Leaving Fort Lauderdale

The ship was scheduled to leave port at 5 pm which gave us plenty of time. We slept in, booked a place on the Holland America shuttle bus ($12 a person), brought our luggage to the truck and then went to brunch. We still had time to kill before the buses started to leave at 12:30 pm so we tried to get the last little bits of email etc off the internet before we had to pay $25 an hour to connect.

We met more people while we waited for a tour of the ship. Our biggest fear was that our tour guide had gotten lost. Finally Colby, one of the assistant cruise directors, showed up and led us from bow to stern, from the dining room to the theatre, and much of what was in between. We had been on one similar cruise before on Royal Caribbean on the Empress of the Seas. This cruise was on Holland America's Volendam. The Empress carried around 1,000 passengers and the Volendam 1,400. Much of the two ships were the same. The dining room and theatre were very similar. The central atrium on the Volendam was in the range from uninspiring to ugly and garish. The Volendam has a small theatre in addition to the large theatre which is used for movies, talks and cooking classes as it has a demonstration kitchen behind the screen. The Empress had a small but nice library hidden away where you could exchange one of the books you had brought on board for one that someone else left. The Volendam tripled the size of the library, added a coffee bar, many internet stations, a DVD library ($3 a day unless you have a suite) and a decent sized library of books available for free check out. The Volendam has the usual collection of shops, bars and a casino. It does have 3 self-serve laundries. It does not have a climbing wall or equally flashy gimmick. It has two pools, the larger pool (still small) is chlorinated and the one that is on the bow and not surrounded by a wall is salt water since the water in the pool can splash into the ocean in a rougher sea. The roof on the main pool can be closed in case of rain. The Volendam also has a buffet restaurant on the Lido deck as well as an upscale restaurant ($30 per person not counting wine).

Before we left port we did a lifeboat drill where all of the passengers crowded onto 3rd deck where the lifeboats are located. Women and children are still first so the men lined up in the back and the ladies in the front. Pity the person who is claustrophobic as the ships passengers just fit on the 3rd deck. Since the lifejackets have the ship's cabin on them, the crew checked off most people as they arrived and then just called out the names of the ones they were missing. We were assured that there were plenty of lifeboats for all the passengers.

At 5 pm there was a Sail Away party on the deck in the stern of the ship. There was a live band and of course cocktails as we watched the Florida coast drift away. We waved at the Pilot boat and the people on land as we chatted with more people attending the Mac cruise including Janet from Apple's Education department. Some of the people on the Mac cruise had the cruise paid for by their jobs, which seems to make that audience somewhat more varied in age than the Shakespeare cruise. Eventually the party was broken up by strong winds that started blowing the chairs all over the deck (predominantly the ones without anyone in them).

At 7 pm the Shakespeare at Sea had a cocktail party to welcome everyone. We received our schedules, listened to welcoming remarks and met still more cruise mates.

At 8 pm we adjourned to the dining room for the late seating of dinner. The plan is to shuffle the tables each night among the Shakespeare at Sea attendees so that we can meet more people. I was more impressed with my dinner than Joan, so the quality seemed to depend somewhat on what you ordered.

At 10 pm Joan and I went to the evening's movie which was Evan Almighty. Only 2 other people attended although they had prepared popcorn for more like ten times that number.

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Chris Christensen
Amateur Traveler podcast
Tripinator - Travel 2.0