the ship

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Holland America names its passenger ships after major rivers. Our ship was named after the Rhine, which in Dutch is "Rijn." Perhaps they figured no Americans could figure out how to pronounce that -- in any case, they named it Ryndam. The "y" is pronounced as the "i" in "bite," and the "a" of course is "ah", *not* as in "hat"....






Despite my intent to take "documentary" pics as well as aesthetically satisfactory ones, I did a spotty job. These pics were taken on different days, at different times.

I patch them together here to give you some idea....... If there are other things you want to see (the dining room, the Explorer lounge, etc), I suggest you visit Holland America online and look around at the info they have on the Ryndam.

That first pic above was taken in Haines, Alaska. As you see, one can walk off the ship and then walk to the shore.




This next item is something that I certainly would have mentioned before, had I been doing a good job of documentation.

Hand sanitizers were everywhere everywhere we went, in Alaska. Nearly as ubiquitous as fireweed and souvenir stands.

Noro viruses are a scourge of cruiseship passengers (or any other group of people all living and eating in a fairly confined space), and in order to try to keep everyone healthy, it is very strongly suggested that hand sanitizers be used early and often.

I wish I'd taken pics of the different sorts of dispensers......

The dispensers were in hotels, on the train, at touristy locations, and they were all over the ship.

You were *strongly* encouraged (guys standing by to personally dispense it onto your hand) to sanitize when boarding the ship, when leaving the ship, and especially before every meal. There were baskets of packets of hand sanitizer to pick up and take with you as you left the ship, just in case you might need some while on shore.

This seemed a bit strange at first, but then I got used to it, and missed them when one wasn't readily available.

This one is just before you pick up your tray in the cafeteria line on the Ryndam's cafeteria on deck 11.






Now that our hands are clean, let's find our room. We won't find it on this floor (this is 6, we were on 5), but this is my best pic of an empty corridor. As you can see, the Ryndam is a big ship. There are many that are bigger, but it is pretty big. My back was *not* to the wall when I took this pic. There was another couple of hundred feet behind me, I bet........






Our room was very nice, and plenty big enough for two, especially given that we really didn't spend much time in it except for sleeping -- and unloading pics from the camera to the computer and triaging out the blurry ones............

Speaking of which, the blackish place on the wall, just behind the camera-bag strap, is the electrical outlet. There is one (1) socket for American plugs. This makes it impossible to power both the computer *and* the camera charger. Getting the pics off the camera (a very battery-intensive activity) and onto the computer was an annoying dance of plugging and unplugging and judging just who, at any given moment, had enough juice to work without assist.......

My advice is -- bring something that will allow you to plug in both.

I honor their desire to not have too many people sucking down too much power, but I know my computer and battery charger, together, are not consuming as much as, say, someone's hair dryer....... And for a much higher purpose, too! Harumph.







Note mountains outside window! It was nice to have a window, even though it didn't open.






Bank of closets on the right (plenty big enough to store all our clothes *and* our suitcases). Bathroom on left. Very small, but adequate, aside from the fact that someone who is 6'4" can't stand up in the shower.....






As you may have thought, looking at that long (long) hallway to one room after another, finding one's way around required a bit of thought.

A fair amount of attention has been given to helping us landlubbers find our way around the ship. Signs like this were posted at all major intersections. (Our room was aft, on the port side.)






I didn't get a pic of the signs by the elevators, but they extensively documented where you were relative to the whole ship. Sometimes it was tricky to get from here to there -- at the top levels, you couldn't get from bow to stern on some levels (you had to go down, walk to the other end, and then go back up).

We actually got a fair amount of exercise just running back and forth and up and down on the ship. Especially when looking for someone. We are used to using our cell phones to locate each other at any moment, but when they cost $2.50 a minute, each, to use, well, we left them turned off. I have heard that walkie-talkies are suggested, and it seems like a rather good idea..........



In addition to the efforts to help passengers locate themselves in space, efforts are made to help people with their temporal location.






I didn't notice the rugs in the elevators for a couple of days, but was amused when I did.......

The ship publishes a small newsletter every day, which arrives at your room every evening.






The newsletter details all the next day's on-board activities (which are legion), and also gives info about the next day's port (if any).






End of useful info, beginning of rant.

The "news" is a bit heavy on the hard sell, especially for jewelry and expensive watches...... One has to conclude that many are making huge bucks from hawking that sort of stuff, including the cruise line. Especially if you buy it on the ship................

I tried to take the position that I was glad that someone else was buying that junk and therefore, perhaps, subsidising part of the expense of my trip, but the constant hype about it was tiresome, especially when they *could* have used that space in the newsletter to tell us about things we might actually find interesting, rather than detailing the location of every diamond store in each port. (There are far more "diamond stores" in Juneau, pop. 30,000, than there are in Ann Arbor........ One has to conclude that tourists are spending a lot of money that way, but, really, WHY are people buying that sort of stuff in Alaska? I mean, it don't *come* from there........................................... Why buy it in Alaska rather than at home? The duty-free shop on the ship, well, maybe that makes some sense, but in Alaska? Baffling.)

Special note to E -- if you need a few baubles to go with the tiara, you will have plenty of choice and plenty of info about where to go to view those choices...............



In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, a link to the next one is here.

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