Day 1 of our Cruise: The Zaandam!!

After I started dating Louie, I worried I would never cruise again, because I learned he was vehemently against it. He hated the idea of “sitting around on a boat.” Never mind that that’s not what cruising has to be about, but you know, people have all these ideas about what a cruise is and it’s very en vogue to hate on cruising.

Somehow though, I ended up convincing him to go on an Alaskan cruise, and here we were in Vancouver, the morning of the cruise. I think he was pretty nervous, having no idea what to expect, and I was very excited, having quite a lot of ideas on what to expect, but unsure how the Holland America Line would compare.

So, though it was Day 5 of our trip, the best way to count things from here on is to say Day 1, because the cruise started everything over again.

Day 1: Right around noon we took an Uber from the Hotel Sylvia to the Port. Since we left on a Wednesday the Port wasn’t very busy. We did carry-on only and it was very easy to board the ship. Right away everybody working for Holland was very friendly and helped point us in the right direction. It probably took about 15 minutes from getting dropped off from when we boarded the ship, though I wasn’t timing it–the lines were short and all we really had to wait in was for the metal detector line or the x ray or whatever it was, and that wasn’t too long either. It was a pleasant hum of excitement around us as everyone seemed excited to start the trip.

We had heard that Holland America skewed very old (no offense to older folks, as we love them!), so we were looking around and yes, we were probably among the younger folks, but there were others our age and younger there, along with older people. But it was also mid-May, before most schools were out, so a lot of school age families would be in school.

Anyway, soon we boarded, and we were able to immediately go to our cabin! In previous cruises this hadn’t always been the case. We also got our room keys then, they were in the door.

The room! Trick to make a ship cabin feel large: stay in a tiny Vancouver hotel for a few nights before it.

We opted not to shell out for a balcony room. The Zaandam was an older ship with less balcony rooms and they were a lot more expensive, so we went with the ocean view. We didn’t regret it: we weren’t far from the promenade deck on deck 3 where you could walk all the way around, and the only time we wished we had a balcony was (spoiler alert) Glacier Bay day when it was pouring rain and it would have been nice to pop out and see it on our on balcony for a bit, but probably not $1500-2000 nice.

Anyway, we headed up to the buffet for lunch then. It was the only place open for food and we hadn’t had lunch yet so we had to brave the buffet.

Louie was probably a bit shell-shocked at this point. It was a lot of people, and the buffet was even more. He was a little confused too, and took a bit of time to realize that yeah, you could just grab the food you saw and eat it, and just go where you wanted, and this was all fine. It was a vacation and you could do what you wanted. No rules, just right. Wait, that’s something else.

The outdoor pool. We did not spend much time here.

2654 was our room. This was a great location and I would recommend it.

After braving the buffet (Louie had a little PTSD afterwards and we didn’t go to the buffet again, but I didn’t mind as I am also not a fan of free for all or lines) we went to unpack and get settled in the room, and then we had to get our cards scanned as proof that we found our muster drill locations. It was fairly painless. And then we met up with Ben and Roz for sailaway!

Honestly, the views of Vancouver from the ship made it practically worth the cost of the cruise!

Seriously, that’s just an amazing view, isn’t it?

The cost of the champagne was possibly not quite worth it, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. And what a gorgeous day!

The ship went right under the Lionsgate Bridge! We barely had to duck at all!

And we got farther and farther away from Vancouver.

After awhile, we decided it was time to move onto other things such as continuing to explore the ship, rather than just standing on the very windy bow. Plus there was a chamber music trio to watch!

They were lovely, and the cellist mentioned she was from NYC. Again, spoiler alert, when we got back into cell service a few days later (we went dark on the ship–you can pay for wifi but Louie and I opted not to, rather we just waited for ports to use our phones, which was a nice break) we discovered indeed she knew both of my sisters. It turned out that we enjoyed watching the trio perform for a cocktail hour before dinner each evening!

Then we met up with Ben and Roz for dinner in the Dining Room, for our first night, and as we did for every night, which was one of our favorite parts of the cruise. We had a lovely table overlooking the stern or back of the ship, just one table away from the windows, so a lovely view, and our table was set up in a way that we could all see well enough but also chat with each other. We had the same server every night as well, which was really nice.

My first meal: I enjoyed everything except wished the lemon dessert was more lemony. We got to order from a menu each night: you could order anything you wanted, with most things included and some items would be extra prices. You could order salad, appetizer, main dish, dessert, or double of anything, whatever you liked. I usually ordered four courses for fun, and then we did a lot of walking, haha! but the courses weren’t huge as you can see above–the main dish wasn’t giant.

So, even without service you can see where the ship was. We were headed up the “inside passage” to the east of Vancouver Island.

I wanted to show another view of the room. I think Louie was sort of dancing to classical music here (hence the violin on the TV). We had a little couch in the room there, and then closets on the right hand side for clothes and bathroom beyond on the left. I’m taking the photo from the bed. On the tv you could also set it to watch a camera from the bow to see where the ship is headed or the stern to see where it has been, which was a fun thing to do from the room, as well as listen to a variety of music or watch movies, which we never ended up doing.

Day 2: Day at Sea: I thought we would sleep in, but Louie was too excited and woke up early. I suppose I could have continued sleeping, but he wanted to go to the dining room for breakfast, so I joined him. When you get there, they ask if you want to be seated at a shared table by the window or a table alone, so we chose shared table by the window. We were seated with some other people, and had to order quickly. After a few days we learned the breakfast menu better, but the first day it was bit confusing: you kind of know how big things are by the prices, so when there aren’t any prices, you don’t know how big things are! So I may have ordered too little, but the server suggested I add something on, and of course, nobody goes hungry on a cruise.

After ordering we chatted with the other people, and this began the day of learning that everybody else on the ship had been on at least 50 other cruises. Or so it seemed. They would say oh yes, this is my 17th time on this ship. Or, oh, no, I’ve never been on an Alaskan cruise before either! But I have been on 43 other cruises. Everybody was shocked that Louie was on his first cruise! I think maybe we met one other person who was on their first cruise. But they were all very friendly. After breakfast we wandered a bit and then hit the hot tub and relaxed there for a bit. It wasn’t super hot, but it was very nice.

We also managed to make it to lunch in the Dining Room, which I think we ate alone, and I think maybe a show on whales, then later in the afternoon we went to the Royal Dutch Tea, which was a blast. Louie also popped in to see the Polar Bear Plunge.

And then of course the Chamber Trio, and then dinner. And some walking around the Promenade, which went all the way around the deck on Deck 3 and was very lovely. Cruising with Louie meant a lot of activity, though it also meant a lot of hot tub time, and I definitely did some reading in the room as well, don’t worry! After dinner the four of us went to the show, which was “the Alans” who were a couple who did sort of mind/magic tricks and was a lot of fun.

And our room steward left us a towel animal!

Day 3: Juneau

We were getting further north and the landscape was changing. And the air was colder. We weren’t getting to Juneau until after lunch, so we had the morning free to sleep in. Just kidding, we were up early to go to the dining room for breakfast.