I am a retired city attorney and my wife is a homemaker - never retired! This was our 13th cruise; and second on HAL, having done the Western Caribbean on Veendam last March. We selected this cruise because we had only a shortened stop in St. Thomas 3 years ago, and had never been to Tortola or a Bermuda Cay. This was a relaxing, if not overly exciting cruise on a very beautiful, well maintained and well designed vessel.
The ship.
MS Zaandam is now 4 years old, but except for a couple of worn spots on the wooden handrails, is in excellent shape. At 63,000 gross tons, with a passenger complement of slightly under 1400, it has a high space ratio. Our cabin was on Deck 6, a verandah "suite" which is basically a good sized cabin of about 285 square feet, including the verandah. It was provided with a full sized sofa, decent sized desk, Jacuzzi tub/shower and more drawers than we could ever have used. In addition, the closets were large and there were plenty of real wooden hangers. The room has three art works and was a very pleasant place. One could hardly ask for more than what we got for a reasonable price.