This was my first cruise on HAL, after having cruised with Oceania, Princess, Celebrity, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean. It may not be my last, but were I to do this again, it's not going to be on the Zuiderdam, which needs to go into dry dock in a bad way. Yes, I know it was just there in April, but interior decoration was apparently not on the list. We had cabins 4166 and 4170 (originally booked 4164, but that disappeared somehow, thanks HAL). The bathrooms were standard inserts; the balcony of 4166 was, as other CC's have noted, extremely spacious. The rooms, however. . . I nearly cried. No kidding. The carpet was a dingy brown stripe; the walls had extra screw anchors where apparently one larger picture had once hung and been replaced by a smaller one; the curtains, greenish, matched nothing; and--borrowing Terry Pratchett's apt description of the Octavo--the tiny reddish sofa might charitably be described as "'slightly foxed', although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved, and possibly beared as well."

Peeked into some interior cabins, and they looked reasonably spacious and well-appointed in comparison: none of the thrift shop ambiance of 4166 and 4170.

The corridor art on 4 consisted of prints of old Dutch masters' florals, looking so flat that their original artists would cry to see the indignities wrought upon their original oiled depths by modern technology (or cheap paper). That being said, the linens were clean and the room stewards attentive, providing the towel animals without which, IMHO, no cruise ship has the right to describe itself as such. I'm still not entirely sure what two of them were, but I sincerely appreciated the effort. Read more