Dave’s Live From Oosterdam 21-day Southern Caribbean, Jan. 29 – Feb. 19, 2016

Happy to read your posts, will be joining you on the next segment of the cruise . We board on 2/8. Will wish you a happy retirement in person. Like you we have been to all of the ports in the past but always enjoy reading about a new adventure. See you soon.

Sandy

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Congratulations on your retirement and have a great cruise.

wishing you many years of hapy retirement - i always enjoy your live froms and feel i am on the ship with you - if only.........................:)

Have a great cruise, Dave! You had a lovely day for sailaway.

Have fun

Bon Voyage!

Your sail away was beautiful - have a great cruise!

We will be reading everything you share, so thanks a bunch in advance.

:D

Thanks for posting. As a newbie who will be sailing on the Oosterdam Feb. 8, I eagerly look forward to your reports!

Congrats on your retirement...the Oosterdam was my retirement cruise also..but it was out of San Diego and only 7 days..but still wonderful...Thank you for doing a live from...always enjoy your posts!!

Yay! A live from! And happy retirement!

We are experiencing technical difficulties ...

Sorry everyone, but the internet on board is being a real *$@%head tonight. I am timing out of even getting to photobucket and I can barely raise CC. I will try again tomorrow.

Dave

Usually I find the Internet to be pretty good but it sucked big time on the eurodam in October. I hope it will improve for you, and for us:).

It is really sad and bad that Internet on HAL ships is not improving. Jeff on his blog mentioned that HAL executives seem to think that the Internet is OK ( Not his words but my interpretation). Those on the Amsterdam who are blogging on the World Cruise seem to have to log on in the middle of the night to get any kind of signal. But since it is satellite, what could be done?

Sorry to hear that you are having so much trouble with the Internet.

Well,he internet seems to be cooperating better this morning, so I will try to rejoin the blog narrative:

Friday, January 29, embarkation day (Cont.)

I was able to test out my new scanner on the On Location and some other papers. The scanner will take a bit of practice, but my first attempts weren’t bad. And, the results are more readable than regular photos. It will only take a maximum size of a letter-sized piece of paper, so the On Location is split into 6 files.

Here are the first four pages of the On Location:

More later,

Dave

Friday, January 29, embarkation day (Cont.)

Here are the other two On Location pages:

And, here are the front page of the Explorer booklet:

And the info sheet about the internet:

More later,

Dave

Have a great trip, Dave! As you sail by the condos tomorrow, if you notice a lot of air horn noise, it's for you. :D

Thanks! I went out as we were passing the condos, and I heard a lot of air horn toots. There seemed to be two sources. One I could not pinpoint, but the other seemed to be a couple sitting on beach chairs on the beach along the channel, in front of the condos.

I went out (from the Ocean Bar :D) to the promenade and stood in front of the glass shafts for the outside elevators. I was the doofus in the long-sleeved blue shirt, making the "C" sign from "YMCA" twice in succession, rest, repeat (I was trying to signify CC, for Cruise Critic.) I don't know if anyone from CC noticed, but a few people on the ship did ... and edged slowly away.

Dave

Hope your having fun Dave. What kind of Internet account to buy on board??? What were the options? I'm hoping for one of their newer plans after the dry dock in April.

The ship still has the old system -- I posted the info sheet above. But, if you are lucky, they will upgrade during the dry dock. I know several people liked the upgraded service on Westerdam and maybe you'll get that -- here's hoping, anyway.

Dave

Thanks! I went out as we were passing the condos, and I heard a lot of air horn toots. There seemed to be two sources. One I could not pinpoint, but the other seemed to be a couple sitting on beach chairs on the beach along the channel, in front of the condos.

 

I went out (from the Ocean Bar :D) to the promenade and stood in front of the glass shafts for the outside elevators. I was the doofus in the long-sleeved blue shirt, making the "C" sign from "YMCA" twice in succession, rest, repeat (I was trying to signify CC, for Cruise Critic.) I don't know if anyone from CC noticed, but a few people on the ship did ... and edged slowly away.

 

Dave

Didn't see you. :(

The instructions for Internet on your ship are much clearer to understand than what we had on the Eurodam. Very poor and we watched several people trying to get help from the librarian.

Enjoy your cruise and retirement! Congratulations! The weather certainty made you work for it but now you are looking at HMC! You always did a wonderful job with printed documents but the scanner really is very clear, like I was holding the On Location myself.

Now I am depressed...but we are getting above freezing today so I will be happy with small victories although there is plenty of snow and ice about.

thanks for doing another live thread. Too bad there is no unlimited Internet option.

Congratulations on your retirement and bon voyage! We did this cruise 2 years ago and especially loved the second leg a lot.

Enjoy,

Gina

The Netherlands

Congratulations on your retirement. Looking forward to the rest of your review!

Thx for the update. Disappointing to see that Hal isn't offering lunch in the MDR anymore.

That's an excellent scanner - very clear. A great addition to your reports.:)