Caribbean Journey — Boarding Nieuw Statendam in Ft Lauderdale (2022)
We arrived in Ft Lauderdale on March 15 and had a fun dinner at an Irish Pub near the port. On March 16 we boarded the Nieuw Statendam for a three week cruise they called the “Southern Caribbean Wayfarer." Here is the itinerary (don’t forget that if you hover your mouse over a picture the caption will appear):
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Day |
Date |
Itinerary |
Arrival |
Departure |
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WED |
16MAR22 |
Sail from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, US |
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4:00pm |
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THU |
17MAR22 |
Sea Day |
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FRI |
18MAR22 |
Sea Day |
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SAT |
19MAR22 |
Philipsburg, Sint Maarten |
8:00am |
4:00pm |
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SUN |
20MAR22 |
Castries, Saint Lucia |
8:00am |
4:00pm |
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SUN |
20MAR22 |
Scenic Cruising Soufriere Bay |
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MON |
21MAR22 |
Bridgetown, Barbados |
8:00am |
5:00pm |
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TUE |
22MAR22 |
Roseau, Dominica |
8:00am |
5:00pm |
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WED |
23MAR22 |
Basseterre, St Kitts and Nevis |
9:00am |
6:00pm |
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THU |
24MAR22 |
St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. |
8:00am |
5:00pm |
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FRI |
25MAR22 |
Sea Day |
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SAT |
26MAR22 |
Half Moon Cay, Bahamas |
8:00am |
3:00pm |
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SUN |
27MAR22 |
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, US |
7:00am |
4:00pm |
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MON |
28MAR22 |
Half Moon Cay, Bahamas |
8:00am |
3:00pm |
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TUE |
29MAR22 |
Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos |
10:00am |
5:00pm |
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WED |
30MAR22 |
Amber Cove, Dominican Republic |
8:00am |
5:00pm |
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THU |
31MAR22 |
Sea Day |
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FRI |
01APR22 |
Kralendijk, Bonaire |
8:00am |
11:00pm |
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SAT |
02APR22 |
Willemstad, Curacao |
8:00am |
11:00pm |
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SUN |
03APR22 |
Oranjestad, Aruba |
8:00am |
7:00pm |
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MON |
04APR22 |
Sea Day |
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TUE |
05APR22 |
Sea Day |
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WED |
06APR22 |
Debark Ship Fort Lauderdale, Florida, US |
7:00am |
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Commissioned in 2019, Nieuw Statendam is about three years old. But most of that time the entire cruise industry was shut down so its actual time at sea when we boarded was probably closer to a year and a half. This is by far the youngest and the largest ship we have sailed on with Holland America. In passenger capacity it is, at almost 2700, about twice the size of the Amsterdam and three times the size of the Prinsendam (both of which were, sadly, sold during the pandemic). During the post-pandemic return to sea, however, cruise ships are not sailing at capacity and Nieuw Statendam was at only about half capacity while we were onboard, about the same as Amsterdam. It still felt like a lot of people though, and it’s hard to imagine what it must be like when this ship is full. Even with fewer people the distance from the main dining room in the aft section to our cabin in the forward section of deck 5 (“Gershwin Deck”) seemed almost long enough to walk off all the calories!
Many of the spaces on this ship are similar to other HAL ships we have been on, only bigger. The atrium is lighted in purple and has no multistory central sculpture. The crow’s nest has the usual shipwide array of front facing windows, but it also houses the shore excursion folks and a couple of interactive displays about the ports and sea routes. There is also a section with some books (nothing like the old libraries HAL used to have), puzzles and games. The lido pool area has two floors of seating and some casual restaurants with a huge video screen at one end of the pool. We spent a lot of time in this area reading, with our mp3 players plugged into our ears to blot out the ship’s continual soundtrack.
We ate most of our dinners, and breakfasts on sea days, in the Main Dining Room, which had unusual curved pillars holding up the second floor. During the first leg of our back-to-back we had a table upstairs by the rail, but there were several hundred fewer passengers on the second leg so they closed the upstairs and everyone had to be seated downstairs. Presty, who many of you may know from world cruises, was the dining room manager. He recognized our faces right away and was very solicitous, arranging a table by the windows for us when we were moved downstairs. We had arranged to share a table with our world cruise tablemates Bob & Judy, and were most disappointed when a non-Covid medical issue made them miss our cruise at almost the last minute.
The ship had plentiful alternative dining options, most for no additional cost. Although it normally costs extra, we had a dinner at the Pinnacle and one at Tamarind gratis because we are 5 star mariners. Both were excellent, but Tamarind is more exotic and interesting. Our go-to place for lunch was the Grand Dutch Café, where we enjoyed the Dutch pea soup (not quite as good as when served on deck while visiting icy places) and superb ham and cheese sandwiches. They also had humongous desserts, including one similar to an éclair and a chocolate chip cookie that fills a dessert plate. On the second floor of the LIdo area we enjoyed pizza & sandwiches from the New York Deli & Pizza on one end and Dive-In hamburgers on the other. The hamburgers are thick & juicy at the Dive-in, but we don’t like their fries or special sauce nearly as much as others do. We have enjoyed their huge hot dogs on other ships, but this one had no sauerkraut or brown mustard so what was the point. Near the Dive-in was a gelato bar, which was not free. We love gelato, but theirs was good rather than great, and once you have had great gelato (which we have in Italy, Spain and New Zealand) good is kind of disappointing. We had lunch in the Lido buffet a few times as well, where they were carving rare strip loins that can be put between two pieces of bread to make a wonderful sandwich.
Music venues also were plentiful on board the ship. The Main Stage had shows most nights, usually featuring the ship’s dance company or its four man singing quartet. The main stage here is surrounded by huge video screens stretching back along either side of the audience and it rather overwhelmed the unfortunate performers on stage. There was no live music in these programs; instead the music was recorded along with large displays on the screens moving with the music. We found this all very distracting and much preferred the performances we have seen on other HAL ships focused on live musicians and performers on stage.
HAL’s music walk, on all of the larger ships, consists of performing groups in four different genres. Lincoln Center Stage features a classical piano quartet and alternates in the same venue with the BB King Blues Club. It was a lovely venue with a glass fronted balcony where we usually sat. Billboard Onboard was a lounge with two pianists playing and singing together (not “dueling,” as is sometimes said) and the Rolling Stone Rock Room across the hall housed a really good young band with a very fine lead guitar. We visited all of these venues except the BB King (a matter of timing rather than taste), but the Lincoln Center Stage received most of our attention because their classical performances were really outstanding. We were told that these musicians auditioned separately for the gig and were formed into a group after being hired by HAL’s music contractor. Their repertoire was determined by the contractor who employed them. We had different quartets on the two legs of our cruise, but both played exactly the same shows with almost exactly the same pieces. We don’t see how that could work on a Grand Voyage, since a week’s worth of repertoire wouldn’t go very far on a three or four month cruise.
As on other HAL ships, there is a lot of art scattered around the Nieuw Statendam. But while other ships we have been on have antique or classic looking artworks from around the world, this ship’s collection leans heavily toward the pop art genre. The ship has something of a musical theme, though it is not overdone. For example, some of the hallway carpets have images of musical instruments woven in along one wall. Among the musically themed art were a portrait of Jimi Hendrix, a reflective infinity piano hanging in an elevator bay, a melting guitar sculpture by the elevators on another floor, a sculpture made of cymbals in the front of the Main Dining room, and two huge violin hangings covered in what looked like Delft ware on the wall behind the front desk.
There were some artworks on walls composed of unusual media. A copy of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night on a stairway landing turns out, when viewed up close, to be made of small plastic toys and other items, and a portrait of Van Gogh was similarly made. Some soft stripey portraits of women turn out on closer inspection to be painted on feathers. There was also an elaborate painting in a classical style on a surf board.
Elevator bays on several decks had displays of ordinary items wrapped in what appears to be needlepoint.
A very interesting photo was on a wall near the Lincoln Center Stage. If you look only at the center section it looks like a large wood paneled room lit by skylights. But viewing the picture as a whole makes clear that it is something entirely different.
Near the atrium was a sculpture of a lady’s head with a very elaborate hairdo topped by a sailing ship apparently under attack by a giant squid. And near some elevators was large copy of Michelangelo’s David made of glass (or possibly plastic). If you look closely in his lowered hand is an iphone with which he is taking a selfie. Quite unusual.
We have no pictures of it, but we can’t end a discussion of the ship without some mention of the Casino. It seems that a few weeks before we sailed HAL decided to make the first leg of our back-to-back a gambler’s cruise, without informing the other passengers. This means that they invited casino mavens from previous cruises to sail on this one at a big discount or even for free, as we understand it. Presumably this is a money maker for HAL since all those rooms would have been empty and not generating revenue anyway because the ship’s passenger complement was so limited during the post-pandemic restart. This meant there were about 300 more passengers on the first leg of the cruise than on the second. To make matters worse, at the same time HAL ended the prohibition on smoking in the casino that has been in place since the return of cruising. The result was that the casino was very crowded most of the time with many people smoking.
The unpleasant smell from all of this smoking floated down the open stairway to the music walk, where it was often impossible to enjoy the music. Worse, there was an increase in folks being quarantined for COVID near the end of the first leg of the cruise (they don’t tell you how many), and it seemed to us that a casino jam packed with people sitting cheek to jowl without masks and blowing smoke around was probably a Covid superspreader. Some passengers we talked to were forced to move to new staterooms just a day or two before we reached Ft Lauderdale so that HAL could establish a separate quarantine area on a couple of decks (since passengers had been quarantined on earlier cruises and there were so many empty cabins on the ship, why couldn’t they plan for this possibility by setting aside a quarantine section before the cruise?). We found HAL’s handling of all this to be very disappointing, reflecting either a failure to think it through or a reaching for every last dollar regardless of the safety and enjoyment of the other passengers.
So that’s enough about the ship. We set sail heading south to the islands that are the main point of the trip.
South Pacific update (I hope)
This is our first try at an email posting. We are currently in the future, having crossed the international date line a couple of days ago (I would share a picture of it, but of course it is invisible). Somewhat surprisingly, we made it ashore to all of the South Pacific islands on the itinerary. All but Tahiti are tender ports & Rarotonga & Niue lack outer reefs that create lagoons with calm water for easy tendering. So those two islands are often missed because of bad weather or rough sea conditions. Boarding the tenders was pretty dicey on both of these days, especially at Rarotonga, but we did make it ashore. So that is probably a pretty good omen for the rest of the cruise.
For the last two days we have been sailing through a real gale, with wind speeds up to about 60 mph. The ship has really been rocking, both side to side & front to back. Actually, the captain says we are threading our way between two big storms, so we are getting it from both sides. The weather on our port days has been mostly quite good, so we can’t really complain about bad weather when we are confined to the ship anyway. Day after tomorrow we will be in Auckland, New Zealand, which is actually the last of the Polynesian Islands we will visit on this cruise.
I have attached a couple of pictures, so we will see if they get posted when I send this. The first is a view of the island of Moorea from Tahiti. The second is the early morning sail in to Bora Bora.
Monaco
On April 17 we docked in Port Hercules in the middle of Monaco (legend has it that Hercules passed through here & made the area habitable by getting rid of all the wild beasts). Monaco is the world’s second smallest sovereign state (after the Vatican), covering less than a square mile. But it is also the world’s most densely populated state with some 37,000 residents (just about a third of whom are citizens). It is only about 5 miles from Italy but is surrounded by France on all land borders, and by treaty France is responsible for the defense & foreign policy of Monaco. Although not a member of the European Union, the Euro is Monaco’s official currency. Monaco is, of course, famous as a playground for the rich & famous, so the harbor is full of (big) yachts, the streets are full of fancy cars & everything is expensive.
It was a gray rainy day, one of the very few we have had on this trip. Mary was still feeling pretty bad from the illness she picked up in Dubai, the previous two days in Rome & Florence had been pretty taxing & we were planning a big day in Barcelona the next day. Monaco really wasn’t a priority for us, so we decided to take it easy & just took the HOHO bus tour around the city/country. We didn’t hop off the bus at all, though, so all the pictures in this episode were taken either from the open top of the bus or from the ship. Thankfully the heavy rain didn’t begin until just after we got back to the ship.
Our first stop was at the Casino of Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo (Mount Charles) is one of the five districts of Monaco. The casino was first built in the mid 19th century because the ruling family was in dire financial straits. It worked: they aren’t in any danger of bankruptcy any more. You have probably seen James Bond walking up the steps to the entrance in Casino Royale or Never Say Never Again. The back part of the casino, facing the harbor, is the opera house, built a few years later. And on one side of casino square next to the casino is the Hotel de Paris, built in 1863, very ritzy & expensive. The tennis ball decorations are to celebrate the 110th Monte Carlo Masters tennis tournament (actually held over the border in France), the final day of which was the day of our visit.
We rode through the narrow, sharply curving & hilly streets of the city to the Palace.
The Prince’s Palace was first built in 1191, but has been expanded, renovated & enhanced many times since then. Built on top of a huge rock overlooking the Mediterranean, it was initially a Genoese stronghold & you can still see some of the more castle-like walls at the edge of the rock. The Grimaldi family, Genoese noblemen who were on the losing side in a struggle for control for Genoa, captured it in 1297 & have ruled here most of the time ever since. The princes were absolute rulers until 1910, when a rather ineffectual parliament was established under a constitution granted by Prince Albert I in response to public unrest. But even today Prince Albert II is the dominant political power in Monaco & his offices & residence are in the Palace. His predecessor (& father) was Prince Rainier III, who famously married the movie star Grace Kelly (Albert’s mother) in 1956.
From the Palace grounds there were some stunning views of the harbor & the mountains. Next to the Palace on the edge of the rock cliff is a statue called “hommage aux colonies étrangères,” built in 1914 to honor the 25th year of the reign of Prince Albert I. Across the square from the Palace were some interesting buildings that look like they date from the 19th century. We drove on, down through an arched road, to St Nicholas Cathedral. It was built at the turn of the 20th century; Prince Rainier & Princess Grace are buried there.
We passed by the Oceanographic Museum. It was built in 1910 by Prince Albert I, who had an avid interest in the subject, and presided over from 1957 to 1988 by Jacques Cousteau. The collection inside has a first rate reputation, including an aquarium with more than 4,000 species of fish, but of course we didn’t see the inside. Outside the museum was a very colorful exhibit, but we have no idea what it was about.
The Monaco Grand Prix auto race was first run in 1929. It is a challenging course through the streets of the city, with hairpin turns, changing elevations & a tunnel. The 2016 race was to be at the end of May & they were already preparing when we were there, building viewing stands in several places on the water front. One of the excursions offered by HAL was to walk the course of the race (it might be a lot cheaper to buy a map & walk it yourself). We saw several of the viewing stands that were under construction (built anew every year).
Well that’s it for our short bus-top tour of Monaco. We returned to the ship & it then began raining pretty hard for most of the afternoon. We will leave you with a few pictures taken from the ship.
Please Stand By; We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties
It’s been a long time & we don’t want anyone to get the idea we have abandoned this blog or jumped ship or shipwrecked by a cyclone. We are continuing to sail through the beautiful South Pacific seas, taking lots of pictures & composing blog posts. Unfortunately, so far the internet connection has been woefully inadequate to upload postings with lots of pictures (which means lots of data). We can still receive email intermittently (my email works better than Mary’s) & we will still receive by email any comments that are posted on the blog. But blog postings just haven’t worked.
We will continue to try and hopefully will eventually be able to start posting actual voyage episodes to the blog. We don’t know when, but hopefully not too long. Rest assured that eventually all of the voyage will be posted. Meanwhile, for all of you currently buried under tons of snow (and particularly the one of you buried under that snow on our front yard), here is a teaser to keep you from changing to another channel. Those of you who have been here will recognize it; the rest will just have to tune in later to learn where this particular South Seas paradise is.
About This Blog (revised January, 2023)
*These are the voyages of Rick & Mary Bader. Our continuing mission: to boldly go where we have never gone before!*
*Note: Menu Button At The Top of the Page*
If you are reading this you probably already know that the “About This Blog” button will always bring up this post, in case you want to review the itinerary or the instructions for using the blog. There used to be two more buttons at the top, but it seems those are no longer permitted on this blog’s template. Workarounds:
* If you want to return to the most recent posting just put “www.baderjournal.com” into your web browser.
* If you want to see where the ship is at this minute put “www.seascanner.com/ships-position-[ship’s name] into your web browser, with the actual ship’s name (eg. Zaandam) substituting for the brackets at the end.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Welcome to Bader Journal, the travel blog of Rick & Mary Bader. That’s us, pictured at the top, in old travel pictures that will rotate randomly each time you open the blog, but have nothing to do with the content of the post appearing below them. This blog was created primarily for our family & friends but anyone who is interested is welcome to view it. We last set sail October 10, 2022 on a 71 day circumnavigation of Africa on the Holland America ship Zaandam. Here is a map of our itinerary:
Our posts typically contain a lot of pictures & text so they take some time to create. This can only be done on sea days, when we are on the ship & have leisure time. In addition, internet access on a cruise ship is very spotty & slow. During this voyage were unable, because of technical issues, to upload any postings to our blog. So we continued to compose blog posts as we went along (at a time when we could still remember fairly clearly what we did & what is in the pictures) but did not post any before we returned home at the end of the year.
If you want to be notified when new posts appear, read Part B below.
**One general caveat: please don’t take what is written here about the places we visit as authoritative. We do our best to be accurate but really we are mostly repeating things we have read or been told. You may sometimes note a skeptical tone when we tell you something we have heard but don’t necessarily believe, though even things we do believe sometimes turn out to be inaccurate. So, caveat emptor!
What follows is an outline of instructions for using the tools built into the blog. Use anything that is helpful to you & just ignore the rest.
A. Subscribing To Email Notifications Of New Postings:
If you scroll to the very bottom of your computer screen you will find several “widgets” in 4 columns. In the second column from the left (next to the calendar and above the orange RSS buttons) is a button to subscribe to email notifications of new postings. If you sign up you will receive an email right after a posting is published with a link to the new blog page, so you won’t have to waste time on the internet looking for one that isn’t yet there.
B. Navigating the Blog:
1. Google: The easiest way to find a particular post is to use Google. If you google “Bader Journal” & the place in which you are interested, the posting on this blog should be one of the first results listed (e.g. “bader journal rome” will bring up our posts about visiting Rome). If we have visited that place more than once, all those visits should appear in the google results.
2. Blog tools: At the bottom of your computer screen you will find several widgets (probably overkill) that may (or may not) be useful in navigating the blog:
a. In the left position is a calendar on which the posting dates of blog entries are blue. Click a blue date with your mouse and that day’s post(s) should pop up to the top of the blog.
b. Next to that is a section with three items. The first is the email subscription described above. The middle one has two orange buttons for subscribing to RSS feeds of the posts and/or the comments (We have no idea how well – if at all – those work). The bottom one is a search function that should allow you to find a previous posting by searching for a particular word or phrase in the text (e.g. “camel” or “Peru” or “Alhambra”).
c. In the right hand position is a list of the 5 most recent posts; click on one to bring it to the top.
d. Second from the right is an “Archives.” After the name of each month is the number of postings during that month. Click on a month to bring up that month’s blog postings. This is probably the easiest way to access all of one of our previous voyages on this blog, which I will list here as a sort of table of contents (note that the dates indicated are when the posts went up on the blog, not when we were sailing on the cruise):
— First South America & Antarctica Voyage posts can be found at December 2011 through March 2012:
![image[4]](https://baderjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/image4.png "image[4]")
— Grand Mediterranean Voyage posts can be found at March through October 2013:
— Southern Caribbean posts can be found at April through May 2014:
— Voyage Of The Vikings posts can be found at July through September, 2014:
— First World Cruise posts can be found at December, 2015, through July, 2016:
— Alaska Cruise costs can be found at August, 2017:
— Second World Cruise posts can be found at January through September, 2018:
— Second South America and Antarctica posts can can be found at January, 2019 through January, 2020:
— Caribbean Journey posts can be found at June and August, 2022:
BADER JOURNAL 