dakrewser
October 15th, 2004, 12:08 PM
From the Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/traveloutdoors/2002062440_cruiselede17.html):
As we cruised through the Baltic Sea, the ship's beautician took one look at my hair and winced.
I was having a bad-hair day. Maybe a bad-hair year, judging by the pained look she couldn't quite hide.
On a Northern European cruise aboard Holland America's Noordam, I had unleashed my Type A tendencies and joined in almost every activity the ship had to offer, including the "Frustrated with Your Hair" seminar.
Line-dancing class? Count me in.
Top-deck volleyball? I was there — although the Spanish guys half my age sweetly humiliated me in every game.
Ice-carving demonstration. Bingo games. Geography trivia contests. Fight-the-flab exercise class. I did them all.
I sped from deck to deck, clutching the ship's daily activity schedule. When I finally ended up in the hair seminar, incongruously held in a corner of the Crow's Nest bar, shipboard life had turned into a surreal blur.
Outside, the rain splattered on the gun-metal sea on what passed for a summer day in the far north on the Scandinavia/Russia cruise. Inside, a flock of middle-aged women lamented: "My hair's oily. It's thinning. I can't do anything with it."
The beautician nodded sympathetically at each of us, suggesting hair cuts and products (conveniently available a few decks down in the shipboard beauty salon).
"My hair's pretty dry," I chirped, sitting up straight in the lounge's comfy armchair. The beautician fingered my hair and sighed: "Well, when it gets to this state ... "
On the other side of the bar, a group of guys looked like they were having a lot more fun at a wine-tasting.
"Maybe I should just cut it all off," I chortled — and trotted off to join the men in a little merlot.
The sightseeing blitz
There were, of course, passengers who did none of the above on the 10-day cruise. They wisely saved their energy for serious sightseeing in ports of call along the way, of which there were a great many.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_clear.gifRemember that old movie "If It's Tuesday, It Must be Belgium" about Americans on a sightseeing blitz? This was the waterborne equivalent. The ship sailed by night and docked by day; most mornings, we'd wake up to a new city to explore. Apart from two full days at sea (when I maniacally tried almost everything the ship had to offer), it was a cruise that mostly attracted people who wanted to see the ports, not hang around on board.
Like most Scandinavia/Russia sailings, the cruise began and ended in Copenhagen with stops at Helsinki, Finland; Visby and Stockholm, in Sweden; Tallinn, the Estonian capital; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Warnemunde, a German seaside resort.
The visits were quick and superficial, just a day in most ports but, thankfully, two days in St. Petersburg. Yet with no worries about where to stay, where to eat, or how to get around, the cruise was an easy and efficient way to get a taste of many places.
There was, however, one big problem. After my blitz of shipboard activities and frenetic sightseeing, I needed a long cruise to nowhere to recuperate.
Calm life aboard
Going on cruises is, for me, traveling against type. Partying crowds and group tours leave me cold. Flashy 10-story atriums, the hallmark of the new mega ships, and glitzy floor shows are not what I seek.
Thankfully, the cruises of Seattle-based Holland America are known for a more sedate atmosphere and older crowd. The young party animals go for Mexican and Caribbean cruises on flashier ships.
On my July sailing aboard the 1,200-passenger Noordam, a classic (i.e. no glitzy atrium) 20-year-old ship, there was a congenial and low-key crowd of mainly North Americans and some Europeans and Australians. Many were 50-plus couples but there was, thankfully, a sprinkling of families with teenagers. That kept my 14-year-old daughter happy.
She and a dozen other teens formed a merry little posse, hanging out in the evenings in a counselor-supervised teen club room; going to shipboard movies; and swooping in on the dessert bar, especially when the chocolate-chip cookies emerged hot from the oven. They'd check out the ship's nightly floor shows, where a half-dozen perky singers and dancers would get the crowd going, sort of, before everyone toddled off to bed to rest up for the next day's sightseeing.
Deckside pleasures
One hot and sunny afternoon, a rarity on our unusually crummy-weather cruise, I took a break from my shipboard hyper-activities and flopped in a deck chair next to three prim, elderly Englishwomen. They were fussing over their chair placement and attire.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_clear.gif"I shall have to get my straw hat," mused one.
"It is a rather bright sun," agreed her friend. "Mustn't get my legs burned." She aligned her deck chair just so, and placed her sensible lace-up shoes beneath. Then all three whipped out their MP3 players, tuned into their music and dozed.
I left them to nap in the sea breeze and joined the more energetic passengers promenading around an outside deck.
On the wide teak deck that wrapped the ship, there was a constant trickle of walkers. Five circuits made a mile. Some people strode vigorously, counting each lap; a few young things jogged. Others strolled, wine glasses in hand, in tuxedoes and long gowns after formal dinner nights.
I became one of a handful of regular deck walkers. Even on gray, chilly evenings, it was almost hypnotically relaxing to walk round and round as the waves and clouds scudded past. We were so far north for much of the cruise — almost the same latitude as Anchorage — that it was light until almost midnight.
Some evenings, there was shoreline scenery, not just the Baltic seascape, to enjoy. Near Stockholm, the Noordam nosed through a web of islands where seaside cottages were tucked into tree-lined coves. I wanted to leap overboard and live in one of the cozy hideaways.
Along the Russian coast, I stopped walking and joined dozens of history buffs leaning on the rails to stare at Kronstadt, a grim Russian naval fortress established in the 1700s on an island near St. Petersburg. The cradle of a failed 1920s Russian rebellion, nowadays a few warships and submarines hunker at Kronstadt's docks.
In Warnemunde, on Germany's north coast, I walked the deck as tugboats expertly maneuvered the Noordam in a waterway barely wide enough for the ship to turn. Townspeople lined the dock and waved as the ship headed to sea, its whistle blasting to warn off little ferries and pleasure boats scuttling across the channel.
Walk to eat
My nightly deck walks weren't just pleasurable, however. They were a necessity, given how much I was eating.
As on all big cruise ships, there were endless mounds of food, from lavish seafood buffets and formal dinners to afternoon tea and room service whenever you wanted it. The calorie killer was the special dessert buffet one night — a delectable, 50-foot-long spread of cakes, pastries and chocolates.
Some experienced cruisers sniffed that the Noordam food was nothing special compared to other cruise lines. Yet their plates were always piled high. One guy who'd been complaining at breakfast (What? he whined. No waffles?) had a coronary-inducing mound of bacon, cheese, pastries and eggs.
I thought the food was great, and the chefs and waiters, most of them young Indonesian men who worked endless hours and lived somewhere in the bowels of the ship, were unfailingly helpful and gracious. But not everything was great on the Noordam.
Holland America's new tipping policy — $10 per person a day automatically added to shipboard bills — had some passengers muttering.
Some shore excursions were high-priced and the guides not the best. And in my stateroom and some others, sludge in the plumbing system sent discolored water spurting out of the bathroom taps several times.
"Oh, just something caught in the pipes," a staffer at the purser's office said airly when I called to complain about being doused in dark gray water during a shower.
Perhaps plumbing and other aging-boat issues are why Holland America is offloading the 20-year-old Noordam to a smaller European cruise company this fall. A newer Holland America ship will sail the Scandinavia/Russia route next summer.
Too bad. The Noordam's somewhat intimate size — at least compared with the new wave of 3,000-plus passenger ships — and old-fashioned style and tranquility made it just right for a passenger like me.
I'll just have to find a sister ship — although one without the gray-colored water.
Kristin Jackson: 206-464-2271 or kjackson@seattletimes.com (kjackson@seattletimes.com)
As we cruised through the Baltic Sea, the ship's beautician took one look at my hair and winced.
I was having a bad-hair day. Maybe a bad-hair year, judging by the pained look she couldn't quite hide.
On a Northern European cruise aboard Holland America's Noordam, I had unleashed my Type A tendencies and joined in almost every activity the ship had to offer, including the "Frustrated with Your Hair" seminar.
Line-dancing class? Count me in.
Top-deck volleyball? I was there — although the Spanish guys half my age sweetly humiliated me in every game.
Ice-carving demonstration. Bingo games. Geography trivia contests. Fight-the-flab exercise class. I did them all.
I sped from deck to deck, clutching the ship's daily activity schedule. When I finally ended up in the hair seminar, incongruously held in a corner of the Crow's Nest bar, shipboard life had turned into a surreal blur.
Outside, the rain splattered on the gun-metal sea on what passed for a summer day in the far north on the Scandinavia/Russia cruise. Inside, a flock of middle-aged women lamented: "My hair's oily. It's thinning. I can't do anything with it."
The beautician nodded sympathetically at each of us, suggesting hair cuts and products (conveniently available a few decks down in the shipboard beauty salon).
"My hair's pretty dry," I chirped, sitting up straight in the lounge's comfy armchair. The beautician fingered my hair and sighed: "Well, when it gets to this state ... "
On the other side of the bar, a group of guys looked like they were having a lot more fun at a wine-tasting.
"Maybe I should just cut it all off," I chortled — and trotted off to join the men in a little merlot.
The sightseeing blitz
There were, of course, passengers who did none of the above on the 10-day cruise. They wisely saved their energy for serious sightseeing in ports of call along the way, of which there were a great many.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_clear.gifRemember that old movie "If It's Tuesday, It Must be Belgium" about Americans on a sightseeing blitz? This was the waterborne equivalent. The ship sailed by night and docked by day; most mornings, we'd wake up to a new city to explore. Apart from two full days at sea (when I maniacally tried almost everything the ship had to offer), it was a cruise that mostly attracted people who wanted to see the ports, not hang around on board.
Like most Scandinavia/Russia sailings, the cruise began and ended in Copenhagen with stops at Helsinki, Finland; Visby and Stockholm, in Sweden; Tallinn, the Estonian capital; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Warnemunde, a German seaside resort.
The visits were quick and superficial, just a day in most ports but, thankfully, two days in St. Petersburg. Yet with no worries about where to stay, where to eat, or how to get around, the cruise was an easy and efficient way to get a taste of many places.
There was, however, one big problem. After my blitz of shipboard activities and frenetic sightseeing, I needed a long cruise to nowhere to recuperate.
Calm life aboard
Going on cruises is, for me, traveling against type. Partying crowds and group tours leave me cold. Flashy 10-story atriums, the hallmark of the new mega ships, and glitzy floor shows are not what I seek.
Thankfully, the cruises of Seattle-based Holland America are known for a more sedate atmosphere and older crowd. The young party animals go for Mexican and Caribbean cruises on flashier ships.
On my July sailing aboard the 1,200-passenger Noordam, a classic (i.e. no glitzy atrium) 20-year-old ship, there was a congenial and low-key crowd of mainly North Americans and some Europeans and Australians. Many were 50-plus couples but there was, thankfully, a sprinkling of families with teenagers. That kept my 14-year-old daughter happy.
She and a dozen other teens formed a merry little posse, hanging out in the evenings in a counselor-supervised teen club room; going to shipboard movies; and swooping in on the dessert bar, especially when the chocolate-chip cookies emerged hot from the oven. They'd check out the ship's nightly floor shows, where a half-dozen perky singers and dancers would get the crowd going, sort of, before everyone toddled off to bed to rest up for the next day's sightseeing.
Deckside pleasures
One hot and sunny afternoon, a rarity on our unusually crummy-weather cruise, I took a break from my shipboard hyper-activities and flopped in a deck chair next to three prim, elderly Englishwomen. They were fussing over their chair placement and attire.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/art/ui/dot_clear.gif"I shall have to get my straw hat," mused one.
"It is a rather bright sun," agreed her friend. "Mustn't get my legs burned." She aligned her deck chair just so, and placed her sensible lace-up shoes beneath. Then all three whipped out their MP3 players, tuned into their music and dozed.
I left them to nap in the sea breeze and joined the more energetic passengers promenading around an outside deck.
On the wide teak deck that wrapped the ship, there was a constant trickle of walkers. Five circuits made a mile. Some people strode vigorously, counting each lap; a few young things jogged. Others strolled, wine glasses in hand, in tuxedoes and long gowns after formal dinner nights.
I became one of a handful of regular deck walkers. Even on gray, chilly evenings, it was almost hypnotically relaxing to walk round and round as the waves and clouds scudded past. We were so far north for much of the cruise — almost the same latitude as Anchorage — that it was light until almost midnight.
Some evenings, there was shoreline scenery, not just the Baltic seascape, to enjoy. Near Stockholm, the Noordam nosed through a web of islands where seaside cottages were tucked into tree-lined coves. I wanted to leap overboard and live in one of the cozy hideaways.
Along the Russian coast, I stopped walking and joined dozens of history buffs leaning on the rails to stare at Kronstadt, a grim Russian naval fortress established in the 1700s on an island near St. Petersburg. The cradle of a failed 1920s Russian rebellion, nowadays a few warships and submarines hunker at Kronstadt's docks.
In Warnemunde, on Germany's north coast, I walked the deck as tugboats expertly maneuvered the Noordam in a waterway barely wide enough for the ship to turn. Townspeople lined the dock and waved as the ship headed to sea, its whistle blasting to warn off little ferries and pleasure boats scuttling across the channel.
Walk to eat
My nightly deck walks weren't just pleasurable, however. They were a necessity, given how much I was eating.
As on all big cruise ships, there were endless mounds of food, from lavish seafood buffets and formal dinners to afternoon tea and room service whenever you wanted it. The calorie killer was the special dessert buffet one night — a delectable, 50-foot-long spread of cakes, pastries and chocolates.
Some experienced cruisers sniffed that the Noordam food was nothing special compared to other cruise lines. Yet their plates were always piled high. One guy who'd been complaining at breakfast (What? he whined. No waffles?) had a coronary-inducing mound of bacon, cheese, pastries and eggs.
I thought the food was great, and the chefs and waiters, most of them young Indonesian men who worked endless hours and lived somewhere in the bowels of the ship, were unfailingly helpful and gracious. But not everything was great on the Noordam.
Holland America's new tipping policy — $10 per person a day automatically added to shipboard bills — had some passengers muttering.
Some shore excursions were high-priced and the guides not the best. And in my stateroom and some others, sludge in the plumbing system sent discolored water spurting out of the bathroom taps several times.
"Oh, just something caught in the pipes," a staffer at the purser's office said airly when I called to complain about being doused in dark gray water during a shower.
Perhaps plumbing and other aging-boat issues are why Holland America is offloading the 20-year-old Noordam to a smaller European cruise company this fall. A newer Holland America ship will sail the Scandinavia/Russia route next summer.
Too bad. The Noordam's somewhat intimate size — at least compared with the new wave of 3,000-plus passenger ships — and old-fashioned style and tranquility made it just right for a passenger like me.
I'll just have to find a sister ship — although one without the gray-colored water.
Kristin Jackson: 206-464-2271 or kjackson@seattletimes.com (kjackson@seattletimes.com)