Live From The Noordam With Tomc

[dakrewser]

Ahoy!

 

$1 ? Perhaps a 'friends of TomC' meeting instead?

 

Thanks for the journal Tom.

 

Bon Voyage & Good Health!

Bob:)

 

Perhaps we should all schedule an FOT meeting on our cruises, then all chip in to create a life journal - shared among all the "Friends". Of course, tea would be served at the meetings, held at the big round table at the back of the Lido...;)

[Suesan Jean]

Perhaps we should all schedule an FOT meeting on our cruises, then all chip in to create a life journal - shared among all the "Friends". Of course, tea would be served at the meetings, held at the big round table at the back of the Lido...;)

 

:D :D :D :D !!!!!

[innlady1]

Perhaps we should all schedule an FOT meeting on our cruises, then all chip in to create a life journal - shared among all the "Friends". Of course, tea would be served at the meetings, held at the big round table at the back of the Lido...;)

 

Love it, dakrewser! :D

[SeaMatesNYC]

Ruth, I guess Tom thinks too much chocolate is overkill. Guess he doesn't like it like we do.

Tomorrow night there'll be a chocolate on my pillow too. :cool: Yippee!

 

And some of us think that even one Kinkaid is overkill.:eek:

[bob brown]

Perhaps we should all schedule an FOT meeting on our cruises, then all chip in to create a life journal - shared among all the "Friends". Of course, tea would be served at the meetings, held at the big round table at the back of the Lido...;)

Great idea!

 

Tom, your wonderful sense of humor makes your thread a joy to read. While the above suggestion is in jest, perhaps you should consider conducting CC groups on various cruises, I'm sure you would have a considerable following, and you'd probably get a comp. cruise out of it.:)

[off2ctheworld]

Enjoyed reading your adventure Tom! Thanks for sharing. Helps keep our CC group fun!

[FIRELT5]

http://home.att.net/~PIED-PIPER-TRAVEL/Webcam.html

[mamaofami]

Not quite. She could first be seen pulling in at 7:44, a full five minutes ahead of the Gem who she had originally trailed by 4 hours. Hats off to Captain Scott.

 

 

Tom, thanks for bringing her safely back to me.

[FreeStyleNCL]

Not quite. She could first be seen pulling in at 7:44, a full five minutes ahead of the Gem who she had originally trailed by 4 hours. Hats off to Captain Scott.

 

 

Tom, thanks for bringing her safely back to me.

 

 

wow he did great...Gem was already docked by the time we got in...hour and half late lol

 

definitely looking forward to TOMC's review afterwards! it will be one big review with lots of laughters! :)

[tomc]

Beam us in, Scotty. The good captain caught the Gulf Stream, hit the engines full and out ran seven police boats with lights flashing and sirens screaming all the way from Hatteras to NY Harbor. We arrived 'way earlier than predicted, and the ETA kept changing earlier and earlier. I forget what time we docked, but I was in the middle of my 7:00am breakfast when we tied up, so 7:44 sounds about right.

 

The story with the Gem is neat. We cut them off and ran them into a sandbar on the west side of the Hudson River. While their captain was busy standing on the bridge extension yelling bad words at our captain, we snuck by and docked. Funny?? I thought I'd pee my pants. We were determined to dock first and having that stupid NCL ahead of us thru no fault of our own was galling. In fact, we had enough gall to be divided into three parts: ms Veni, ms Vidi and ms Vici, all part of the Costa line.

 

Anyway, I'm home, listening to two CD's I bought at St Vincent's, of a very good steel band ("Harmonites String Band"), with two banjos --I saw one and a small guitar-- steel pan, shaker and drum. This is what is listen on the cd. What I saw was a set of tuned #10 cans, which the musician had to touch up once with a small hammer, and part of a 55-gal drum with a ridge to make two notes, plus the small guitar, shaker and, I think, a banjo device. Very nice.

 

More later.

 

This post came to you live from tomc's incredibly cluttered apartment.

[jhannah]

Glad you're home safely, Tom. Hope you didn't put the whole box of detergent into the washer like you did last time! ;)

[cruz4evr]

Beam us in, Scotty. The good captain caught the Gulf Stream, hit the engines full and out ran seven police boats with lights flashing and sirens screaming all the way from Hatteras to NY Harbor. We arrived 'way earlier than predicted, and the ETA kept changing earlier and earlier. I forget what time we docked, but I was in the middle of my 7:00am breakfast when we tied up, so 7:44 sounds about right.

 

The story with the Gem is neat. We cut them off and ran them into a sandbar on the west side of the Hudson River. While their captain was busy standing on the bridge extension yelling bad words at our captain, we snuck by and docked. Funny?? I thought I'd pee my pants. We were determined to dock first and having that stupid NCL ahead of us thru no fault of our own was galling. In fact, we had enough gall to be divided into three parts: ms Veni, ms Vidi and ms Vici, all part of the Costa line.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, I'm home, listening to two CD's I bought at St Vincent's, of a very good steel band ("Harmonites String Band"), with two banjos --I saw one and a small guitar-- steel pan, shaker and drum. This is what is listen on the cd. What I saw was a set of tuned #10 cans, which the musician had to touch up once with a small hammer, and part of a 55-gal drum with a ridge to make two notes, plus the small guitar, shaker and, I think, a banjo device. Very nice.

 

More later.

 

This post came to you live from tomc's incredibly cluttered apartment.

 

 

Glad you're home safe and sound, Tom. Too bad you couldn't bribe your efficient room steward to clean your apartment before the next sailing. :D

[Susie51]

TomC, thanks for the entertaining thread and I'm glad you made it safely home.

[CTBob]

Tom, glad you're back safe but also sorry that there will be no more "Live from the Noordam with TomC" posts. I've enjoyed the ride, thanks.

 

Bob

[tomc]

These hit the "ran out of internet time."

 

Someone mentioned to me a boat excursion they were on with a fellow who was afraid of either boats or the water they tend to sail in. Anyway, they sailed to this little island and the man desperately wanted to take a bus back to the dock where the Noordam was. Not about to happen, Mac.

 

Also, at the Mariners ceremony, there was a little old lady art teacher (85 and retired) who cruises alone. Yeah, ok, big deal, so? So she has cruised 309 days in 2007 alone.

 

When we had to divert to 100 miles off P.R. for the helicopter evacuation, we lost 6-7 hours on our trip back to NYC. Captain Scott, as mentioned, made up all but 16 minutes of it. I claimed he took short cuts down dusty country roads and through peoples' backyards.

 

This has never happened before: I was on my deck, 6, and rang for an elevator to go down. Two of them arrived at the same time. You know how you get a "ding" when it arrived and a slightly lower "dong" to indicate that it's a down car? "ding dong." Here is what it sounded like: ding ding dong dong. Took me a moment to realize what had happened.

 

I don't remember if I told you about the table next to me in the Lido full of people who were chattering away in French. I speak it to an extent, but nowhere near well enough to understand what they were saying. Being in a mood to have some fun, I waited until they left; as the last one passed by, she looked down at me. I glanced up, said "bon soir" ("good evening") and went back to my reading. Later on, a steward said two people of that group came back to find out who I was. And, I suspect, find out from me just how much of what they were saying I overheard.

 

The weather on our next-to-last day returning to NYC was amazingly nice. The storm off Hatteras did not develop, so it was quite smooth there. But on that second day before docking, people were in the pool, hanging out in their shorts on the Lido deck. It wasn't particularly warm, but it sure was not cool at all. The last full day at sea was cool and somewhat wet, so we knew it was all over at that point.

 

This post came to you live from atop a pile of dirty clothes.

[bUU]

I'm creating a Live From the Noordam (2/6/2008 voyage) thread. It can be found here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=13292358#post13292358

[dakrewser]

I don't remember if I told you about the table next to me in the Lido full of people who were chattering away in French. I speak it to an extent, but nowhere near well enough to understand what they were saying. Being in a mood to have some fun, I waited until they left; as the last one passed by, she looked down at me. I glanced up, said "bon soir" ("good evening") and went back to my reading.

 

Ah, but you have to do this with a "knowing look," and a wink! ;)

[jrzebird]

These hit the "ran out of internet time."

 

Also, at the Mariners ceremony, there was a little old lady art teacher (85 and retired) who cruises alone. Yeah, ok, big deal, so? So she has cruised 309 days in 2007 alone.

 

This post came to you live from atop a pile of dirty clothes.

 

 

Did you happen to meet the older woman who was also traveling alone, and is on five back-to-backs on the Noordam? She said it is cheaper than going to Florida. And, since both she and her daughter live in NYC, she can go home and pay bills and whatever when they hit New York. She was fascinating and I was lucky enough to have dinner with her (and her daughter who had joined her for one cruise) one night. Apparently, she's done this the last few years, on various ships.

 

Welcome home and thanks for the great posts!

[tomc]

It's still "The Spotless Fleet," if the Noordam is any example. I saw people cleaning all over the ship, all the time (and I'm up until 1:00am). I could not find any place on the ship that was not clean, just cleaned, or about to be cleaned.

 

Handrails are being cleaned at various times with (as it appears) the same compound as we are asked to wipe down the computer keyboards with. There seems to be an agressive policy to prevent the NLV, rather than to contain it once it gets rolling.

 

The white curtain in the Queens Lounge was pretty ratty on the bottom, sort of worn and ripped-looking; I think it really was ripped. My cabin, as may have been noted before, was quite small for a double; I would have thought it a reasonable, if not perfect, size for a single. On my comment card, I called it a broom closet. For a K-Cat, it was smaller than any other "K's" I have booked on previous cruises.

 

The library area is classic, between the large collection and the woodwork. This is also the site of the Internet computers. (This is just my opinion and I could be very wrong, but if someone in the know told me the Internet connection was deliberately slowed down so we spent more, I'd believe them. Again, my opinion with no factual backup.)

 

This post has come to you live from Apartment 4

[FreeStyleNCL]

you should give review of your daily life lol quite interesting to read:)

[aubreycorgis]

Hi,

We just came off the 1/26 cruise and had a great time. Tom, they were very slow in calling out colors to disembark. We were brown and they didn't call our color until 11:00. The one big issue I saw was that there were not enough porters, we waited in line for 35 minutes for a porter and never got within 30 people of the front of the line. We finally decided to drag all of our bags ourselves out to the street to meet the limo. The cruise was very smooth coming home considering we were worried since our first day at sea was very rough and alot of people had gotten sea sick. The crew are the most friendly we have ever encountered, always had a smile on their face. We too got stuck with AYW dining which we did not request and we ended up eating in the pinnacle grill every night and enjoyed it to the max. Our waiters Meegan, and Agust were the best. Every night they were waiting for us at our same table and the wine steward had our drinks at the table there when we arrived.The big excitement was after leaving Puerto Rico we were at sea for about 8 hours when the captain came on and said were going to have to turn around to meet the Coast Guard as we had a guest who had taken ill. The Coast Guard helicopter arrived around 11 pm and hovered over the back of the ship and airlifted the patient off the ship. So considering we had a 7 hour diversion the Captain made up all the time and arrived back at port on time. Now I have to go through over 400 photos I took and pick out which ones we like and will put some up after I go through them.

 

vince

[tomc]

The regulars here can sift out from my previous comments what were the joke posts and my general observations of how the cruise went, so I'll try not to repeat them.

 

Overall view:

No two people will see a given cruise the same way. That having been said, here we go. I rate this as one of the best cruises I have taken, certainly in the top five out of 19. I can't think of anything substantial that went wrong, and the insubtantial was a matter of "ship happens" and "roll with it."

 

Check in:

We were, IMO, quite late checking in as compared with previous cruises. However, people were equally late leaving the Heavendam and returning to the Helldam. The delay was about an hour, from what I could tell, but once they pried people loose from their cabins and pulled them, kicking and screaming, from the ship, we went through the process quickly.

 

Check out:

As long as we're on the subject, Vince ("aubreycorgis") and I had different experiences. I was on Expedited Departure ("Get your own bag and get your butt out of here as fast as you can"), while he was in the "take a color, any color at all" Ellis Island immies. I don't know what the holdup was with the later people, naturally, so I can't comment on it.

 

Come on up to my place, hon:

I don't recall that we had to hang out too long before our spacious verandah suites (or, in my case, a broom closet with two beds) were ready. Since I've done this a number of times, I might not have paid much attention to it and just hung out watching the water traffic on the Hudson River.

 

My ha ha cabin:

Despite their having to move out the brooms, mop and bucket from 6014 so they could sell it as a double, the cabin actually was nicely set up and worked well well for me and my roomie. There definitely was not one inch more closet space than we needed and I would have felt better with a few more square feet of cabin that I had. The 9x18 foot cabin (162 square feet) gets small fast when you start putting in beds, closets, a bathroom, a table and a little desk/fridge combo. I've never been in anything this small that floats, except for our 14' sea skiff that we used to explore Long Island Sound when I was a kid.

 

Food, eats, chow, etc.:

Dangerous territory for comments. What is perfectly acceptable for one person become another's "even the seagulls wouldn't touch this."

 

This is, IIRC, the first time I've been advised to avoid the egg products (Eggbeater fritatta) because of the time it takes to make one. That's kinda curious, as I've always had them without any great delay; does this indicate fewer cooks in the kitchen? I ordered blueberry pancakes each morning for several reasons: (a) I really don't give a poop what I eat for breakfast, as I'm not awake enough to tell, (b) While I'm never in a hurry at that time, I do tend to arrive fairly close to closing and don't want to inconvenience the waiters who have to reset the place, © I like them.

 

Other than that, I thought everything was fine. HAL does not serve salmon the same as land-based places, but I'm sure it's because they can't keep it fresh. Due to circumstances (being at sea), it's got to be kept frozen and that will make a big difference. No points off for that.

 

I like the pizza bar open 11:30am to late night buffet. It's no good for me, but I limit myself severely. Ditto with the ice cream/yogurt/cookie bar; a little self-control goes a long way.

 

Entertainment:

Did not go to most of it, for reasons unconnected to anything. I did go to the first night, the woman who considered herself a comedian. Left when she started doing impersonations, as earlier I figured (wrongly) it couldn't get any worse, but ... well ...

 

Cleanliness of the ship:

The don't call it "The Spotless Fleet" for nothing. We were asked to wipe down the computer keyboards with some provided anti-bacterial tissues before and after each use; there were Purell stands all over the place; a note on the back of the restroom doors asked us to use a tissue when we opened the handle on our way out; for some events, stewards were there with anti-bacterial bottles to give us a squirt.

 

If I think of more, I'll post it. Right now, my tea mug is calling my name.

 

This post has come to you live from behind a pile of mail.

[CrystalLady]

It has been a pleasure to read your running commentary and review. Thank you again.

[Flyingfish]

Thanks Tom, it's been a pleasure as always!

[grannynurse]

Hi Tom,

Love from the giant daffodil.

GN