Voyage of the Vikings 2023

   Zuiderdam arrived in Boston about 6 a.m. this morning. The overnight voyage was rough until about 90 minutes from Boston. It had rained during the night but was just cloudy after sunrise.   The temperature was 21° C, the sky was cloudy and the wind was only SSW 5 km/hour.    We were up and having breakfast in a crowded Lido Market by 7 a.m. and had a quick chat with Cee Kaye and Brad. When we returned to the stateroom the bed had already been changed, but our used towels were still available in the bathroom. We gathered our backpacks and jackets and went to the Deck 1 Atrium to wait. Cee Kaye and Brad were also there. Their assigned time for seeing the United States Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) agents was 8 a.m., while our time was 9:30 a.m. Their flight home was much earlier than ours.    Before disembarking the ship, all passengers had to proceed to a designated area for mandatory face-to-face passport inspections by the USCBP agents...

    Today is the fifteenth and final Sea Day as Zuiderdam travels from Halifax to Boston. Clocks were moved back one hour overnight as the fog rolled in. The fog horn sounded throughout the night until close to 9 a.m. Once the fog lifted the sky was mostly cloudy, wind SW 9 km/ hour and temperature 16° C.     We ate breakfast in the dining room then went to the World Stage for the City at Sea presentation about how the ship runs day-to-day. The presentation started with a brief explanation of the building of Holland America’s Rotterdam 7 ship. The staterooms are built as modules and fit into the structure like assembling Lego. The heat produced by the engines heats the hot water and the steam is condensed to produce drinking water which has some minerals added to it. The diesel engines produce electricity that powers the ship. At the end many crew from all departments ascended the stage for a standing ovation of the two level theatre audience.    We s...

      A sunny morning with a light north west wind of 5 km/hr and 12° C temperature. At 7 a.m. Zuiderdam was still in the Atlantic but close to the mouth of Halifax harbour. She was moored at its Halifax berth just after 8 a.m.   There were an assortment of excursions this morning starting at 8:30 a.m. ranging from two hours to seven hours. Zuiderdam is moored until 10:30 p.m. this evening. The excursions were going out of town to Peggy’s Cove, the Bay of Fundy or Lunenburg or city tours to see the Public Gardens, Maritime Museum and the Citadel. There was a wine tour and after dinner a haunted tour of the Citadel. Besides our first visit to Halifax in the late 1980s when we flew in, since retiring we have visited Halifax on three different cruise lines, Celebrity (coming from Sydney, Nova Scotia), Royal Caribbean (coming from Ponta Delgada, the Azores) and Holland America (coming from St. John’s Newfoundland).     We climbed up to Lido Market on Deck 9 fo...

       The clocks were put back 30 minutes overnight to be the correct time for the stop in Halifax tomorrow. Sea Day #14 started with a mainly cloudy sky, temperature 16°C.   and a wind NNW 14 km/hour. The ship was cruising south east of the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. By noon the sun was shining and it had warmed to 18° C. Walking on Deck 3 we encountered some wind, but did not need jackets for the first time in nearly two weeks.     After breakfast we heard the last 15 minutes of Coffee with Tjalling which had five female officers from different departments answering questions about their duties. Ask the Captain at 10 a.m. was held in the World Stage with almost a full house. Passengers asked the captain questions including if he had ever experienced green water while on board a ship. The answer was yes. More than two decades ago on a cargo ship in a bad storm when a giant waves crashed over the ship. He said it was not pleasant. ...

    Just after 9 a.m. Zuiderdam was entering the narrow 90 meter wide St. John’s channel into the harbour. To add to the challenger it was a rainy day, but no fog. The temperature was 18° C and wind SSW 19 km/ hour. The all aboard time this evening ts 10:30 p.m. Late in the afternoon and into the evening, the rain was lighter, almost drizzle, and there were times when it stopped.     Tjalling announced that there was a delay in the gangway placement and it would a little after 10 a.m. before it would be ready. There were excursions that were to meet on the pier at 10:15 a.m. and participants were getting a little impatient. Cee Kaye and Brad told us about the impatient participants at dinner since they had an early excursion to Cape Spear and the area. It rained most of the time. They even had fog flow in and out.      We had breakfast in the dining room as the ship was passing into the narrow entrance. Then we read in our stateroom until the excursio...

     Approaching St. Anthony, Newfoundland at 6 a.m. it was foggy. The ship was anchored by 7 a.m. and the tender boats were lowered. The first excursion was off the ship shortly after 7 a.m. for l’Anse aux Meadows. We had breakfast in Lido Market. The sun was shining and there were a lot of clouds, rain was predicted for later in the day. Temperature was 15° C, wind SW 9 km/hour.       We picked up our tender boat   tickets at 8 a.m. as Tjalling announced that tenders were operating. There were only four people on the boat when we got on. We waited another few minutes. The trip to the St. Anthony pier was less than 15 minutes. Onboard was the port agent and she gave us information on Wi-Fi and places to visit. There was an information booth as soon as you left the pier that had maps. We were in the Grenfell Center by 8:30 a.m. uploading the blogs of the past few days on a reasonable speed Wi-Fi for 45 minutes until more people were ashore and got on t...