Nieuw Amsterdam Review
Panama Canal ports great- food terrible
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Took a 21 day Panama Canal cruise from Vancouver to Fort Lauderdale. The ship is nicely decorated with some lovely flower arrangements & art & it is in relatively good working condition. Our cabin was well cared for but we found the pillows & linens to be in poor condition. Pillows had stains & no support. Stains on the duvet as well.Our bathroom shower curtain had black mold on it. It was replaced as soon as we notified the steward. Air conditioning worked great.
We enjoyed the various ports on the cruise. Definitely must do a tour for Puerto Chiapas, Puerto Caldera, Nicaragua & Guatemala. There is nothing at those ports to do unless you take a tour. These are great places to get tours from to explore the country.
The Nieuw Amsterdam must do something about the poor quality & quantity of food they serve. It was the most disappointing part of our cruise. Portions would not even satisfy a child. Food was overcooked or raw usually. Poor selection of food unless you like eating lamb or pork belly. They did have prime rib which came either raw or like leather. Soups lacked substance & taste. Service was beyond slow. 2 hours to get a main course is too long. Waiters had way to many tables to serve in my opinion. The only item we really enjoyed in the dining room was the fresh squeezed orange juice for breakfast. We eventually quit going to the dining room as the food & service was a disappointment. We found the ship deep fries a lot of it's food which we don't enjoy. Watch out for the turkey bacon. It actually should be called turkey jerky- it's deep fried!
Cabin Review
Port Reviews
Puerto Quetzal (Antigua)
Took the ship tour that included the Filadelfia coffee estate & Antigua. At the coffee estate they have one of their guides do the tour. It was excellent. Our lunch at the estate was also excellent. The walking tour at Antigua was very interesting but the weather was hot, humid with beating sun the whole way. The guide seemed to lose his enthusiasm as the day went on. We did see an erupting volcano which was great.
Corinto
Did a private tour with Julio Tours. The van was in an accident on our way back to the ship which resulted in us getting back late. Luckily the ship hadn't sailed as there were late ship tours. The guide on our tour although a pleasant young man was quite disorganized & his ability to keep track of time with the pace of the tour was poor. We missed some places we were supposed to see as we ran out of time due to the slow pace.