Sorry it has taken so long, but I am finally getting around to doing the review on the Westerdam Feb. 4 sailing. Things have been crazy since we got home, in fact we need another cruise just to recover! Little bit of a background, DW and I are both in our early 60's and this was our 37th cruise, not all of them on HAL but over all the lines. The purpose of this trip was just to relax and veg out. We were in these ports in Dec. so we had no plans on rushing around trying to see everything in sight.

We flew down to FLL the day before as we usually do. For those of you in the Midwest you will remember that was the time of snow and ice. It felt so good to arrive in 76 degree weather. We rented a car and drove over to Weston. We really like it over there, it is away from the hustle and bustle of FLL, they have great restaurants and of course the Saw Grass Mall where we can pickup last minute things whether we need them or not. We usually stay at the Marriott Residence Inn there. The next morning we got up and had a nice leisurely breakfast, did a little bit of repacking for the things we bought the night before and then headed off to the pier about 10:30. Dropped my DW off at the pier with the luggage and I went to return the car. I was back and we were on the ship by 11:30. I had heard that they were going to try and have the rooms ready by 11:30 on these boards and as we walked on the ship they announced that the rooms were ready. It was so nice to drop off our carry ons before going to lunch.

We were in 8002, all the ways forward, next to either the captain's or an officer's room. It was your typical veranda room, just what we expected. We had ordered a soda card and a bottle of Sterling Vodka and made reservations at the Pinnacle which was all there waiting for us. Also there was a letter from the hotel manager stating that he noticed that we had given some low scores to certain items on our Dec trip on the Zuidy and that if there was any thing we needed assistance with to please let him know. Boy talk about customer service, someone does actually read those surveys. To be honest the things we talked about on the survey were very minor. Since we had been on the Zuidy in Dec and this is the sister ship, we knew where everything was. Before we left for lunch we did meet our room stewards who were absolutely wonderful, we could not have asked for anything better. We headed off to the Lido to get some lunch. On the way we stopped at the restaurant reservation stand. I had tried to book the Pinnacle for that night on line but they only showed 5:30 as being available, too early for us. No problem, got a 7:30 reservation. We do not like going to the DR the first night, too much chaos. We also made reservations at Canaletto Restaurant for later in the week. We already had reservations made for later in the week for the Pinnacle again. Went to the Lido for lunch, food was good as usual and we were under code orange for the first couple of days. Some people were complaining about it, but hey if you can keep me from getting sick go for it. Read more