Holland America Volendam solo from San Diego to Ft Lauderdale

[kelliebiz]

1 hour ago, richwmn said:

Sorry we didn't talk more, hope to run into you again before Fort Lauderdale. If you want to call, I'm in 3300.

 

No worries, there’s another week (or so) to go. Congrats on the trivia win! 

[kelliebiz]

Test to see if the picture loads. Here’s the little boat we rode to do the crocodile safari. Uploading from phone; last night tried uploading from iPad. 

[kelliebiz]

Here is today’s offering of on board activities. Later I’m doing the Mixology class at 3pm with a woman I’ve met. 
 

I attended the talk with the captain this morning that included questions from the audience. One person asked, “Have you ever responded to a mayday at Sea?” His answer was yes, and he recalled a time that ended on a funny note. They came to the aid of a stranded pleasure boat and called the Coast Guard to provide further help to the sailors. The captain said he also contacted his hotel Director and requested that they send sandwiches and water to the folks who were stranded on the Boat.
 

After some time had passed and the food and water had not been delivered yet he again called the hotel Director and asked what was taking so long. The hotel Director said the sandwiches weren’t finished yet; turns out they were preparing five star sandwiches with chilled salmon, top-of-the-line deli meats, fancy cheeses, etc., while the captain had only envisioned a quick drop of simple bread and water. Pretty funny. But the captain said the stranded sailors were delighted! 

[kelliebiz]

@oakridger No luck with any of my better photos. What I’m seeing is that photos I took on my camera that I have downloaded to my apple devices are posting as black screens. Photos I took with my phone are posting just fine. I’ll have to see if I can figure that out. All my good bird photos are from the camera!
 

Here is a Nazca booby I got with the phone. It was flying right along super close to the ship, like 5 yards away. I’d never seen one before, so I had to use some bird photo ID apps, then got confirmation from some online birders. A lifer! 

[kelliebiz]

I’m off the ship now and sitting on my own couch in my own home. I’ll write a bit later about my experience for sure, but wanted to share a couple pics. Here is cabin 2579 on ms. Volendam and it was very nice for the duration. Plenty of space, especially solo having FOUR closets to myself. The cabins on these older ships tend to be slightly larger than the cabins they build on new ships. This is an ocean view cabin on deck 2

 

Full size window on starboard side

 

looking back towards the door

 

the safe in the closet is operated by swiping a credit card to lock and unlock. No charge, but instructions say it must be a credit card and that your keycard may not work. The door has the only full length mirror in the cabin

 

here’s the desk and the one and only electric outlet in the cabin! No USB ports anywhere in the room either. Glad I brought my 6 port charging device. 

 

glass doors on shower, Elemis bath product dispensers in the shower

 

more Elemis products at the sink

 

three tiny glass shelves above the sink, one long shelf under the sink

[SparklingPinkDaisy]

13 hours ago, kelliebiz said:

I’m off the ship now and sitting on my own couch in my own home. I’ll write a bit later about my experience for sure, but wanted to share a couple pics. Here is cabin 2579 on ms. Volendam and it was very nice for the duration. Plenty of space, especially solo having FOUR closets to myself. The cabins on these older ships tend to be slightly larger than the cabins they build on new ships. This is an ocean view cabin on deck 2

 

 

Thanks for the photos!  I'll be on the ship in 11 days.  Elemis - was there both shampoo and conditioner?   (I was on another cruiseline last year and they only had a body wash and then a combo shampoo/conditioner - so I brought my own.)   

Can't wait to hear more about your trip!  

[kelliebiz]

1 hour ago, SparklingPinkDaisy said:

 

Thanks for the photos!  I'll be on the ship in 11 days.  Elemis - was there both shampoo and conditioner?   (I was on another cruiseline last year and they only had a body wash and then a combo shampoo/conditioner - so I brought my own.)   

Can't wait to hear more about your trip!  

Hi SPDaisy

Yes there was shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in the shower, and at the sink there was hand soap and lotion. I thought they were just fine, no complaints from me. I prefer to save the trouble of bringing all that from home and was very happy using what was provided. Are you doing Boston to Montreal? 

[SparklingPinkDaisy]

7 minutes ago, kelliebiz said:

Hi SPDaisy

Yes there was shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in the shower, and at the sink there was hand soap and lotion. I thought they were just fine, no complaints from me. I prefer to save the trouble of bringing all that from home and was very happy using what was provided. Are you doing Boston to Montreal? 

I'm doing Montreal to Boston - May 4-11.  I did the same itinerary on the Zaandam in 2019 and have been waiting to repeat that itinerary!   

By the way - you're from the Bay Area?  I lived there for years and miss it! 

 

[kelliebiz]

21 minutes ago, SparklingPinkDaisy said:

I'm doing Montreal to Boston - May 4-11.  I did the same itinerary on the Zaandam in 2019 and have been waiting to repeat that itinerary!   

By the way - you're from the Bay Area?  I lived there for years and miss it! 

 

Yes, I’ve been here 28 years now, though originally from LA. I’m in the tri valley area, maybe 10 miles east of Oakland. I’ll be doing the reverse of your itinerary in August. Going from Boston to Quebec City on Zuiderdam, though my partner is joining me for that one. I’m doing one more solo before then, southeast Alaska next month on Nieuw Amsterdam. That one is just 7 days on ship followed by I believe 2 Denali days. I enjoy the ship experience but I think I’m more looking forward to Denali. We went there once before and it’s incredible. I wish I had more than 2 days there but it was a great offer and I just couldn’t pass it up. That just means I’ll have to go back another time I guess 😄

[SparklingPinkDaisy]

6 minutes ago, kelliebiz said:

Yes, I’ve been here 28 years now, though originally from LA. I’m in the tri valley area, maybe 10 miles east of Oakland. I’ll be doing the reverse of your itinerary in August. Going from Boston to Quebec City on Zuiderdam, though my partner is joining me for that one. I’m doing one more solo before then, southeast Alaska next month on Nieuw Amsterdam. That one is just 7 days on ship followed by I believe 2 Denali days. I enjoy the ship experience but I think I’m more looking forward to Denali. We went there once before and it’s incredible. I wish I had more than 2 days there but it was a great offer and I just couldn’t pass it up. That just means I’ll have to go back another time I guess 😄

You have some great cruises planned!  (and the denali part as well!)  

 

 

[kelliebiz]

So I had wanted to write this thread to shed some light on the solo experience. There’s plenty of people writing travelogues, writing about sights to see in ports so that wasn’t necessarily my focus. This was my first time sailing solo, and I’ve read on this board plenty of questions from others, wondering how one can do that, how one can enjoy that. So I thought I’d tell about how it was for me. 
 

This was a 16 night cruise and some people asked me, How can you choose such a long cruise for your first time solo? I will say that if it had been a shorter cruise like a seven night cruise, it would’ve been much easier to keep to myself without extending social effort. But for me for 16 nights, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that without wanting social interactions. So before I ever left, I told myself to get out there, to introduce myself to people, to start conversations with people, and so I did just that. This is not always my natural behavior, but I made myself do it because that would be necessary if I didn’t want to spend a 16 night trip alone. I know there’s people that are perfectly happy to spend time only with themselves but I knew I would feel lonely if I was without social interactions for 16 nights. 
 

My first time aboard to do this was on the first team trivia night. I walked into the venue a few minutes before it was to start and it was pretty full. There weren’t many available seats, much less seats to sit by myself lol. So I saw one empty chair next to a group of three women and I just walked up to them and said hi can I sit here? And can I join your team? They were very nice. They immediately said hello, welcome, and yes of course you can join our team! And we had lovely conversations and thereafter I probably hung out with these same ladies at least every other day, whether it was to have dinner or to play trivia or to listen to live music. And I found that this was the reception I got with virtually everyone I walked up to and initiated a conversation with. So if you’re afraid of being rejected, don’t be. Cruisers are mostly friendly and they are mostly open to meeting new people. I’m sure this is not true of all people, but I didn’t meet any people like that in 16 nights aboard! 
 

I formed nice friendships with several people this way. One solo lady sat next to me on an excursion bus and we had a very fun day chitchatting about everything we saw. And again, thereafter we had dinners, played trivia, listened to music, played bingo, attended informational talks, and did other shore excursions together. I sat next to a woman in the main theater and through conversation found out she was also there solo. That turned out the same way with coffees and talks and more onboard activities. There was another couple from the Facebook group that I spent a good amount of time chatting with. That was another good friendship where we would meet for different activities at least every other day. So I probably had eight different people that I could have good conversations and experiences with, that started with casual random meetings.

 

Besides these substantial friendships there were another eight people that I would bump into repeatedly and we always paused long enough to have short conversations with. We never met up anywhere or dined together or did activities together, but we always had good short conversations. So it was interesting to me to see how these different types of relationships were out there if I wanted them. Just by talking to strangers there were people in my journey that I interacted with just for one conversation, and other people I would only chat with daily, and other people I would actively plan to do things with daily. For me, it was very nice to form this network of people, even if the network only lasted for 16 nights. And in fact I do plan to keep in touch with some of them.

 

All that is to say that you can spend as much time with others and as much time with yourself as you want to. It might take effort to behave in ways that you don’t normally behave and of course it’s up to you to decide how you want to spend your time if you’re contemplating a solo cruise. If you’re contemplating a solo cruise, I say go for it. There’s as much or as little social activity as you want on board. There’s many people on these boards with dozens of solo excursions under their belts and this may all sound like common knowledge to them, but for me on my first solo journey I was very curious to see how it would all turn out. I plan to do it again with no hesitation. 
 
And here’s just a few photos to share of our first two stops, the los Cabos area and Puerto Vallarta.

 

I was in San José del Cabo during the solar eclipse on April 8! I brought my eclipse glasses and got to see the eclipse at 95%. San Jose del Cabo is about a 30 minute ride away from Cabo San Lucas.
 

This is when it was lower sunlight right before we got to the 95% so you can tell how much darker than normal it was at 10:45am. Totality happened at about 11:10am. 
 

 

Of course I had to take a shot of the famous arch as we sailed out of the harbor. iPhone pics are all I have 😄 The arch is at the left end of the third “rock” on the left. 

 

 

This was in a little public square in Puerto Vallarta, just a block from the malecón. Those banners were so vibrant I just crossed my fingers and hoped the photo would look as fun as it did in person. 
 

 

My excursion in Puerto Vallarta included a “cooking” class but all we did was make guacamole. First time I have used the stone mortar and pestle though, which I believe they called a molcajete. But my spelling might be wrong. 
 

 

 

 

[oakridger]

@kelliebiz Thanks for coming back and wrapping up with your impressions and more nice pictures!  Was that last picture taken during the eclipse???  😉       

 

I travel solo most of the time and love it, however when the rare event happens and a friend or my daughter can come with me, I love that too!  Separate cabins are a must these days though!  I'm off on a solo adventure from Ft. Lauderdale on the Zuiderdam on May 11th, then a week in the Netherlands and another month in Norway.  I'm going on the Havila coastal ferry from Bergen up the entire west coast of Norway and back.  So excited and will come back to the HAL and the "Other Cruise Lines" forum to report on that.

 

~Nancy 

[kelliebiz]

33 minutes ago, oakridger said:

 Was that last picture taken during the eclipse???  😉       

 

hahahaha 😄

 

I’m going on another solo cruise next month, aboard Nieuw Amsterdam to Alaska. So now that I know what to expect, I’m not concerned about anything. I would like to have regulars to have dinner with, and I’ll probably partner up with some people for trivia. Beyond that, we’ll see what happens as it happens organically. I do enjoy being independent and I do enjoy my own company. I’ve been to all the ports before so I know what to expect there too. I really enjoyed this first solo trip, so now I’ll be curious to see how it feels and how my expectations differ on the second one. 

[kelliebiz]

And enjoy all that travel, Nancy! It all sounds fantastic