November 13: Today was disembarkation day at Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, and on to the next stage of our adventure. I spent a while this morning getting a few more photos of the Noordam. The hallway outside our cabin – our door is the 2nd on the left, close...

November 12: Today was entirely a beach day – 6 hours on a private island in the Bahamas, with lots of options for activities for those who choose to not just laze around. This is Explorations Cafe, the library and computer area on Deck 3 on the Noordam. This...

November 11: We were supposed to be at sea all day today, but had to make a short stop at Grand Turk to air-evacuate a sick passenger. The Lido pool area on the Noordam is lovely but on nice days (which in the Caribbean means most days) it gets...

November 10: Our port visit today was the city of Charlotte Amalie on the island of St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. We had planned to take a catamaran to the island of St. John for another beach and snorkeling day, but Mother Nature changed those plans. This...

November 9: Today we visited Martinique, “the island of flowers”. This French colony gets few cruise ships, in my opinion because there are few English-language excursions available and Euros are used in trade. US dollars are only grudgingly accepted even in Fort-de-France, at poor exchange rates and with change...

November 8: Today’s port was Bridgetown, Barbados. Deciding what to do here was tough – as much as I wanted to explore some of the country’s history and architecture in particular, Cathy found a catamaran tour that including snorkeling with turtles. Snorkeling with turtles was on the Bucket List,...

St. Lucia was one of the 2 ports that I’d been particularly looking forward to, and I was very much saddened to see the devastation and death brought by Hurricane Tomas just a week before our scheduled arrival. We’d had a very friendly email discussion with the tour guide...

I’m already a day behind, as we’re now sailing from Saint Lucia to Barbados, but here’s what happened before that 🙂 November 5: Winds of 30-35 knots caused the outside decks on the Noordam to be closed for 2 days. Having a nice breakfast delivered to our cabin is...

As I write this at 06:40, 25 minutes past sunrise, we’ve just passed Anguilla and are approaching Sint Maarten. These 2 islands are the first land we’ve seen since leaving Fort Lauderdale, which is now 1167 miles behind us. The weather has been poor, with winds averaging 30-35 knots...

On Monday morning we flew out of Whitehorse, and we’re now on board Holland America’s Noordam at Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Three flights totalling 9 hours got us to a very different world. Here’s how it went… November 1: We took off at 11:10 am – this is...