The Maasdam was just out of dry dock, having finished its Christmas cruise about 10 days earlier. Some people had commented recently in RTC that the Maasdam was looking rather worn in some respects, and that had us a bit concerned as we embarked upon our very first cruise. We hoped the break would mean HAL had time to spruce up the ship.

I have to report that we saw only a few glitches, and nothing that spoiled the trip in any way. We were in B191, a mini-suite on the Verandah deck. It was really more spacious than we'd expected, certainly more than enough room for my sister and myself. The bathroom was more than adequate, and the whirlpool tub was a nice addition. We had plenty of closet space, even for two chronic over-packers like my sister and me. Our cumulative five pieces of luggage (including 4 garment bags) easily fit under the beds. In addition to two twin beds (put together as a queen when we arrived), the small couch converted to a single bed as well. My sister chose the convertible, so I was plenty comfortable in the queen bed! Someone commented that the mini-suite mattresses looked saggy, but were quite comfortable. Well, they must have changed them in dry

dock: ours were not a bit saggy, and they were pretty ... uh, firm. Unfortunately, they haven't changed the bedspreads, which were clean but definitely worn looking.

Our cabin was missing the promised VCR, which was very disappointing, since my sister had brought a family tape for me to see (we live about 1800 miles apart). Our cabin steward brought in a technician, who fixed the television connection but said he had no spare VCRs. The steward seemed to be worried about the fact that the VCR had disappeared in dry dock. We have no idea where he found it, but sometime during the second day of the cruise, a VCR magically appeared! We enjoyed having the verandah, especially one evening when we ordered room service and ate out there.

The most striking thing about the Maasdam, to me, is that it seemed to be a very comfortable ship. We soon determined that our favorite place was the aft Lido Terrace, overlooking the Navigation pool. We usually were able to get a table there, even on at-sea days. (The Lido pool area seemed to draw the biggest crowd, but it felt too closed-in for me.) Very few areas other than the Lido pool ever seemed very crowded. There is a nice choice of bars, with various musical options in the evening, and the smoking wasn't too intrusive. Best of all, there were rarely long lines in the Lido restaurant, even when we galloped in at the very last minute for breakfast on most days. The couches and club chairs in the show room were quite comfy, especially in the balcony. And we noticed very little motion in our cabin, even though we were back toward the stern. (The only place I noticed a great deal of vibration was in the atrium, just opposite the front office.) The seas were relatively calm for most of our trip, with the exception of one evening when I had a very interesting shower experience (trying to stay IN the shower, that is).

I'm emphasizing the comfort of the ship because it seemed in stark contrast to the Carnival Triumph, which shadowed us for much of our voyage. In Grand Cayman, we had only a short wait to get a tender into port - maybe 10-15 minutes after we wandered into the lounge to get our number. (We chose to wait an hour or so after tender service began to avoid the crush. OK, who am I kidding? We slept late that day, like every other day, and barely made breakfast at 10 AM.) When we were ready to head back to the ship, maybe 2 hours before we were scheduled to sail, we just walked up to the dock and barely missed a Maasdam tender. Another glided into the dock within 2 minutes. In the meantime, there was a line of about 50 people waiting for the Carnival Triumph tenders. Later, our travel agent, who was on the trip, said that she had to pull Maasdam passengers she recognized out of the Triumph line (since the separate lines weren't well marked), and they told her they had been waiting nearly an hour in the wrong line! It was the same story at Ocho Rios. Maasdam passengers could just wander on and off the ship with no wait for most of the day. I looked over to the Triumph docked next to us and at about 3:30 PM I estimated that the line to re-board was over 150 people long. I donut know when Ill cruise again, but I do know that it wont be on a ship any bigger than the Maasdam.

For anyone still awake and reading this, Ill just summarize a few things about the food and entertainment.

Food: fabulous dinners in the dining room; fair to good breakfasts and lunches in the Lido. (We never got up early enough for breakfast in the dining room, and we ate breakfast so late we weren't hungry for lunch there either.) The Lido had delicious toasted bagels at breakfast, good pizza at lunch and as an afternoon snack, and the ice cream parlor offerings were scrumptious. Coconut ice cream, pistachio, chocolate chip, vanilla bean ... yum. I've read about charges for ice cream on some other lines being a point of contention, so I think this is a nice offering by HAL. It seemed to me that they had the parlor open just about every afternoon and late night on several occasions. Some of the best dining room offerings were lobster tail, parmesan crusted turkey tenderloin with sun-dried tomato risotto, grilled pork chop with mushroom sauce, king crab legs, tomato Florentine soup ... I could go on, but I'm drooling into the keyboard so Ill stop here.

Entertainment: We were on a charter called Phil Coulter's Tranquillity Cruise. Coulter is an Irish musician/producer/songwriter and he has been doing these cruises annually for about six years now. This year the Irish entertainment also included a duo called the New Barleycorn and an increasingly well-known tenor named Ronan Tynan. Tynan is a big draw among Irish music fans, so this year there were about 400 in the Coulter group. We had our own shows scheduled, so we didn't get to see much of the regular entertainment. My sister and I did catch part of one show called Up on the Roof and a couple of the singers were really good. The only other organized activities we joined in were a couple of trivia games and one of Pictionary. We didn't do any port excursions, either. Basically, we were happy slugs.

Miscellaneous: Lots of people will tell you about the great jewelry buys in the Caribbean, but based on what we saw in all three ports, that's a gross exaggeration. My sister and I collect gemstones and jewelry as a hobby, and we had store clerks asking us where to get the rings we were wearing. Know what you want and what a good price is in the US before you venture in. (And no, the supply of tanzanite is not going to run out in the next 10 days. Take your time.)

Halls private island, Half Moon Cay, is really nice. Beautiful sand and clear water. I even found a whole sand dollar, newly washed up on the beach. (Uh-oh. I just remembered about that. It's still in a plastic ziploc bag ... er...somewhere. I shudder to think what its condition might be, though.)

This is already too long by half, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Thanks again to those of you who answered my specific questions, and to everyone else who provided valuable information via RTC without even knowing it.

Happy cruising!

Susan in Austin