Nieuw Amsterdam Review
Rating by category
Additional details
We arrived in Barcelona 3 days early for time adjustment and to see the city. The on-off bus is the best to see the most in a short time. Barcelona was an extremely clean city as compared to Venice (yuk). A side trip to Montserrat was super. Services pre-booked through HAL were great in getting us to the Hotel Melia and to the ship. Unaccustomed to European dining we found restaurant's didn't open till 9 PM. At the ship checking in and getting to room was a breeze. Our veranda stateroom was on deck 8 offering us a great view. Our luggage arrived quickly and we began to unpack before dinner. Nothing unusual through our first day (at sea) arriving in Liverno on day 2. We opted to book an Italian Trio of excursions (Florence / Rome / Naples) through a London Company. All three offered more for almost half the cost of HAL. Only difference was having to walk from the ship to the transportation as they were not allowed on the pier.
Of all the places (cities) we visited Santorini was the most beautiful. This is not to lessen anything from Florence, Rome, Naples, Messina (Sicily), Nafplion , Katakolon and Kerkira (Greece), Venice, Dubrovnik & Split (Croatia), Kotor (Montenegro), Istanbul and Mykonos (Turkey, and Kusadasi & Santorini (Greece).
We noted that there was over 400 kids on our fully booked ship for the first twelve days of the journey creating some consternation due to parents NOT minding their children. The second half there were only about 30. We had a great private tour in Messina booked through people we met on the Cruise Critic web site. At Nafplion we took the HAL tour and later had dinner at the Tamarind (Asian) restaurant ($10 extra PP). We also discovered the Pinnacle Grill ($23 extra PP) which was excellent. It is fine dining to the maximum and we used it four times. The Lido buffet (not like a totally help yourself buffet) was OK but being from the buffet capitol of the world (Las Vegas) we chose late dining. We soon discovered that because Europeans prefer late night options the shows (more on this later) were after dinner so we switched to early dining and had wonderful table mates on both legs of the trip.
Cabin Review
Deluxe Ocean-View Verandah Stateroom
Rooms smaller than expected - good balcony location - great view - hallway noisy because too many very young kids on first half of trip - had to call security three times - they were very slow to respond - insufficient house phones throughout the ship - had to search all over for a phone to call security. Very inconvenient if you needed to call your room from afar. None (working) near pools or restaurants. Many people (workers) in buffet room not savvy as to ship places. Need to have coffee and something small to eat 24 hours a day somewhere. Computer time extremely expensive. No allowance to "get on" (time purchased). Next time I'll bring my own computer. $0.75 a minute is outrageous. Never had to pay that much on RCL. The Pinnical Grill was absolutely super despite the added cost - well worth the money. Service was better than most Las Vegas fine dining restaurants on the strip.