Nieuw Amsterdam 2012 - Sailing Away from Venice

Our first night on board Nieuw Amsterdam we slept like a rose. We had a very comfortable (and huge) bed. For the kids, the stewards transformed the couch into a bed and they lowered the ceiling above us, where another bed became available. Of course with four people in the room and all the beds made, there’s not much free space. But outside the stateroom we had several decks of giant living room (to share with the other guests).

Breakfast at the Lido was great each day: Eggs Benedict, waffles, French toast, bacon, sausages, etc. Especially for Europeans, who usually just have a piece of bread with cheese for breakfast, this is always a great start to the day. The girls went to the Lido pool. We put our iPods on and had a book read to us. How lazy can one get on vacation…

The lifeboat drill was postponed until 1:45 p.m. It’s a good way to get acquainted with other guests. We have much confidence in captain Edward van Zaane and his crew so this was just a formality.

Highlight of the day, maybe even the whole cruise, was the sail away out of Venice. The lagoon is a couple of miles long, but quite narrow.

The route of the ship as seen from Doge's Palace.

The views of Venice are spectacular. We were at the forward bow of deck 5, just outside of our stateroom. Check out the panorama photo we took of Venice from the canal.

Sailaway from Venice Panorama.

On the ship’s speakers, Andrea Bocelli sang to us “Time to Say Goodbye.” With all the great memories of three days in Venice, that was almost an emotional moment. We’ll never forget this.

Sailing away.

Sail away.

Sailing away.

We are not the only Dutch-speaking people on board. Altogether, there are some 230 people from the Netherlands and another 70 from Belgium. A special information session was held in the Queens Lounge where we met other Dutch-speaking guests and staff like the International Concierges and Hotel Manager Marco van Belleghem. We also had a nice talk with Rudy Beckx, editor of the magazine Cruise & Style. The next issue of his glossy will feature an article on Nieuw Amsterdam. He was also on the maiden voyage of the ship and wrote an article on that earlier, but this new article will emphasize the family experience of cruising on Nieuw Amsterdam. Great choice since our girls are two of over 350 kids on board.

Dress code for tonight was formal, so we changed into our evening gowns and tuxedo. We always love to get our pictures taken by the HAL photographers. They are real professionals and we end up with hundreds of photos in our package. We recognized photographers Layton and Palma who were on Noordam last year. They recognized us as well, that is to say they recognized Rhodé with her quite exclusive curly red hair (Annie style).

Formal night.

Dinner in the main dining room was excellent. Lobster, steak, filet mignon and chicken were on our table… for a couple of minutes anyway. Between dinner and the show there was some time to go dancing while the kids went to Club HAL to meet some friends. Tonight’s show was a treat — Cantare. Four excellent singers performing Il Divo-style. Great quality. They were accompanied by the HAL Cats as their orchestra. That greatly improves the quality of the music, but the downside is that the HAL Cats don’t play in the Queens Lounge very often. On Noordam we loved listening and dancing to their music every night.