We are going for a cruise!
21/12: Sydney
There is no working internet connection on board (the free wifi is useless and the paid one is exaggeratedly expensive), so I’ll not blog the sea days chronologically and will just write a bit about everything.
Ms. Noordam, although it’s a mid-size ship and is far from being one of those luxury top world-class cruise liners, is beautifully decorated.
There is an art gallery (with daily auctions):
Among our first reconnaissance activities there was an emergency muster drill where we had to learn the routine to follow in case of emergency. As we have booked 2 staterooms, even if they are interconnected and we are one family, we are assigned to different life-saving boats.
One of those stunning ocean sunsets:
22/12-24/12 At sea.
The cruise ship offers so many different activities to fill the passengers time that we hardly could attend all of them. But we met many people from different backgrounds and professions that I can already say that the ship’s crew is amazing. The passengers are also nice: today Anton lost his bracelet (which is supposed to be worn at all times for an emergency case and which Anton usually does not want to put on) in the pool and started crying so hard that anyone could think that he nearly drown. People who were in the water, started searching and one boy with swimming glasses found it – to an indescribable joy of Anton. Later that day, at lunch, Anton happened to really, really want an egg (and surely the chopped version available at the salad bar was not good enough), and guess what, a nice lady from the kitchen staff went to the stock to pick up a couple of eggs and boiled them for him. While we were waiting for the eggs to get cooked, another lady came to Anton to just talk to him. It turned out that she also has a little (3-years old) boy back home in Indonesia and she misses him a lot. I find this quite sad…
Later, as the days went on, we realized that the staff works 11 hours a day, without full days off, throughout the cruise (our route is only a part of the whole cruise which takes about 9 months in total), then they get home for about 3 months.
Ok, we are there for vacation.
Pool side:
Sport deck on the very top of the ship:
Kids club:
There is a gym (where I stepped in every single day, except for the last one when there was another activity which I’ll talk about later), a spa salon, 2 pools, a library, cinema and more.
The show lounge deserves a special note. Every night there happened to be something: a musical show, or a comedian, or a singer…
The stateroom attendants are also very cool. Each evening we found an animal in the room, like this one:
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