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Photo Blog of our Panama Canal Cruise - Full Transit


AryMay
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In the past, I have put together long, photo reviews of our cruises to post on Cruise Critic. I have gained so much from using these boards and felt like it was my way of paying back. But...for all of the work it took to do those reviews, they were not a good way to preserve the memories. After a short while, the reviews drift to the back pages of the forums, rarely to be seen again.

 

So...a few years ago I decided to start doing a blog instead. My main goal was to keep a journal of our travels, but also have a way of sharing what we have done with others.

 

This spring we did a full transit of the Panama Canal on the Holland America Zaandam. This was a 23-day cruise that started in Ft. Lauderdale and ended in Seattle. My blog posts cover every day, but primarily what we did on port days. This is the link to the first post and then you can use the archive list on the right hand side of the page (on the full web version) to navigate to other posts that you might be interested in.

 

Click Here: Photo Review of Zaandam Panama Canal Cruise

 

Here is a list of the ports we visited and what we did. Hopefully this might be of some help for those of you researching future cruises! Normally it is rare for us to book ship tours, but we had an abundance of OBC for this cruise and used it to purchase excursions. In some cases the tours were great and others...not so much.

 

I have done YouTube videos for most of our port days and the links will be at the top of each specific post.

 

 

Curacao - Irie Tours West Side Beach Hopping Tour

Puerto Caldera (Puntarenas) - Gio 8 in 1 Tour

Puerto Quetzal - Antigua on Your Own
(one of my favorite port days!!)

Puerto Chiapas - Banana Plantation & Rural Communities (HAL tour)

Hualtulco - Rural Communities & Traditions (HAL tour)

Manzanillo - Magical Pueblos (HAL tour)

Puerto Vallarta - Vallarta Food Tour

Cabo San Lucas - Coastal Highlights (HAL tour)

San Diego - USS Midway Museum

San Francisco - Self guided walking tour via MUNI transportation

Vancouver - Hop-on-Hop-Off Bus

Please let me know if you have any questions...I would be happy to try and answer if I can.

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  • 1 month later...

OP, thanks for posting. Enjoyed your blog. We have a few of the same ports. Did you enjoy being on that long of a cruise? We are booked for 15 nights from LA to Tampa. We have done 10 nights and loved it so I think we will be fine.

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OP, thanks for posting. Enjoyed your blog. We have a few of the same ports. Did you enjoy being on that long of a cruise? We are booked for 15 nights from LA to Tampa. We have done 10 nights and loved it so I think we will be fine.

 

I very much enjoyed the 23-day cruise!! I remember getting this wonderful feeling at the end of the first week thinking...we still have over 2 more weeks left!

 

Having a nice balance between the sea days and port days also helped. I loved our experiences in each port, but after 2 or 3 ports in a row I was ready for some quieter days at sea. I'm pretty sure I would enjoy an even longer cruise and hopefully I will get that chance some day!

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