Overall, it was a very nice 11 night cruise from Istanbul to Athens. There were some disappointments due to changing ports of call from when we booked the cruise, but that was just due to political unrest vs. the cruise line. So HAL should get some credit for ensuring guest safety comes first.
Stateroom
It was always clean, big enough for us and the balcony was nice. It was very similar to the ...
My wife and I decided to celebrate our 25th anniversary on the Noordam last month. We had looked at the Holland America website and joined up with the HAL community forum, but were still not prepared for the high standard of service and luxury we were exposed to on the ship. Our stateroom was large enough despite being a standard one and the portholw was larger than we expected providing a good ...
For the last 7 years or so the trend has been for the cruise lines to position their ships around the world, and visiting more international ports than ever before. Which can only be great for the traveler. Part of that trend, especially in the last 2 or 3 years is to also create multiple itineraries as part of one big trip! I think Holland America is leading the way.THE ITINERARYThe embarkation ...
The boarding of the ship in Istanbul went smoothly no long lines. Our cabin was ready as soon as we boarded we met our friendly cabin stewards and then headed to the Lido for lunch. On returning to our cabin after lunch to our surprise our luggage was already there so we unpacked an settled into ship board life.
Our cabin was what we expected clean and comfortable. We had booked a VE gty and had ...