This review of our Oosterdam cruise to the Mexican Riviera can be read in its entirety here without pictures and some additional verbiage that isn't part of this. If you would like to see pictures of the places and people we are talking about, you can see them at www.jkbellomo.com. I promise if you go there to read it, it will be a lot more interesting. This was our first time since 2002 that we have been on any cruise line other than Celebrity(X). We had cruised Holland America(HAL) on our first cruise in 2000 but it had been one of their oldest ships, the Westerdam, that was almost immediately retired and a new Westerdam replaced her so this would be a fairly new experience for us. I also knew that even though I had promised Kathleen I would not keep comparing HAL to X I knew that I would be doing it in my head and in this review. Those who are reading this that know me, know how I feel about Celebrity. But I promised myself I would give HAL a chance. One of the things that has always been a HAL truism in our minds is that HAL pax are generally an older group. The average age on X is about 55 (our age at the start of this trip) and the "common knowledge" in the cruise community has always been that HAL's average age is about 70. That was certainly true on our original Westerdam cruise, but it was not on this one. Yes, the majority of the pax were older than us but there were a lot of younger cruisers. This particular cruise had a large contingent of surfers who loaded their boards on the ship and would be surfing in every port as well as having a series of concerts by 70s rock semi-legend, Dave Mason (look him up). Embarkation Embarkation was OK. We arrived at the cruise terminal around 10:45 by cab. Our taxi ($10 with tip from Gaslamp District) was not allowed to go into the cruise terminal so we had to grab our bags and walk them in. That was fine for us but others with the same size bags and less fit might have a problem. After dropping our bags we were directed to the check-in area. Actual check in (including filling out a noro-virus questionnaire assuring HAL that we weren't coming on board sick) took very little time. We were then given a boarding number (we had 10) then we had to wait. Luckily, there were still a few places to sit and we only had to wait about 30 minutes before they let us on. We met other folks who were in the number 6 boarding group and had come right from the airport and had been waiting since 8:30 am. They said, "It was either here or the airport." One thing we liked about check in was that when we got our sea pass cards, we had our pictures taken then for ID purposes. Much better than doing it on the gangplank. From that point on, all they had to do when we embarked or disembarked was to scan our sea pass cards. More about this on our first day ashore. Once our group was called, it was just a short walk across the parking lot, up the ramp and we were onboard. Unlike X where you then have the run of the ship, we were herded directly to an elevator and sent up to the Lido deck for lunch. We would much preferred to stop by our cabin and drop our carry-on luggage as we do on Celebrity. HAL does have an area near the pool where you can drop your carry-on luggage while you have lunch but mine included my laptop as well as my Nikon so there was no way I was just leaving it in what looked to be a very unprotected area. We kept it with us, grabbed a table outside on deck (but in the shade) and Kathleen went to get lunch while I waited with our stuff and then when she came back I went and got lunch. Lunch was excellent. We both had panini sandwiches which unlike X were grilled the right way. They were made quickly and efficiently and the sandwich bar had both chips and caesar salad so I was happy. HAL's buffet is broken up into islands unlike X's where there are a few additional stations but they are all pretty much together in one long bar in the middle of the ship. Our next cruise on the brand new Solstice will also have this configuration. It does seem to cut down on the longer lines. I can say that I very seldom had to stand in line and when I did, it wasn't for very long although I will say that they really fall down on the drinks. There are only two places in the entire buffet area to get drinks and they are PACKED! In the morning the entire buffet has only two coffee machines for probably 1000 people. Woefully inadequate. After lunch we ended up sitting for about 90 minutes before there was a general announcement (much too loud) that our cabins had been released. We were thrilled as we had been stuck in one place watching our carry-on bags since we had gotten on and really wanted to go explore the ship. Our cabin Originally when we booked this cruise, our wonderful travel agent had gotten us our usual favorite aft cabin. We were thrilled to get it as we had booked this cruise rather late. And it was a real bargain as well. Considering the fact that we were told it eventually sold out, only eight weeks before the cruise they were dropping prices like crazy. About a week after we booked, the TA called me and said, "HAL wants to know if you want to upgrade, do you want to give up your aft cabin (with its larger verandah and bigger view) for a Verandah Suite. Well we have never been in any kind of suite before so we snapped at the chance and were we glad we did for the room but not for the noise. More about that below. Our normal Concierge Class cabins on Celebrity are 190 square feet. This suite was 389 square feet!!! And it came with a jacuzzi tub, a huge verandah and a king (not the usual queen) size bed. We are now SPOILED! The cabin (8052) was wonderful. It had a HUGE amount of storage spacethree full closets that can be converted from full closets to shelves, a vanity with make-up mirror as well as a desk with plenty of room for all the electronics I carry along. (Believe it or not we always bring a MacbookPro, two iPhones, three iPods, an Altec-Lansing travel stereo for one of the iPods, Kathleen's Nikon point and shoot and my Nikon DSLR, a plug strip and all the rest of the cords for all of the above.) If you check out our pictures from the Oosterdam Day 1-San Diego, you will see more pics of the interior of the cabin. We want to note the one thing we did not like about this cabin. It was directly under the main pool and this made it very noisy. The crew would be on the deck, moving chairs, opening and closing the roof on the pool (which sounded like doors being slammed) from 6:00 am on. Our room got quite noisy. We should add that we have been in aft cabins on Infinity a number of times that were on the Sky deck where many people complain about the noise and we have never been bothered. Not so on deck 8 of Oosterdam. It was loud and obnoxious. If you are a light sleeper and like to sleep past 6:00 am we would not recommend any cabin midships on deck eight. Our next door neighbors (who turned out to be our tablemates) agreed with us. The night we were in Mazatlan was the worst! There was a pool party from 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm. The noise was incredible. Forget trying to sleep. But worse than the party was the cleanup that lasted well past midnight. People should be warned about the noise in these cabins. After we had dropped our carry-on luggage we went right back out to go and tour the ship. We started on the Lido deck where we had eaten lunch and worked our way down. Oosterdam has 11 decks. The Lido deck where the pool, buffet and spa are located is deck nine. We were on deck eight. The next four decks (4-7) are also cabins. Decks two and three had most of the rest of the activity areas on the ship. Our cabin was perfectly situated for having breakfast and lunch, me going to the gym and us both going to the spa (more about that later). But going to dinner in the dining room or going downstairs for almost anything else means quite a walk up and down five flights of stairs. Of course, it's a great way to walk off all that good food. (Much more about that later.) After our tour we met our Cruise Critic group on the bow of the ship to have the web-cam wave. It is a tradition in San Diego that the Cruise Critic group goes to the front of the ship where they can be seen by the San Diego webcam. There is even a banner which everyone signs. Then at 3:00 pm we hold up the banner and wave. Someone at home takes a screen shot and posts the photo to the Cruise Critic website. It's a great chance for us all to get together for a few minutes. After that it was back to the cabin to unpack and then off to the lifeboat drill. We expected the drill to be very well run after our previous HAL trip but it was a joke. We arrived at our lifeboat station (in front of a huge vent that was extremely noisy) and a crew member attempted to read the cabin numbers of those who were supposed to be at that station. There was absolutely no way you could hear a thing he was saying and after reading about 10 cabin numbers he gave up and they let us go. It was sad to say the least. After the life boat drill we went topside to watch the sailaway. We had beautiful, sunny, seventy degree weather. It was gorgeous.

Ports of Call This cruise was about cruising as opposed to our last two European cruises which were really about the ports. This was to relax and get away by ourselves. And it worked great since it only had three port days out of seven. We like cruises with a couple of sea days. There is always plenty to do on board but the best thing to do is to relax. But we did want to let you know what we did on shore. As you can see from the itinerary we had a sea day and then stops in Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan and finally in Puerto Vallarta. The one thing we will remember for quite a while about this trip is that all three ports were incredibly hot. Temps in the upper nineties and humidity to match made the days fairly miserable. There was actually a time watching a show in Mazatlan that I was worried about Kathleen passing out from the heat or getting a migraine headache. Thankfully she did neither. If you have any doubt that global warming exists all our guides told us that they had never seen temps this high at the end of October in these places. Cabo San Lucas We had decided not to do a tour of any kind here as we had already been here once before as the last stop on our Infinity Panama Canal cruise in 2004. We just thought we would get off the ship and walk around. We might really have enjoyed this if it weren't for the heat. We did our usual walk and might have had lunch or a drink except by that time it was so hot we just got back on board. We did have luck in one of our two quests. On every trip we look for police T-shirts for our son-in-law Joel who is a Washington State trooper. He loves wearing the different ones from around the world so we are always on the lookout for them. Our own children have informed us then no longer want or wear T-shirts. We sometimes also look for Formula 1 racing stuff for our other son-in-law Brian but our kids get nuthin! In Cabo we found Joel's shirt and were also looking for something that someone else who has to remain nameless lest a surprise be revealed but we were unable to find that item anyplace. That was about it for Cabo. We can say that besides being hot, it was the absolute worst of the three ports for vendors almost attacking us as we walked from the tender into town. Every two or three steps we would have someone in our face asking us to buy jewelry, take a tour or have a picture taken with their iguana. It got very old, very quickly. There is only so many times you can say, "NO gracias!" Mazatlan Having never been to Mazatlan before we had decided to take the "Discover Mazatlan and The Papantla Flyer Show" tour. This would give us a basic overview tour of the city with an experienced guide on a big air conditioned tour bus and a cool show at the end. Thank God we did that. The tour started with an overlook of the city's lighthouse which we were told is the highest lighthouse in the world (coincidentally exactly one year ago we were at the site of the second highest in the world at Gibraltar). There we were accosted by the usual vendors and watched a fairly amateur cliff diver almost kill himself and took about five minutes of pictures. Then we were off to the cathedral downtown, the real cliff divers, shopping in the Golden district (there has to be shopping) and finally to see the Papantla Flyer Show. This is a Mexican cultural show that features folk dancers, Mardi Gras costumes, a trick rope artist and the flyers themselves who hang upside down from ropes as they descend (without nets) from about 80 feet in the air. See the pictures to get the idea. The only problem with the entire day was that it was hot. VERY HOT! And with the humidity it was even worse. After the performance, it was back on the bus and a quick return to the ship where the air conditioning was running full blast...thank the Lord! Puerto Vallarta After the two incredibly hot days we had endured in Cabo and Mazatlan we decided we better book another overview tour so we could see Puerto Vallarta without dying in the heat since we would at least have an air conditioned bus to get back on. We were glad we did. We boarded the bus early in the day (8:15) and were off to see the town. I want to note here that Puerto Vallarta is on Central Standard Time but that the ship elects to stay on Pacific Standard Time. Why? I guess they think their guests are too stupid to figure out how to change their clocks. Our first stop on the tour was the boardwalk and the beachfront area where there is a plethora of public art both permanent (sculptures) and temporary (incredible sand sculptures). Make sure to check out the pictures to see what I mean. After about an hour of walking tour during which we saw the cathedral of Our Lady of Guadeloupe as well, we got back on the bus for a drive to another part of the city where we got off for the obligatory shopping. I should add that all these tours included "shopping." Unfortunately the shopping is often at exactly the same shop (usually Diamonds International) that you would see in any cruise port. For instance, we saw exactly the same product and store in all three ports on this cruise, in all three ports in Alaska, in all the Caribbean ports we have ever been in and strangely, last year in Gibraltar. If you blindfolded me and set me inside one of the stores, I couldn't tell you what port I was in. We did leave the jewelry store and went across the street to the ceramics factory store where we did find a new plate to add to our collection. After the shopping it was back on the bus and a drive south of the city to a tequila distillery. We got the tour that showed how tequila has been made for about a hundred years from the blue agave plant plus we got samples. In fact at every stop there are free refreshments. Usually soft drinks, margaritas and our choicebottled water. After the tequila tour, it was back on the bus and a long but scenic ride back to the ship. Summing up the ports Of the three cities, I would say that we would actually consider return to Puerto Vallarta. And as for me, if I never go to Cabo again, it will be way too soon. Mazatlan was a nice place that I might have liked better if it hadn't been so oppressively hot and humid. But as I said above, this cruise for us (and I believe pretty much anyone on it) isn't really about the ports. All about the food When I wrote my last cruise review and set up my website after our Alaskan cruise in August 2008, my daughter Jenna looked at it and said, "Dad, it's all about the food." I told her that I was writing the review predominately for cruise people and that for cruise people, it is sometimes all about the food. Cruise ship food can be classified into four distinct areas: buffets, dining rooms, room service and specialty restaurants. We are going to state right now that we don't do room service. Kathleen and I are not big fans of eating in our room. We cruise to meet people and make friends and since we eat by ourselves at home about 90% of the time we can actually count on one hand the times on our 11 cruises when we have ordered room service. So if you are a regular room service person we won't be much help to you. I can tell you that a couple from our Cruise Critic group who we talked to on the sixth day of the cruise said they had ordered room service every morning for breakfast and the order had been wrong six days out of six. Not much of a recommendation for room service. The Buffet For us breakfast and lunch are predominately in the buffet. On X we might also eat in the Aqua Spa Cafe but Oosterdam doesn't have anything like that. What they do have is an excellent buffet restaurant. As much as I am a Celebrity fan, I have to admit that HAL has a better buffet, at least for breakfast and lunch. Let's start with breakfast. For me the astounding thing is nine (YES NINE!) kinds of eggs benedict. I love eggs benedict. But on a buffet they are usually awful. The reason they aren't usually that good is that they are usually pre-made, sitting in a steam tray for so long that the poached eggs are usually hard boiled by the time you get them on your plate. Not on HAL. When you step up to the eggs benedict man, he starts your eggs poaching. Then he toasts your english muffin. Then he puts it together, covers it with some of the best hollandaise sauce I have had and top the entire thing with a metal plate cover to keep it warm and sends you off to your table. Yummy! Speaking of topping your plate with a top to keep things warm, HAL also does this on their omelets and it keeps them warm while you grab your juice and coffee. A superb idea that every buffet should have. Also great for breakfast were the made-to-order omelets with just about anything you could want in them. And did I mention the freshly-squeezed OJ? It is wonderful. Not to be in anyway confused with the fresh from the spigot, weak and watery juice served on Celebrity. The only fault here is that it is often warm by the time you get it. I guess in a perfect world you would get a hot breakfast with ice-cold juice and hot coffee. Maybe on a more exclusive cruise line. Speaking of coffee, even with Celebrity's new coffee, HAL kicks butt here. They may be the last place on earth you can still get Torrefazione coffee. This is an outstanding, small roaster from Seattle that got gobbled up by Starbucks a few years ago. We used to love them in Seattle and were sorry to see them go but were very pleasantly surprised to find them here on HAL. The coffee at breakfast was wonderful and the decaf at dinner was also superb. What was a real surprise here was when we went to the specialty coffee cafe (the HAL version of the Cova Cafe) and ordered coffee to drink there and were given our coffee in paper cups. PLEASE! If I am going to pay for coffee on a ship where I can get good coffee for free (we always finish breakfast with a cappuccino) I would like to have that excellent coffee in a real cup. I know it's a little thing but it matters to us. And strangely, when we asked for biscotti to go with the coffee we were offered it on a regular plate or "to go" on a napkin. Lunch was also excellent in the buffet (or as it is called on the Oosterdam, the Lido Restaurant). We discovered the excellent grilled panini sandwiches on the first day and they became my favorite for the entire week. Kathleen went with the salads and I discovered a really excellent seafood salad that was chock full of calamari and shrimp yummy. One thing that Celebrity does a bunch better than HAL is their hamburger grille. X's has about ten times the choices when it comes to condiments, much better fries, a huge selection of not only burgers but hot dogs, greek sandwiches, nachos, tacos and more. HAL has hamburgers and hot dogs and mustard and ketchup to put on them. Runny ketchup at that. On X you get unlimited guacamole on your burger if you want it and I always do. I should make note again that while it is easy to get food in the buffet, it is often difficult to get drinks. While there are probably 10 food stations, there are only two drink stations and they are often out of order at one or the other. That means that on any given morning there might be 1,000 people trying to get coffee from two machines in one small area. Not the best situation. Plus, the unpaid (soft drinks are chargeable on cruise ships) selection was meager. On X I can ALWAYS get lemonade, ice tea and a punch. On Oosterdam, it was two but never three. And most of the time one of the machines was down. (Kathleen's note: But you can get cranberry juice, V-8 or tomato juice, pineapple juice, fresh squeezed OJ or regular OJ for breakfast which you cannot get on X.) One last little criticism of HAL's almost perfect buffet. At the front of the buffet, just as you enter at lunch they are making pasta. They use so much garlic the smell alone is almost sickening. And folks, I am Italian and love garlic. This is overkill. Lighten up on the garlic. I saw one cook doing a single serving of pasta that he fried seven cloves into the sauce to start the order. I don't know about you, but that would have killed me. The Dining Room Although you can eat either breakfast or lunch in the dining room Kathleen and I didn't on this cruise. The buffet was too good to pass up. But we did eat there all but two nights at dinner. We are early seating people. And we like a fixed seating plan. HAL has both fixed seating (5:45 and 8:30) for dinner as well as an "Anytime Dining" option which allows you to go to the dining room at any time from 5:15 until 9:00 for dinner. All fixed seating is on the third floor of the dining room and all "Anytime Dining" is on the second floor. We were originally supposed to have "Anytime Dining" but our TA had put us on a waiting list for regular early seating and we were thrilled to find we had made the cut. We were at a table for ten (we prefer eight or six) but this ten was just fine. Also at our table were three folks we hardly ever talked to as they were very quiet and always sat at the far end of the table from us, a couple from the San Diego area who were celebrating their wedding anniversary and three wonderful sisters from East Texas-Louisiana region who were the most fun ever. They turned out to be our next door neighbors cabin-wise as well and we wound up seeing them on a shore excursion too. A big hello to Joy, Phyllis and Nancy. At dinner the food was great. I can say that I had an eggplant cannelloni the first night, lamb the second, a pasta dish the fourth, beef tenders the sixth and a wild forest mushroom strudel the seventh (the third was Kathleen's birthday and we went to the Pinnacle Grille and the fifth we went to a Mexican barbecue on the pool deck). With this wide variety of dishes, they didn't fail with a single one. All were excellent as were the appetizers, the salads and the soups. Kathleen was just as happy with her dinners as I was. So we had great company and great food but I would still have to say that I never once enjoyed a single dinner as much as any dinner I have enjoyed on Celebrity. Why? Because of the service. Was it good, quick and efficient? You bet. Was it cold, brisk and rushed. To that I have to answer an emphatic YES! On X we can tell you the name of every waiter and every assistant waiter we have had on all eight cruises. They made our dinners special, social occasions. As I write this it is the fifth day of the cruise and I have no idea who our waiter is, or our assistant waiter, or our sommelier. In fact I am pretty sure that we have had different waiters every night. We may have had the same person every night but they have never taken the time to introduce themselves, to make any recommendations on the menu or to really do anything that would make them special. I truly believe that part of the fault in this lies with the tipping policy on HAL. Tips on X are optional. You can add them to your ship's account or you can pass them out in cash on the last night. We always do and almost always far surpass what X suggests we give our waiters and assistant waiters as well as often tipping the sommeliers and bartenders more than the standard 15% they automatically add to every drink and bottle of wine. On HAL, tips are automatically added to your ship's account whether you like it or not. So, the service can be good or bad, you can have waiter A on one night and waiter B another and it makes no difference. We like the difference. We like our waiters, assistant waiters and sommeliers who take great care of us on Celebrity. Besides never getting to know our servers, they were way too fast. We would sit down to eat at 5:45 and walk out of the dining room around 7:15. It was like they were in a major rush to get rid of us. I would barely pull my chair in as we sat down at the table when a menu would be in my lap. Within three to five minutes my order was taken, within another three to five minutes my first course would arrive and then with just about as quick and interval, all remaining courses. When we were finished with our entrees the dishes were replaced with dessert menus almost instantly and we barely had time to read them before the waiter was back to ask us what we wanted. Often he would interrupt a conversation to find out what we wanted to order for dessert. Then it was almost immediately served. I know that I ordered decaf with dessert every night and so far on only one night did I get even offered a second cup. Dinners always felt rushed on HAL. I have never felt that way on any of our cruises on Celebrity. Dinner is the social event of the day and it is special. On Oosterdam, I felt like we were well-dressed animals being fed at a ten animal trough. A mention of our sommelier is in order. On Celebrity, the sommelier is an integral part of the dining experience. On HAL, they weren't sommeliers, they were "bar waiters" (that's what it said on their name badges) and they took care of the wine service almost like they were doing you a favor. Our TA had sent us both a bottle of champagne and a bottle of red wine to our cabin. We took the red to the dining room on the first night and it took the "bar waiter" quite a while to get us glasses and get it poured. At the end of the evening I made a point of telling him that we would bring the champagne down the next night and would like to share it with the rest of the table. I asked if he could he please have glasses ready and the champagne chilled. He said to just bring it down when we came (in other words, chill it yourself) and he would take care of it. On X our cabin steward would have sent it down earlier and it would have been waiting at our table, chilled and the sommelier would have had glasses at every seat at the table. Well we were one of the first people at the table that night but by the time he acknowledged us, he had already poured wine for more than half of the others at the table and of course no on wanted any champagne now that they had purchased their own wine. This to me was the height of bad service. Just one more comment on the service in the dining room. We had breakfast with a very nice woman from Missouri who was doing "Anytime Dining" and said that she and those in her party had almost exactly the opposite problem. They seemed to have to wait forever to be seated, to order and then to be served. So long, she said, that it bordered on bad service. That's is amazing. If they just tried to even it out, we could both be happy. The Specialty Restaurant-The Pinnacle Grille While HAL and the Oosterdam may have a better buffet than Celebrity, and the food in the dining room is equal, The Pinnacle Grille is not in the same city, much less the same ballpark as the speciality restaurants on the Celebrity M-class ships. We have dined in the United States Dining room on board Infinity at least eight or nine times and it is one of our favorite dining experiences. Dining in an alternative restaurant should not just be about the food but it should be an event. The food, the wine, the conversation, the ambience, all contribute to the meal. This is especially true in the Celebrity's specialty restaurants. Silver dome, french service with many dishes prepared table-side by experienced waiters who know how to converse about food add up to a one-of-a-kind dining experience. We can honestly say that except for one hurried Valentine's dinner in the United States Dining Room, every X specialty restaurant meal has been a culinary pleasure. Not in the Pinnacle Grille. We arrived on time and were seated just as if we were eating in the dining room. We were shown a variety of steaks under glass that are the specialty of the house. As it was a special occasion (Kathleen's birthday) we decided to order Pellegrino sparkling water which was promptly served...warm. Actually closer to hot. When we asked for ice or a different bottle that was cold, we were treated like culinary heathens that did not know you "never put ice in Pellegrino." Well, excuse us. It was either that or drink hot water on what had been a fairly hot day. That also meant that since they put ice in the water we had to continuously remind them that it was sparkling water which meant they kept looking at us like we were dunces for having ice in it. Again, we had barely dealt with the water when the waiter was there asking if he could take our order. We told him we really hadn't had a chance to look at the menu yet. At this point the "bar waiter" came by and asked if we would like to see the wine list. All of this happened within five to ten minutes of our being seated. Again, we are feeling very rushed. The wine list was excellent. Being that HAL is based in Seattle, there were quite a few Washington wines that we know and love including a Syrah from our favorite cellars, McCrea that we had enjoyed before. Unfortunately, it also meant that we knew most of the wines very well, including their prices which I felt were way too high. Almost to the point of "price gouging." Wines in restaurants are normally three times the price of wine in a store and these were sometimes four and five times the price. The least expensive bottle of red was a merlot that came from Chateau St. Michel, a winery that is about two miles from our home. We have seen it priced in stores at the $10 level but HAL wanted $58 for it. We thought the pricing was "just us" but when we decided on a bottle and we told the "bar waiter" (It was bad enough that there was a "bar waiter" doing wine in the dining room but I can't even imagine a good specialty restaurant not having a trained sommelier!) how impressed we were with the number of Washington wines on the list, she said, "I bet you are pretty surprised at those prices, aren't you?"We knew right then, that it wasn't "just us." After we got our wine ordered the waiter was back to take our orders. Once we had given him those the "bar waiter" was back with the wine. Once we had opened and poured that, the waiter was back with our salads. Once we were done with the salads they had been off the table no more than three or four minutes when our entrees arrived. I am not sure why these people were in such a hurry but they were. There were plenty of empty tables so it wasn't like they were needing to get rid of us so they could seat someone else. Food-wise the cuisine was adequate. It was the equivalent of anything we had eaten in the dining room on the first three nights of the cruise. We both started with caesar salad that was good, followed by Steak Diane for Kathleen and a ribeye steak for me. Mine had bernaise sauce on the side that was less than adequate. HAL's desserts have been excellent and the desserts in the Pinnacle Grille were no exception. I had the chocolate volcano cake and Kathleen had a raspberry cheese cake. Both were excellent. I also had a cup of the Torrefazione decaf that was really great but I had a heck of a time getting a second cup as both our waiter and our bar waiter were rushing up to us with checks to signs. Cost of dinner in the Pinnacle Grille is $20 each which is supposed to cover the cost of the tip. The food was no better than the dining room and I have to say that when we sail HAL again, we will probably skip it. One event that you may want to avoid On the last night we were in Mexico the ship held a "Mexican Barbecue" on the pool deck and we decided to try it instead of eating in the dining room. Big mistake. First, we are not sure why it was listed as a "Mexican Barbecue" as there was nothing Mexican about it that we could see. No salsa or guacamole in site. Just steaks done on a grill with some beans (not even refried but pintos in a barbecue sauce) corn on the cob, baked potatoes, cornbread, rolls and a salad bar. The biggest problem we could see was that they were not ready to handle the numbers of people who showed up to eat there. Steaks were very undercooked. Mine, which was supposed to be medium-rare, was raw and by the time we waited through getting the side dishes was also cold. If they are going to consider doing this on a regular basis, they need to rethink the logistics of the event. If you are sailing on Oosterdam in Mexico this year, skip the Mexican Barbecue and eat in the dining room. You can get the same steak, done correctly and still warm when you eat it. It would be easy to rearrange the line so that you got your cold salads and sides first and then got your meat but this isn't the way it is. The Master Chef's Dinner Just a quick note about this. On the final night at sea, the dining room staff assisted by some of the ship's entertainers, put on a culinary show in the dining room. It starts with invitations on the table the night before asking you to be seated by 5:15 and stating that the dining room would be open at 5:00. So at 4:55 we dutifully went to the dining room and found it closed. Until 5:15. If they are going to tell you to be there by 5:15 (NO LATE SEATING) then they should be on time. When we finally got seated, there were no napkins on the table because the dining room staff then paraded in to music and made a big deal about putting the napkins on our laps. This was followed by another parade with the waiters juggling and spinning plates prior to delivering the salad course. Then after the entrees (all courses were delicious) the traditional Baked Alaska March took place. All in all a fun evening. Your typical cruise stuff taken up a notch. In Summary Food All in all, HAL wins the battle of the buffets while Celebrity and HAL are about equal overall in food but X understands that dining is more than just the food. It is a social occasion. An event. And when it comes to that, give me Celebrity every time. Especially Celebrity's specialty restaurants which are beyond awesome. All the rest of the cruise stuff Having covered all the big stuff like ports, food and San Diego and our onboard experience, this page will cover all the rest. The little stuff that really didn't fit into anyplace special but does deserve a special mention. Cruise Critic Those of you who are reading this because you found it through the Cruise Critic website don't need an explanation but those of you who are friends and family need a little background so I hope the former group will excuse my explanation here. Cruise Critic is a super website that allows those of us who cruise on a regular basis to read about cruising online. But more than that it allows, through it's wonderful message boards, for us to communicate with what seems like millions of other cruise junkies like ourselves. If you are reading this as part of a Cruise Critic review, you should make sure and check out the boards. You will meet so many great people there. On those boards you will usually find a thread dedicated to your next cruise. These are called roll calls. We have had one for every cruise we have been on since 2004. There were roll calls before that but we hadn't found Cruise Critic so we didn't have any for our first two cruises. And being on a roll call (especially an active roll call) really enhances your cruise experience. I often tell people that not only did I meet Kathleen online but that I have met the majority of our current friends online through Cruise Critic roll calls. Our four best friends and us form the backbone of a group we refer to as the Martini Mates. We have been posting on the roll call from our original cruise that we took together in 2005 for what seems like forever. That roll call has more than 3,000 posts as of now. I mention this because I want to point out how great HAL was in taking care of our Cruise Critic group. First though, let me say that the roll calls for HAL cruises seem to be a lot smaller and less subscribed to than the roll calls for our Celebrity cruises. This may be due to the average age of the HAL cruising community vs the X cruising community. Either way our Oosterdam roll call was pretty tame compared to our current Solstice roll call which is incredibly active. I would say that our Oosterdam roll call was pretty much kept going by a wonderful lady who goes by the screen name of San Diego Sue (who is really named Gloria). She organized us and got us scheduled so that we met three different times. The second time is what I want to focus on here. On Celebrity if you have more than a certain number of people on your roll call X will host a reception for you. I believe that number is 25. You get invited by X, they usually have it on the morning of the first sea day and they serve coffee and what has always seemed to me like leftover, stale danish from the breakfast buffet. Sometimes someone in authority from the ship will stop by. On many of them, we have had cruise director come by to say hello. On HAL there is no formal get together for the roll call group but between a couple of members of the group contacting HAL in advance and asking for one, we wound up with a reception that put Celebrity's Cruise Critic Connection Party to shame. No stale danish, no coffee, no morning meeting in a tiny lounge (or as we had on the Century a gathering in the theater which was AWKWARD to say the least). Instead there was champagne, wine, appetizers (including shrimp big shrimp) in a really nice lounge in the afternoon. HAL acted like they really cared about the Cruise Critic group. And not only did Cruise Director Erik show up but he brought along DJ Matt and a little while later his boss, the hotel director came by and stayed a while to answer questions. It was outstanding. We felt very special and it is something that X could learn a lesson from. Treat those people who are the most vocal about cruising like you care about them. Kudos to HAL for taking such great care of us. Culinary Events Since one of my hobbies besides photography and travel is food and cooking I was thrilled to see that HAL had a Culinary Arts Center on board the Oosterdam. This truly is a state-of-the-art culinary demonstration kitchen. The set up is fantastic with live cooking going on in front of you and big screen TVs to show you exactly what was going on the stage. During the week I attended (Kathleen joined me for some as well) four demonstrations and could have attended more except they cut into our pool/spa time. The demos were done by either the Oosterdam's chefs or a guest chef (this week the food editor of the Seattle Post Intelligencer) and were all very good. It was a great way to spend the time during sea days and they even gave you samples of everything that they cooked (as if there wasn't enough to eat on board already). The Spa Another place that HAL exceeds our experiences on Celebrity. Some explanation is in order here. When we have sailed with Celebrity one of our favorite places on board is the Thallosotherapy (T) pool and the Persian Gardens. Think of the T-pool as a giant hot tub with the water at body temperature and huge jets coming from under some in-pool metal chaise lounges. And the Persian Gardens is a series of steam rooms and hot ceramic benches that you can sit in and on. We tried them on our original Infinity voyage and really liked them but over the years the T-pool has gotten worn down and now kids are allowed in it so it has lost its luster for us. And the Persian Garden on Infinity on our August Alaskan cruise was in total disrepair with tiles broken and things just feeling dirty. On X, the T-pool is free on the M-class ships but the Persian Gardens is chargeable. Usually about $100 per person for a seven day cruise. On Oosterdam, both their version of the T-pool and their version of the Persian Garden are chargeable as well. One price for both of $150 per person for the cruise or $250 for a couple. Here's the real seller for us...no kids allowed and they only sell 50 of the "memberships." On X the T-pool can sometimes get very crowded and the Persian Gardens as I mentioned, has often in been in different states of disrepair. Also on the Infinity, the Persian Gardens are a dark and dank place while on Oosterdam, the hot benches (six individual ones) face a huge window that looks out over the sea. Behind them are three brightly painted, very clean steam rooms of differing intensities. One is steam with aromatherapy, one straight steam and the last a dry heat. I know, it seems nuts that on a cruise where we are complaining about the heat outdoors that we would sit in a dry heat steam room but we do. Go figure. It is THE most relaxing two hours I know how to spend. An hour in and out of the pool, laying on the most comfortable chaises I have ever laid on and then off to the steam room and ceramic hot benches. I am relaxing just writing about it. I am hoping that the new Celebrity Solstice class ships will have something of this caliber (although she will not have a T-pool, which is a real shame) when we board Solstice in March. Our message to X is to improve their spa to this level and our message to you is that if you are on Oosterdam and can afford it, get this spa package. It is money well spent if you are after relaxation. The Entertainment We like to be entertained. We go to the movies on a regular basis, have subscribed to a theater season for a number of years and are supporters of the Seattle Men's Chorus. So when we come on a ship, we will often see the shows. Especially when we are not traveling with friends which often means we end up skipping the shows just to sit around and talk. On this trip we saw some of the entertainment and I can say it is about typical of what we have seen on all our other cruises. There was a comedian (we skipped his performance on the first night because the show was too late for us), a magician who was cute and folksy but no David Copperfield, a pianist who did an Elton John tribute show that we saw a few minutes of but was not our cup of tea and a full blown production show called Escape which was your typical cruise ship fare. None of them were anything to really write about...so I will stop writing about it now. Photography Since I am in the memory business and I have been taking so many photographs this year, I want to make a couple of comments about the ship's photographers. If you don't cruise you need to know that every time you get on the ship, get off the ship, dress up, dress down or do just about anything else, someone is taking your picture. Then they print them up and put them in the photo gallery section of the ship. The photographers are usually young people who are trained in portraiture by someone who learned it about 20 years ago. They do the regular poses that frankly I think, look rather cheesy. You know the ones. You posed that way for your prom pictures. That said the Oosterdam photographers did their best to make theirs more interesting. Unfortunately they only succeed marginally. One of the things they did was combine shots into picture packages. Let's say we got our photo taken on formal night. When we went to look at it, there would be five pictures on one sheet. One 8 x 10 of the two of us in color, another of each of us individually in black and white and then two wallet sizes. You could only buy all of them. So if you want the one color photo, you end up with all of them. Not a bad thing but two of those sheets are $80! Yikes. And the waste is as bad as any photo studio we have seen at sea. On the final sea day we went in and pulled every photo of us we could find. There were more than 35 individual sheets of photo paper with just us on them. We bought two and they threw the rest away. WHAT A WASTE! People, this is the digital age. How about taking my picture and making it available on a kiosk or even better swipe my key card when you take it and have the pics show up on the TV in my cabin. Then I can look at them and order just the prints I want. Or even better give me the option to purchase them digitally. You see, like many people today, I don't carry actual photographs anymore. I carry an iPhone (or I could have them in my iPod) that has photos in it. As of today the photo library on my iPod has more than 700 photos in it. I want my pictures digitally. I use them on websites, as my screen saver, my desktop background and so many other ways in a digital format. Please cruise lines, stop printing the pictures and go digital. I must say that X finally started at least using kiosks in their photo galleries but they still printed every photo. What a waste of resources. They need to get a little greener. I would love to find a way for Jostens to partner with cruise lines as they do with Disney where you could go home from a cruise, see all the pics taken on your entire cruise and put together a book of just the ones you want, have it printed and shipped directly to you. How great would that be. Summing it all up Here it is. The end of the review. I bet you never thought you would get here. But now for the final judgement. Will we sail HAL again? Yes. This line will probably become our second (or third if you count Azamara as a second line, separate from Celebrity) favorite line. It will be a safe line we can sail on when X does not have the itineraries we are looking for or when a bargain comes along. We have pretty much eliminated most of the other big lines (RCCL, Princess, Carnival) because we really don't want to sail with kids and families. We like an adult line. For that reason, Celebrity works for us. And HAL will be a great second line that is also close to that demographic. Was it a perfect cruise? No. The noise level in our cabin was horrendous and we will never book under the pool area again even if they give us another upgrade. Were there things we loved? Absolutely...the food, the cabin itself (without the noise), the people we met. Do we still like X better? Yes. Her crew is the difference. The service is the deal breaker. We love X because of the way we are treated every minute we are onboard. Not that we were treated badly on HAL, it just wasn't the same.