'Twas the Week Before Christmas - Live from the Eurodam

[MaxeyMom]

I am new to Evernote---my politically correct way of saying I am an idiot. I am able to access all your wonderful downloads individually but is there a central file on Evernote where they all reside? Or do you need to click on the individual links each time?

 

Please convey to Poohby Joe that the while HAL bear is cute, there is no competition there. Poohby wins hands down!

[POA1]

I am new to Evernote---my politically correct way of saying I am an idiot. I am able to access all your wonderful downloads individually but is there a central file on Evernote where they all reside? Or do you need to click on the individual links each time?

 

Please convey to Poohby Joe that the while HAL bear is cute, there is no competition there. Poohby wins hands down!

 

Poohby says "Thanks!"

Here's the master link to the shared notebook. I had to clean out all the workspace pieces, which I'll explain later in this post.

https://www.evernote.com/pub/skypadfll/eurodam2016-trip-dailies

 

Evernote uses a notebook & notes metaphor for it's filing system. I made a notebook for the Eurodam trip, which keeps everything organized inside the program. Inside the notebook are individual notes, which is what I share via link. (Hope that makes sense so far.) Evernote runs on both computers and mobile devices which means that as long as the various machines have Internet access - not always a given on a ship - the notebooks stay in sync across my phone, my wife's phone and our computers. This allows me to write up reports on either my laptop or my phone, the latter being used for late night or early morning scribblings while DW sleeps.

 

I created staging notes inside the workbook to hold everything I expected to scan. I also made a bunch of "report stub" notes where I put content that I had written prior to posting. This saved a lot of Internet minutes, which was crucial on this trip because the Internet speeds were so slow. I also loaded up the URLs to all the bumper graphics which I loaded onto the Institute of Cheer sever before we left home. As much as I like you guys, there's no way that I'm going to sit in our room, on vacation, making graphics. I whip them up ahead of time and then copy and paste the URLs into Cruise Critic.

 

So anyway....

 

All this "stuff" was inside the main notebook I used for the cruise. I cleaned it out by moving the fluff out into a separate storage notebook. That allowed me to post the link above, which should be just the meat that you want to access.

[POA1]

Apologies for the larger images.

 

I thought I had everything set to resize to 800x600 when I ran it through the image processor on my phone, but that's clearly not the case.

[POA1]

Perhaps it's a function of the fact that we don't eat in the Lido often, or it might be the result of not having cruised in two years, but I didn't notice anything huge in the way of changes to the Lido. The signage is new and some of the stations have been reconfigured, but if I hadn't read about some of the changes here on CruiseCritic, I might not have noticed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I feel bad about that, because I'm sure people worked hard on the new concept.

[POA1]

One thing we noticed - and really liked - is the Market Central area where they had cheese plates and charcuterie plates made up for what is, in our opinion, a sophisticated grab and go option. The cheese selections changed daily and we enjoyed the variety. Ditto for the cured meats. (We often make a meal of cheese, charcuterie and a bottle of wine, so this is right up our alley.)

 

 

 

 

[Copper10-8]

Cool pics dude! Enjoy and Happy New Year to you and Michelle, Brian! :)

[slidergirl]

Is anyone permitted to reserve in the Retreat Cabana area or is it limited to certain classes of cruisers, like the Neptune Suites?

 

I'd sure love to have a little retreat of my own to settle into, put on the noise-cancelling headphones and zone out for hours at a time. But, I'm going to be in a lowly Inside cabin and fear I must make due with a simple lounge chair out in the open...

[NMLady]

Happy New Year and thank you for a wonderful blog. I just discovered it so have spent an entertaining morning reading it. Awesome photos. My Tessie Bear says Hi to your Poohboy and would love to cruise with him.

 

I hope your bronchitis is gone by now. Not a good way to have ended your cruise.

[POA1]

Is anyone permitted to reserve in the Retreat Cabana area or is it limited to certain classes of cruisers, like the Neptune Suites?

 

I'd sure love to have a little retreat of my own to settle into, put on the noise-cancelling headphones and zone out for hours at a time. But, I'm going to be in a lowly Inside cabin and fear I must make due with a simple lounge chair out in the open...

Anyone can. It's first come, first served. We met people who couple an inside room with a cabana to save on the cost of a balcony. We've also met other people, like Poohby Joe, who always travel in suites.

 

 

On a serious note though - We book the cabana right after we book the cruise. You're charged in full as soon as you book. And, near as I can tell, you get onboard spend credit for the cabana.

Edited January 1, 2017 by POA1

[POA1]

Happy New Year and thank you for a wonderful blog. I just discovered it so have spent an entertaining morning reading it. Awesome photos. My Tessie Bear says Hi to your Poohboy and would love to cruise with him.

 

I hope your bronchitis is gone by now. Not a good way to have ended your cruise.

You're quite welcome. I'm doing much better and hope to be 100% any day now.

[Krazy Kruizers]

One thing we noticed - and really liked - is the Market Central area where they had cheese plates and charcuterie plates made up for what is, in our opinion, a sophisticated grab and go option. The cheese selections changed daily and we enjoyed the variety. Ditto for the cured meats. (We often make a meal of cheese, charcuterie and a bottle of wine, so this is right up our alley.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are an improvement over what we had on the Westerdam.

Just a tiny plate with 3 or 4 tiny pieces of cheese. And a separate tiny plate with a couple pieces of fruit.

We watched one man take about 6 plates of each, pour them onto a larger plate and left the Lido.

[POA1]

The Lido pool area is located (you'll find this hard to believe) on Deck 9, the Lido deck.

 

For those of you who are looking to play ping pong on your cruise, you'll find two ping pong tables. On our cruise, the kids on the ship seemed to really enjoy playing table tennis. It was an enthusiastic group. (I'm not saying that these kids were lacking in ping pong skills, but let's just say that it's a good thing that you can get sneakers have velcro laces nowadays. If you are reading this and it was your kid on the table, he or she was awesome. The other kids, however, were a mess.)

 

 

The Lido pool area has a food venue, the Dive In, and the Lido pool bar.

 

 

 

You may notice, in the picture above, that the gentleman at the bar began stripping down the minute I raised my camera for a shot. Normally, I'd try to get another photo later, but it's very difficult to avoid these amateur striptease artists in today's cruise vacation environment.

 

 

[POA1]

 

 

Edited January 1, 2017 by POA1

[POA1]

Cool pics dude! Enjoy and Happy New Year to you and Michelle, Brian! :)

Thanks, John! Hope you and your lovely wife are enjoying your cruise.

[POA1]

These are an improvement over what we had on the Westerdam.

Just a tiny plate with 3 or 4 tiny pieces of cheese. And a separate tiny plate with a couple pieces of fruit.

We watched one man take about 6 plates of each, pour them onto a larger plate and left the Lido.

We were pleasantly surprised. After we boarded, I grabbed a table by the Lido bar while DW and her dad set out in search of food. She returned to the table I was holding with two nicely composed plates: one cheese and fruit, the other sliced meat. She said that she found them on the Market Central display.

 

I was impressed. Each plate had a tasty little selection, with a bite or two of each flavor. For us, that was great. If, on the other hand, you can't bear the thought of blue cheese anywhere in the vicinity of of Gouda, I can see it being an issue. (Hope that's objective enough.) We never had a cheese plate we wouldn't have served at home. I counted 5 different blues over the course of the week. The Dutch cheeses had a good showing, which I'd expect. If there was anything underrepresented, it might have been softer goat's milk cheeses. (That makes sense since everything was plated ahead of time.)

Edited January 1, 2017 by POA1

[POA1]

Continuing aft, we have the Sea View Pool, Sea View Bar and the new and improved pizza venue, New York Pizza.

 

 

 

 

If it looks like my New York Pizza picture is exactly the same as HAL's publicity photo, that's probably a coincidence. Also, the bartenders at the Sea View Bar definitely are not wearing the old shirts. When someone tries to insinuate that I forgot to take shots from the back of the ship, it's all lies. Lies, I tell you! Lies!

Edited January 2, 2017 by POA1

[POA1]

I wasn't able to get photos of the the massage and treatment rooms. Something about, "Hey! Get out of here! I'm not wearing pants!"

 

I did manage to take photos of the thermal chairs and the thalassotherapy pool.

 

 

 

It's been a while since we experienced the spa facilities, but they are essentially unchanged, so we can recommend them heartily. Tell the pantsless guy we said hello.

[Mz11378]

Did you get a chance to sample the pizza - Im originally from Bklyn NY so thats a big name to live up to

[POA1]

Did you get a chance to sample the pizza - Im originally from Bklyn NY so thats a big name to live up to

It's definitely better than the previous incarnation of HAL pizza. I'm not sure I'd take a take a cruise just for the pizza.

 

Start with the Grand Central, which is a basic pie. You can always move on from there.

 

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s88/sh/cf00d9dc-b6f2-4429-93e5-ae29e7d5d1e5/98a00c2cc4211bf2df6b01a83df62ef8

 

If you are sailing from Fort Lauderdale, try Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza on Federal Hwy (US 1.)

[POA1]

One of the places I really fell down on this trip was MDR photos. We carried our camera to dinner all five of the nights we ate there. We agreed to no MDR food photos in advance. If you think that would still allow us plenty of things we could take snaps of, you'd be right. If you think that we took lots of MDR pictures, you'd be wrong.

 

May I proudly present all 3 of our dining room photos.

 

Our "wine delivery guy." This gentleman is separate from our wine steward. Our wine steward, Joan, took our order every night. A wine runner would bring our order to the table. So, we had a relationship with Joan. It would only be natural for me to snap a picture. Or so you would think.

 

 

In case you are wondering, you *can* order your wine and have it delivered course by course. Given our level of familiarity with wine, we have them bring everything at once. We can pace it ourselves.

 

 

To recap: Five nights in the MDR. No food photography. No establishing shots. Nary a picture of the people around us. Waiters? Nope. Just some wine glasses.

 

I scoured our photos and found this:

 

 

It's a picture of our table number and the names of our MDR team.

 

They were really good. And, thanks to this image, I didn't have to write down names.

 

Our final MDR photo is this gentleman who was the wine steward for the section next to ours. He caught me sneaking his photo and gamely agreed to pose for a picture. I feel bad because we can't read his name tag. However, if you watch the show "Superstore" on NBC, you'll recognize Mateo.

 

Edited January 2, 2017 by POA1

[MaxeyMom]

Poohby says "Thanks!"

Here's the master link to the shared notebook. I had to clean out all the workspace pieces, which I'll explain later in this post.

https://www.evernote.com/pub/skypadfll/eurodam2016-trip-dailies

 

Evernote uses a notebook & notes metaphor for it's filing system. I made a notebook for the Eurodam trip, which keeps everything organized inside the program. Inside the notebook are individual notes, which is what I share via link. (Hope that makes sense so far.) Evernote runs on both computers and mobile devices which means that as long as the various machines have Internet access - not always a given on a ship - the notebooks stay in sync across my phone, my wife's phone and our computers. This allows me to write up reports on either my laptop or my phone, the latter being used for late night or early morning scribblings while DW sleeps.

 

I created staging notes inside the workbook to hold everything I expected to scan. I also made a bunch of "report stub" notes where I put content that I had written prior to posting. This saved a lot of Internet minutes, which was crucial on this trip because the Internet speeds were so slow. I also loaded up the URLs to all the bumper graphics which I loaded onto the Institute of Cheer sever before we left home. As much as I like you guys, there's no way that I'm going to sit in our room, on vacation, making graphics. I whip them up ahead of time and then copy and paste the URLs into Cruise Critic.

 

So anyway....

 

All this "stuff" was inside the main notebook I used for the cruise. I cleaned it out by moving the fluff out into a separate storage notebook. That allowed me to post the link above, which should be just the meat that you want to access.

 

This is perfect, thanks. This makes it so much easier for me to access and cross reference all the menus and dalies. And of course you understand that the ease of MY ability to access your wonderful info is of paramount importance. Thank you again

 

"To recap: Five nights in the MDR. No food photography. No establishing shots. Nary a picture of the people around us. Waiters? Nope. Just some wine glasses."

 

We all understand you have your priorities straight--all in the name of research for your fellow cruiser.

[POA1]

MaxeyMom - Glad to help. Having one place to fetch all the links makes perfect sense.

[POA1]

A word on Christmas decorations -

 

This might be a little late, but when you consider that we're targeting the Greek Orthodox and Ukrainian Orthodox segment of our audience, which celebrates Christmas on Saturday, January 7, 2017, you'll see that this is a pretty timely post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Eurodam did a great job with holiday decorations and theming. You won't confuse the ship for a Disney park, but you'd definitely know that it's the holiday season. The movie selection in the theater and the movies on demand (TV) both had an array of Yule flicks. Most public rooms carried some Christmas theming. There was less Christmas background music than I expected - at least until around 12/22.

[slidergirl]

Anyone can. It's first come, first served. We met people who couple an inside room with a cabana to save on the cost of a balcony. We've also met other people, like Poohby Joe, who always travel in suites.

 

 

On a serious note though - We book the cabana right after we book the cruise. You're charged in full as soon as you book. And, near as I can tell, you get onboard spend credit for the cabana.

 

Thank you! I'll call and book tomorrow morning!!!!

[BruhnSisters]

Happy New Year! Hope you are feeling much better now.

 

I've been catching up on your tremendous reporting. Thanks for sharing your time and talents! You get an A+ from me.