I booked this cruise for myself and my 23 year old daughter on the spur of a moment, however, after reading reviews and postings on CC's discussion boards I wondered whether I'd made a big and costly mistake. I read about staterooms reeking of smoke, tired and worn furniture, billing problems...the list of negatives went on and on. My 23 year old daughter was also a bit apprehensive about the whole 'cruising' experience - not only does she get motion sickness but she was concerned that she'd be surrounded by "old people"! The experience that we had on the Zuiderdam 10th -17th September, however, turned out to be the highlight of our almost 6 weeks long Canada/US holiday - we thoroughly enjoyed every bit of our Inside Passage cruise.

Check in and embarkation

The first thing that struck me, when we got to Canada Place, was the amount of Australian and UK accents that we heard (we're English born but after 21 years in Australia we only hold Australian passports and speak with an Aussie accent!); I saw at least 3 different tour group names that I recognised (we were independent travellers not part of a tour group). The second thing that struck me was that, as these tour groups seemed to consist of relatively recent and youngish retirees, the average age of the passengers on the Zuiderdam seemed to 60ish, which was a decade younger than I'd imagined and also much fitter than I'd envisaged. Read more