Tag Archives: Holland America

February 7, 2018 · 5:35 am

54 Days as Sea — Gustavia, St Barthélemy


MS Prinsendam in Gustavia, St Barthélemy

We reached our first port on the third day of our voyage, arriving at the French Caribbean island of St Barthélemy outside the capital city of Gustavia. In French, St Barthélemy is truncated to Saint-Barth, while much of the rest of the Caribbean and the U.S. calls it simply Saint Barts.

Gustavia, St Barthélemy

If it looks from the photos above that there are a lot of very expensive yachts here, that’s because we just happened to hit St. Barts during the annual Bucket Regatta yacht race. More on that later, but first let’s take a quick look around Gustavia:

Gustavia, St Barthélemy

Fellow cruisers in Gustavia

Gustavia, St Barthélemy

Gustavia, St Barthélemy

Gustavia color

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February 5, 2018 · 5:35 am

54 Days at Sea — Fort Lauderdale and MS Prinsendam


MS Prinsendam — Photo from Wikipedia article on MS Prinsendam

A few years ago Ursula and I had the distinct pleasure of cruising aboard Holland America’s smallest ship, the MS Prinsendam. And this voyage was for 54 days, involved two transatlantic crossings, and excursions into both the Mediterranean and Black Seas. MS Prinsendam also goes by the nickname Elegant Explorer, as she is often utilized on extended voyages to exotic destinations. MS Prinsendam has room for only about 830 passengers, and when we started this voyage we were but two out of some 650 passengers. Crew compliment is 440. So, how are the accommodations for 54 days? Our cabin was actually quite comfortable by most cruise ship standards, and both the bathroom and closet were larger than most. Here was our cabin:

Our living quarters for 54 days

Cabin bathroom

Cabin closet

We left Fort Lauderdale on March 24 and began our trek southeastward for the first of 27 scheduled ports of call, St Barthélemy, or “St. Barts” as it is often called. Until Wednesday, and St. Barts, here are images from our Fort Lauderdale sail-away:

Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale

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March 6, 2015 · 5:35 am

Fun Photo Friday — Favorite Photos of Hurricane Ridge


Drama in Rock

Drama in Rock

 Today we say farewell to my series on our transpacific adventure from Sydney to Seattle aboard Holland America’s MS Oosterdam.  Click on any image below to bring up today’s gallery.

Tree Cloud
Snowscape
My Dog Has Fleas!
Through the Mist

By the way, if you’re reading this and other material authored by me on The Destinary website, this post was not “Posted on (fill in the date) | By destinary” as they’ve been erroneously claiming; this material was in fact reposted.  The Destinary have also been claiming the right to do so, without links back to the original and without full attribution (“by RDoug” and a nonworking link is not proper attribution) with a rather bizarre interpretation of U.S. copyright law in which they claim I’m responsible for changing my RSS feed settings so that they cannot skim my material for commercial purposes.  That would make reading my blog less convenient for you, which I’m not willing to do.  As such, I’ll be running this little diatribe on all travel related posts until they cease and desist, along with this:

© 2015 R. Doug Wicker (RDougWicker.com)
All right reserved — that includes you, Destinary

Final note:  Considering The Destinary is a site listed as owned by Sonia Bosquez-Platt of Indianapolis Tour & Travel, you may want to rethink doing business with either her or her company.

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