This time I went with my sister on the cruise instead of my hubby. He was nice enough to stay with our Mother while we were gone. We flew into Boston a day early and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express, Boston Garden. I can't say the hotel is great, but the service was good and it was in a great location for touring Boston and finding nice restaurants. We used the Old Town Trolley for touring Boston and highly recommend it. The day of the embarkation, we took a cab to the port. Our cruise was on the Maasdam, room 729, A deck or 4th deck, 2-9 Aug, 2014. The Maasdam is one of the smaller HAL ships with 1400 passengers. There are very few balcony or verandah cabins and we had an outside one with the window. The embarkation was very smooth as Boston has few cruise ships leaving. Since this cruise was during the time kids were out for summer vacation, we had an unusually large amount of children (300+) for a HAL cruise, but all appeared to be well behaved.
The food, service, and entertainment were all top notch. The entertainment highlight of the cruise was a fiddle player, Julian Head, from Nova Scotia. She performed on the stage one night and then also around the pool deck the next day. One complaint I have on these smaller HAL ships is that the theatre is not large enough for the first seating and the seats are uncomfortable.
The cabin was good sized with a nice sofa for sitting and plenty of room for our clothes. The beds were comfortable and there was almost no movement from the seas. However, the toilet would not flush all of the time. We had maintenance come a look at it, but I think it's a chronic problem in these old ships.