The Cruise Line is Holland America, and the ship is the MS Eurodam with 11 decks, holds 2100 passengers, is 935 feet long, and can do around 24 knots.








Our itinerary is: fly from LAX to Barcelona transferring directly to the ship; cruise to several Spanish ports along the Mediterranean (Valencia and Cartagena), sail through the Straights of Gibraltar (with a stop in Gibraltar), around the Iberian Peninsula stopping at several ports in Spain (Cadiz and Vigo) as well as Lisbon, Portugal; traveling through the Bay of Biscayne to Portland, England; across the English Channel to Cherbourg, France; up to Brugge, Belgium, and then through the North Sea to our final destination Copenhagen, Denmark. We'll stay in Copenhagen two nights before flying back home. The cruise itself is 12 days long - total trip 16 days.

Can we handle a 12-day cruise (our longest yet)? Can we survive the flight over in economy class? Will we win the battle against 2000+ passengers for access to the breakfast buffet?..and my first day on board the ship, I discovered that our "Drink Package" which included 15 free drinks per person per day (including alcohol) is not like roll-over minutes - if you only consume 5 drinks one day, you cannot have 25 the next day. *SIGH*....A true test of our survival skills.


Saturday, May 2, 2015

Epilog

All in all, we gave the vacation a 5 out of 10.  





The Pros: 

  • We saw many great historical sites
  • Visited foreign countries and cities for the first time
  • Learned about Stonehenge and other ancient celtic and medieval ruins
  • Met some interesting and fun people from all parts of the world
  • Relaxed & had fun
  • Played Team trivia with new friends (and won twice!)
  • Ate way too much food
  • We played our International Backgammon Tournament (which out of a total of 26 games played, I won only 8 of them…so that’s kind of a con)
  • Perhaps the biggest Pro:  Ability to see all of these sites without checking in and out of hotels, packing & unpacking, renting cars, and getting lost driving on foreign streets.


The Cons:  

  • Getting up at o’dark 30 to start or end a vacation is not our idea of a vacation!
  • Fighting crowds of people at the Lido breakfast buffet and on and off buses and tour groups
  • We must say that Holland America could have done a little better job with their communications, procedures, and services
  • And it may be just Holland America (and we’re no spring chickens)…but there a lot of really old people on these cruises! We felt out of place at times.


It may be quite a while before we plan another cruise.  We'll stick to putting the top down and hitting the road!



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