My wife and I took our 12 year old granddaughter on the the Nieuw Amsterdam in July. It was the second voyage for the ship but the first time for these ports. (Maiden voyage was to the western Med). The itinerary included Split, Katakalon, Athens, Kusadasi, Istanbul, Mykanos and Santorini. Other than Santorini, it's a great itinerary and we had terrific great excursions. I highly recommend the "Olympia and Zorba" excursion on Katakalon. Great viewing, great fun. Our granddaughter was so exhausted from the dancing she slept the whole trip back to the ship. The ship itself is OK. It seems almost identical to the Noordam which we took in Julu 2009. We had a Veranda suite on deck 5. These rooms have no desk drawers and limited shelf space in the closet area. The only drawers are in the nighttables and big ones under the bed which are not very useful and take up space for suitcases. The desktop fills very quickly with chargers, cameras, papers,flowers, etc.and there is only a very small coffee table to put anything on. The bathroom is small with very little shelf space and no medicine cabinet.

There were some air conditioning problems for most of days but not too bad, considering the daily highs were about 95 - 100F. There are a lot more bars and eating areas than on the older, smaller ships which I much prefer. I don't understand the bars as HAL doesn't normally get a big drinking crowd and indeed most of the bars did not seem to get a lot of business. The Tamerind restaurant did not seem prepared for even a half full house, with extremely slow service by both the wait staff and the kitchen. The food was very good. The Pinnacle service and food were excellent as usual.

Additional ports visited were Mykanos and Santorini. Mykanos was interesting. Santorini is extremely hilly and without interest.