Dave’s Live from Veendam 14-day Canada-New England, October 3-17, 2015

[Mtn2Sea]

Fantastic photos!! I've really enjoyed your excellent review.

[RetiredMustang]

... In Bar Harbor next time I highly recommend West Street Cafe and its lobster roll.

 

Friday, October 16, Bar Harbor (Cont.)

 

Thanks! We returned to Bar Harbor just before 11 a.m., so we decided to take your advice and went to the West St. Café for lunch. I passed on the lobster roll, but the lobster lunch special was delicious – a 1-1/4 pound lobster, fries and coleslaw:

 

 

 

 

 

More later,

Dave

[RetiredMustang]

Friday, October 16, Bar Harbor (Cont.)

 

We went to happy hour in the Ocean Bar one last time, and said goodbye to Leo, Henry, Edison and the others. Then, we went to keep our reservation at Canaletto. We had tried Canaletto when it first started, and for a few cruises thereafter. We found some dishes authentic, such as the antipasto and the osso bucco. The quality of the dishes varied a lot depending on which ship we were sailing.

 

Then, HAL started that “spartire” sharing menu, and since we like vastly different things, we never went after that. Well, because we had the Dine-Around free dinner at Canaletto, we decided to try it and booked for this, the last night of the cruise (frankly, we thought, it had to be better than the MDR menu, see below).

 

So, we had dinner at Canaletto. And during our dinner conversation, we agreed that what HAL really needs is a good Italian restaurant. If they can get world-class chefs like Jonnie Boer and Jacques Torres, why can’t they get Mario Batalli or Lydia Bastianich to design a real menu and train staff? (A few years ago, I would have added Giada de Laurentis, but she moved to California and started making weird food). All of the authentic dishes were gone from the Canaletto menu.

 

For antipasti, I had the zuppa de pesce, which turned out to be chunky tomato soup with a bit of fish, bay scallops and squid (and one mussel) in it: not much at all like the real thing. DW had the salumi plate, which was mainly pretty dry copa, along with salty Spanish olives from a jar. Since we liked different things, the large plate had to be something we could agree on, so we chose the spaghetti Bolognese, which seemed like the closest it came to Bologna was an Irish pub in Munich. It was not bad food, don’t get me wrong – but anything real Italian has been carefully wrung out of the menu. Please HAL, call Mario or Lydia or someone who knows real Italian.

 

OK, enough cranky old guy rant, here is what we missed in the MDR:

 

 

 

 

More later,

Dave

Edited October 16, 2015 by RetiredMustang

[RetiredMustang]

Thanks for timing your cruise properly. I'm in transit to Fort Lauderdale so I'm happy not to miss anything. Hope everything went well this morning.

 

Thanks much for cruising with us. I hope you enjoy Eurodam as much as we have on previous cruise. BTW, one time early on we were in the Silk Den bar, and someone said she enjoyed the bar so much the first few days before the riff-raff discovered it (I didn't break it to her that I was Riff and DW was Raff, but she was not there a couple of days later :D). Seriously, the Silk Den is an oasis of calm most days (until the riff-raff discover it :rolleyes:).

 

Enjoy your cruise!

 

Dave

[cruz chic]

Thanks much for cruising with us. I hope you enjoy Eurodam as much as we have on previous cruise. BTW, one time early on we were in the Silk Den bar, and someone said she enjoyed the bar so much the first few days before the riff-raff discovered it (I didn't break it to her that I was Riff and DW was Raff, but she was not there a couple of days later :D). Seriously, the Silk Den is an oasis of calm most days (until the riff-raff discover it :rolleyes:).

 

Enjoy your cruise!

 

Dave

 

Thank you. I think the eurodam is my favorite ship. I'm happy to say I made it to Florida and so did my loved one (suitcase).

 

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this thread. It was always the first thing I looked for daily. With this cruise being so port intensive I'm sure it was quite the struggle to keep it up. Today's pics are great. I love that park.

 

I'm sorry you didn't like Canaletto. I thought it to be quite good on the Veendam. I can't really do pasta most of the time as it bothers me so I had the fish and also the veal. They cut it down portion wise for one for me. I've never been to Italy, never mind live there so I'm likely not the best judge.

[SJSULIBRARIAN]

Thanks Retired Mustang for your gorgeous photographs and your descriptions of your cruise. I very much enjoyed them.

[Cruise_More_Often]

Dave, once again your pictures are wonderful. You have convinced us to take that hiking excursion next August. And your pictures have almost convinced us to switch our cruise from August to October.

 

The last time we had dinner in Canaletto, we also had trouble deciding what to eat. The service was so slow that we couldn't wait for dessert to get out of there (on the Westerdam last summer), so we didn't repeat it on our recent Maasdam cruise.

 

We really didn't care for the last night's menu either. In fact, our server mentioned to us before we even sat down that the alternate menu was available. It made me think many others didn't care for it either. Not one thing on that menu was appealing, and I did mention it on our post-cruise survey (the only negative thing I had to say).

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your trip with us. It has been so much fun, and I'll miss your daily posts.

[RetiredMustang]

Saturday, October 17, Debarkation Day

 

I’m using up my last few minutes before they shut down the internet.

 

We were happy to learn that Boston has expedited debarkation, and since we met all the requirements, we asked for and received that option. The information provided to us indicates that we should expect to depart about 8:15 or so. That leaves plenty of time for us to catch a cab to South Street station to catch an Amtrak train back to D.C., and then a short cab ride home to Arlington, VA.

 

I will check in later tonight or tomorrow to let you know how debarkation went.

 

More later,

Dave

[Heartgrove]

I hope that the debarkation went as smoothly as ours in Boston. We really enjoyed re-living our cruise through yours. I'm also glad that Hurricane Joaquin didn't impact your B2B.

[Cruising-along]

Safe travels home and thank you again for your wonderful review and photos!

[RetiredMustang]

Saturday, October 17, Debarkation Day

 

Well, that was a smooth operation. About 7:50 we took all our stuff and took the elevator to deck 6, where a ship's rep directed us to the line for expedited. About 10 minutes later, we were released. Since we had cleared CBP in Bar Harbor yesterday, all we had to do was hand in our customs form to the official at the cruise terminal and we were done.

 

We walked out to the taxi stand, got a cab right away and were at Boston South station in time to get tickets and board an 8:40 Amtrak train to D.C. We arrived in D.C. about 4:30 and again got a cab right away and were home in Arlington just before 5 p.m.

 

Now, we are doing the mail sort, laundry sort, etc., etc., but I wanted to come back to the thread to let you know how it went this morning. The Veendam staff really had it well organized.

 

That wraps up this blog, pending any more questions. (I just looked at some of the photos on my larger home computer screen, and they seem huge compared to what I was looking at on the netbook. It showed some good results from my new camera for outdoor shots, but also pointed up that I really need to work on a solution for text things. :D)

 

I had a great time, and really enjoyed our port-intensive cruise. Thanks for coming along (and for putting up with some of my biased and cranky opinions).

 

Dave

[swin26]

Welcome home and thank you for your reports.

[cruz chic]

Glad you made it home and back to reality. Thx for all your hard work.

[alsas]

Loved your journey thank you for posting

[SJSULIBRARIAN]

Thanks for a great report.

[Stratheden]

Thanks Dave. Grateful to you for the time and $$$ you spend on your reports. I really enjoy the read

[retiretwo]

Like everyone else, I REALLY enjoyed getting to share your cruise. I never thought I'd enjoy the New England cruise, but after this I may have to add that to the list! Thanks for the great pictures and sometimes hilarious narration. Until next time...

[Seafoam Green]

Thank you for such a thorough sharing of your cruise. The info you provided gives us more of an idea of day-to-day on a HAL cruise as we look forward to our first time cruising with HAL next March.

 

:D

[erewhon]

Dave, have enjoyed your review and fabulous photos, Thank you.

[kazu]

our thanks to you Dave for being kind enough to take us a long and let us share with you.

 

A great thread again and as always, so well done. many thanks :)