes after the tendering process started. It would have moved along a lot faster if they had called down enough people to fill a tender before starting to load it instead of calling down a few at a time, then a few more. We headed down when they called 16 and they called 18 before we got there. You would think the tender would leave when it got full, but they called down a few more and then people had to shuffle around in the seats to make room since it wouldn’t leave until they all sat down. Princess used some port tenders and some from the ship.

end of the dock almost to shore

There’s a long dock where people disembark the tenders. Shore excursions gather there, and there’s a little sheltered area with benches where people can go to wait for excursions if they get there early.

shelter at the end of the dock where people can wait for excursions

Near the end of the dock there’s a little stand with security. On our stop there on the Radiance I went in and out where the security check is several times and they only checked bags or anything once. On the Princess we only passed through once and nobody was checking anything. On the way back in they check the ship ID, which is usually a card, but on Princess is a wearable medallion.

pelicans and sea lion

Without ever leaving the port people can find places to shop, eat, or have a drink. Odds are there is some wildlife to spot as well. I saw a whole lot of pelicans, a really big sea lion, and a puffer fish as well as the usual shore birds like seagulls. These were out on the walkway to the left of where you come off the tender dock.

flea market

The main thing on shore on that side is a giant flea market sort of place full of many individual merchants in a big building. They mostly have the same sort of things found in souvenir shops like jewelry, t-shirts, vanilla, and little trinkets.

row of shops by the free restroom

If you take the path  to the far right there is a free restroom in a building that looks on the outside like some sort of official port place, but the inside was just a big open bare room with restrooms on one end. It’s near the beginning of a row of places to book tours and just past a restaurant. It would be pretty easy to miss except there was a guard at the door. One small warning though, the toilet paper for the ladies’ room is hanging up high on the wall outside of the stalls so you have to get some before you go in or you won’t have any. This path eventually rounds a corner alongside the end of the marina. Beyond there not as many people try to sell you stuff or get you to book things, but there are still a few.

where the dock meets land a sign for the exit from the port and lots of people selling excursions

The path that is mostly straight ahead from where you leave the dock leads to an exit where you can leave the port and go to town which is about a 10-15 minute walk from the port. There are also taxis just outside of the exit. Before getting to the exit there are shops along the way. There’s even a dive shop where people can go for scuba.

whale near Cabo

You can’t get far in any of the areas near the dock without someone trying to get you to either book something or buy something. A gauntlet of people with signs for a variety of activities waits where the dock meets the shore so anyone getting off the ship with nothing booked can easily find something to do. A lot of them are either water taxis to a nearby beach or short tours out to the arch, but you can also find all sorts of other things like snorkeling, whale watching, and fishing. If you search hard enough other things like horseback riding and parasailing can also be found.

people with excursion signs

There are also numerous people wandering around with stuff to sell that aren’t from the shops. A lot of them have jewelry, but some have things like plates or whistles or other random stuff. Some have little lizards they want people to pay to have a photo taken with. The farther you get from the dock the less people will harass you, but even in the farthest reaches of the port there were still some.

restaurant at the port

Besides the numerous shops with excursions, t-shirts, souvenirs, vanilla, tequila, and other merchandise around the port there are also bars and restaurants.

Señor Frog’s

Señor Frog’s is the most well-known bar, but there are a whole lot of other ones there too. The prices are not that good though. We were going to get something at one of them, but it actually cost more than buying a drink on the ship so we didn’t.

another way out

There are more shops, bars, and restaurants the rest of the way around the marina. After going around a couple corners following the edge of the marina to the right of the dock, the far end has some sort of large condo or hotel towering above it. There is an archway in that building with a way out to the street so the pathway mostly straight ahead from the dock isn’t the only way out.

the lighthouse marks a tequila shop

There’s a tall red and white striped lighthouse towering over the marina, but apparently it is not an active one because if you get there you find that it is on top of a tequila shop.

shops at the port

Whether just staying at the port, walking to town, or booking one of the many last-minute excursions offered there, people can easily find something to do in Cabo even if they didn’t book anything in advance.

bar at the port

Copyright My Cruise Stories 2026

view of Antarctica from a heated ceramic chair in the thermal suite

Like all ships on major cruise lines, Holland America Oosterdam has a spa and fitness center. Equipment at the gym is generally free to use. Some of the classes there have a cost and others are free. Personal trainers are also available for a fee.

gym

Nothing is free at the spa other than quick sample massages and boarding day tours, unless you count the sauna as part of the spa. There is a sauna that is free for anyone to use at the end of the hallway between the pool area and the spa desk closest to the pool end. It’s not shown on the deck plan so a lot of passengers probably never even know it is there. Anything else at the spa is generally on the pricey side whether products or services.

beauty salon

The beauty salon offers haircuts and styling as well as manicures and pedicures. Spa treatments cover a wide range of massage options as well as some other treatments like facials, acupuncture, minor medi-spa services, and tooth whitening. There are even facials for men and beard trimming as well as haircuts.

massage treatment room

I hadn’t really planned on having a massage on the Oosterdam, but we had $350 in use-it-or-lose-it onboard credit and pre-paid gratuities so we would not use any of the credit for them. We took the spa tour on boarding day, which included a sample hot rocks massage. When the girl who did our tour found out we had already booked the thermal suite she said she would give a 20% discount for the hot rocks massage. I’d always thought it might be a nice one and since we had all that credit plus the offer of a discount I booked it for a sea day later in the cruise. It seemed to be an offer just from the one masseuse as nobody has ever mentioned that discount on previous cruises and the people at the spa desk didn’t seem to know about it.

hot rocks

Parts of the massage were good, but some of it was rougher than what I prefer. The rocks didn’t always stay hot for very long and much of the massage was done without them. Over all I prefer a nice gentle Swedish massage. This was also the first time after a massage on Holland America that the masseuse tried to sell me something – in this case a lotion and an oil that cost over $60 each. It’s better when they don’t try to sell you stuff. You get all relaxed during the massage and then if they try to sell you stuff it breaks the peaceful mood. They offer a discount over the initially quoted price, but still way too much money for what you get.

loungers by the thermal suite pool

The spa also has a thermal suite for which only 40 passes are sold passes for the duration of the cruise. Other people can buy day passes from the spa onboard when available. It’s expensive, but you get to use the hydropool and heated ceramic chairs. There’s also steam rooms and aromatherapy. It’s nice to have a place to go and relax away from the crowd at the Lido pool. On warm-weather cruises there are often loungers to be found in quieter areas of the outside decks, but when cruising to Antarctica outside decks aren’t generally where people want to sit and relax. The Lido pool has a sliding cover so it can be inside or outside depending on the weather, but the loungers by the spa’s hydrotherapy pool are always indoors.

heated ceramic chairs

The thermal suite has 6 heated ceramic chairs as is standard on all of the Holland America ships we’ve sailed on. One always seems not to work regardless of what ship it is and this one was no exception. One of the steam rooms was also out of order, but there’s not usually a lot of people wanting to go in there at the same time so that’s not as bad as the much more popular chair not working. Or at least we thought it wasn’t working as did everyone else in the thermal suite on this cruise. Later on a different cruise one of the spa workers told me that they keep one chair cold so that if anyone gets too hot they can go lay on that one to cool off. Nobody ever does that though so they are just wasting a chair someone would use if it was kept hot. Heated ceramic chairs are nice, cold ones miserable, and everyone I’ve ever met in the thermal suite on any of their ships thinks that cold chair doesn’t work just as we had thought for many years.

hydropool

The hydropool had a new addition of a chair lift for people who can’t get in and out on their own, but I never saw anyone use it. All of the ship’s pools had them, not just the one in the thermal suite. There are jets around the sides of the pool, a shower sort of thing for shoulder water massages, a metal circle of big bubbles, and a rack where people can sit in bubbles.

water volcano in the spa pool

Usually the bubbles come up evenly across the rack, but this one had a volcano of water on one end and next to nothing on the other. Later in the cruise a smaller volcano developed near the middle of the rack. That was the goldilocks zone to me. There were a few people that liked the big volcano and occasionally someone even sat at the dead end, but most preferred the middle area either between the water volcanos or in the smaller one.

penguins on the counter at the spa check-in desk

Sometimes there were other people using the thermal suite while I was there, but other times I had it to myself. Early morning seemed to be a good time to find it empty or nearly so. Also around lunchtime, late evenings, or when you get back to the ship early on a port day when a lot of people are still out and about.

hydropool room decor

We enjoy the thermal suite more than specific spa treatments because you can use it any time during open hours from 8am to 10pm throughout the entire cruise rather than a one time thing like massages and other treatments. They do give discounts for booking additional treatments when you have more than one, but it’s still expensive.

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