Wanderung 34

Voyage to the Emerald Isle

April - May 2018

Voyage to Azores

26 April 2018 Thursday: At Sea

Well, after a looong night's sleep, we were ready to start the day off with a stretching class after breakfast. Jerry also showed me how to run the treadmill when set to a targeted heart rate, and I gave that a whirl after our stretching class. I figured out the muscles that are stiff are precisely my leg muscles that are not used to sitting in the lotus position on an exercise mat! Surprise!

Our morning entertainment was a lecture of the effect of food on history, which was a potpourri of facts, some of which I knew and others which I did not. About half the talk focused on the shift from a hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural society focused on maize in the Americas, wheat in the Mideast and Europe, and rice in Asia. I had never seen the ancestral maize or corn plant, which had two tough-hulled stalks with about 4-5 kernels of corn in each of them, but it was quite a contrast to full corn cobs of the modern, hybridized corn plants.

The second half of the talk focused on the spice trade, originally monopolized by the Arab empire, that ultimately sparked European overseas expeditions, first around Africa to the Far East, and then westward across the Atlantic, resulting in the discovery of the Americas.

We again convened for trivia at 1 o'clock, and with he help of a newcomer, Doug, a minister, we upped our final score to 12, which was still far short of the winning total that turned out to be 14 out of 17 possible points. Since no prizes are offered, apparently due to Holland America economizing, we were playing for pride only, but we persevered even though we would not get any keychains, bottle stoppers, or plastic coasters!

It is curious what basics cruise lines try to economize on and what frills they preserve. Holland America not only has eliminated trivia prizes, but they have also eliminated the library, which is now a scattering of miscellaneous shelves with even more miscellaneous books up in the Crow's Nest lounge, and the computer center, which is now 3 terminals and a printer stuck in an isolated corner on the lowest deck. The computer center has been replaced by pay-by-the-day Wifi at $25-$30 per day (bring you own computer!), but the library has not been replaced by even so much as a passenger book exchange shelf! (bring your own books!) Holland America has also eliminated bottles of shampoo, shower gel, and hair conditioner in favor of the large, bolted-to-the-wall dispensers in the shower, which is more efficient for sure but reminiscent of what you would expect in a cheap motel room.

However, Holland America Line has preserved both tablecloths on the dining room tables, beautifully arranged appetizers, and real, blooming Phaelanopsis orchids on every table in the Market Place buffet, and those were all different and very pretty. And HAL freely gave out pencils and paper for Trivia contests even if there were no prizes. And finally, they still give out nice sewing kits at the Guest Services desk on the lowest deck, which is a godsend to me as I always seem to be sewing things shut or back together on our trips.

Happy Hour from 4-5 on the back of Deck 9 was followed by a relaxed dinner in the dining room as Bob and Janet were off having a special meal in the steakhouse restaurant. Then we enjoyed a musical evening of the two tenor-pianists singing Country and Western songs from 7-7:45, followed by a Uruguayan harpist playing in the main theater from 8-8:45, and then a selection of songs from the "British Invasion" sung by the tenor-pianists from 9-9:45. So we enjoyed a wide variety of both sung and instrumental music before turning in for the evening.

27 April 2018 Friday: At Sea

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise and were again glad we had a balcony.

We walked around the Promenade deck for some fresh-air exercise in the morning, and then came back inside for a 10 o'clock presentation on the America's Cup that was quite fascinating. I had not known that the winner of the last cup race was allowed to dictate not only the destination where the race would take place 4 years hence, but also the exact size and shape of the type of sailboat that would be used. The USA had been the previous winner of the cup and had decided on Bermuda as the location and really fast catamarans as the basic ship design, so for 4 years teams around the world worked to build the best ship of that new type.

In the end, though, the New Zealand team used bicycles to power their version, which turned out to be more efficient than the hand winches used by the other teams. And as Team New Zealand won the 2017 cup race, they set the design for the 2021 match to be a very advanced mono-hull design that floats above the water on two large underwater hydrofoils. So now teams around the world will be building that new design and optimizing it as well as they can. No wonder pursuing the America's Cup is so doggone expensive!

At the 1 o'clock trivia game, our team with Doug achieved a new high score of 12, better than our previous scores of 10 but still far short of winning. We rested in the afternoon in preparation for the evening festivities due to the birthday of the King of Holland, a Very Big Deal for the Holland America Line, naturally.

But first we enjoyed music from the 70s at the Billboard piano bar, followed by a big production show put on by the Zuiderdam troupe of 3 singers and 8 dancers. I suspect there is a fourth, female singer that should be there, but the troupe as constituted did a fine job of a series of song and dance routines. I particularly enjoyed the one couple who seemed to have classical ballet training as their movements were particularly graceful and elegant. Perhaps not surprisingly, they had Russian surnames.

Monika retired for the night, but Linda and Jerry and I went up to the pool area for the celebration for the King's birthday, and i ended up very glad we did! When we arrived we saw about half the 200 plus people with brilliant orange hats or huge orange wigs , and tried to get one but they said they were all out. I gave the lady in charge my (true) sob story about losing my hat in Bermuda, and really needing a hat, and she promised to look for one. In the end, she managed to find one and I proudly wore it for the rest of the party. Linda and I even danced a bit to the music being piped in, and we chatted and had our pictures taken with the Captain Wouter Von Hoogdalem, who was a good sport even if he refused to trade his King (with 85% popularity) for our President (with 40% popularity). Clutching my valuable orange hat as the party wound down, I returned to the cabin for the night.

28 April 2018 Saturday: At Sea

We slept in, in part due to yet another shift forward of the ship's clock, and did the stretching exercise class after breakfast. I thought I felt some improvement in my flexibility, so perhaps all those exercises were doing some good. Monika also reported that her right hip felt better after the stretching class exercises.

For lunch we were invited to a "Mariner's Lunch" where we were greeted by the Captain and staff, provided with champagne for a toast, and treated to a rather nice lunch. We had a pleasant table companion, a lady whose husband was busy getting an acupuncture treatment and thus could not attend the lunch, and it was fun talking with her.

We rejoined Linda and Jerry for the 1 o'clock trivia contest, but had a quite difficult time and ended up with a score of only 7 out of 16 possible points. The 2 o'clock presentation on the two islands in the Azores we were visiting was, fortunately, very worthwhile.

Horta was the port city on the first island, Faial, and I was surprised to learn that it was a major transit port for small ships crossing the Atlantic, supposedly accommodating 10,000 sailboats per year, which is hard to imagine. The port was apparently small enough that the Zuiderdam was too large to fit into it, and the plan was to anchor and use the lifeboats as tenders to ferry us in from the ship.

The entire island is rather small and Horta just barely a city, so we hoped we could arrange a meeting with Kim to go out and visit Ninovan, the horse rescue farm where she now lives as that is what we really want to see. Pictures of the island looked very bucolic, and the volcano that erupted in the 1980s was now dormant and looked interesting. Certainly the volcanic soil was quite fertile and allows crops to grow there.

The main city of the Azores is Ponta Delgada on San Miguel island, and after looking at the pictures of the island attractions, we decided to sign up for a tour that included lunch out in the hinterlands as that tour included some pretty lakes that we have not yet seen. The tour returns by about 1 o'clock, which should give us some time to walk around Ponta Delgada in the afternoon. Unfortunately, as it will be May 1st, many of the shops will be closed for the holiday, which is a shame as we purchased some nice handcrafted things in the Azores on previous visits.

I took a nap while Monika joined Jerry for Happy Hour, but that gave me the energy to really enjoy dinner with Bob and Janet and then stay awake while we listed to classical music played by a string quintet. That was pleasant, but very low-key, so staying awake was critical. We finished off our evening with a "variety show", which turned out to be an encore performance of the comedian and the harp player. They were both good, although in very different ways, and it was a nice way to close out the evening before retiring to our cabin for the night.

29 April 2018 Sunday: At Sea

We were up early and hopped down to the Main Deck to sign up for the Internet service for 1 day, because at $25-30 per day, it is outrageously expensive on the Zuiderdam. Considering that we BOTH have to separately sign up for Wifi access and then pay $10 more per phone, the total cost of Wifi and phone connections per day could easily be $80 or more, or as Holland America Lines might put it, "What's in YOUR wallet?"!

In any case we used one of the ship's 3 public computers to sign on for Wifi, but obviously the world has become oriented to Wifi rather than to computer stations because with 3 computers for 1900 guests and 800 crew members on the Zuiderdam, that's roughly 1 computer station per thousand people! But I digress.

As this expensive Internet service was also limited to 800 kilobytes per day, we quickly signed on, composed messages, and then sent them and signed off again. One message was to the family just telling them we were having fun on the Zuiderdam and looking forward to stopping in the Azores, and the the other message was to Mike, our neighbor, who had been picking up our mail. Monika had tried to forward our email to Martin and Tanya, but apparently that wasn't working. So we sent Mike an email to check if he was still collecting our mail, in which case we would try to have our mail stopped and stored at our local post office for the next month.

It is more difficult to cope with unexpected snags like that when we travel, and trying to solve them from a distance can be a trying experience. In this case we have no Wifi unless we pay the $25 per device per day and no phone service unless we pay at least $10 more per day to the ship plus whatever extra Verizon would charge us for overseas service. At those prices, it is no wonder that the first thing passengers ask about in the port lectures is, "Where is free Wifi?", and whenever we get on shore the available Wifi hot spots will be surrounded by desperate Zuiderdam passengers and crew members.

We decided to attend several presentations today, including one by the chief engineer at 9:30, a food lecture at 10 o'clock , and a flower lecture at 1 o'clock that would unfortunately conflict with the afternoon trivia session, which may sound trivial but isn't!

In the end, I attended the Chief Engineer's lecture, and he talked about the fuel, water, and propulsion systems of the ship. Zuiderdam has 5 Diesel engines and a gas turbine, and they burn bunker oil in the diesels whenever possible as it is by far the cheapest fuel although it pollutes more. When required to reduce pollution, they switch over to a lighter diesel fuel which burns with no visible pollution. All engines produce electricity that powers the motors in the Azipods that power the ship, as well as the bow thrusters and all the internal electrical consumption of the ship.

Fresh water is produced by distillation using evaporation of sea water at reduced pressures. Air-Conditioning condensate is, however, also used to supply the "black" or waste water systems, but all the "gray" water used for washing and bathing comes from the distilled and treated fresh water. Quite a complex system, I gathered.

Monika walked in at the end of the lecture, but did not see me as she was expecting me to wear my beige sweater. I tickled her and she knew it was me but still didn't recognize me, so I followed her out of the casino area to the elevators, where I once again tickled her to get her attention, and she finally recognized me! Such fun. Maybe once we are married more than 50 years she will recognize my face!

We all had a Sunday Brunch meal down in the dinning room, which we had expected to be a buffet but was instead a 3-course meal with a nice but limited selection for each course. We broke off a 1 o'clock to listen to a talk on how the ship's flowers were arranged, led by a very knowledgable Phillipino guy. He explained how solid-stem and hollow-stem flowers had to be treated differently and how to make a food solution using 1 liter of water plus 2 tablespoons of sugar plus one drop of chlorine bleach to prevent bacterial growth. At the end we each received a little box with three ornaments of dutch windmills.

We returned to the theater for a lecture on the transition of plants and animals from the sea to the land, which was very well done. Unfortunately, the lecturer had a smooth, mellow voice and we were an hour past lunch so we kept nodding off. Afterwards, I gave up and took a nap so I had some energy for the evening, and that was good because after dinner we not only attended the 7 o'clock session of playing audience requests at the piano bar, but also came back for the 8:45 session. The two singer-piano players coordinate extremely well and encouraged a great deal of audience participation, particularly in the well known choruses or refrains of each of the songs, so we had a bunch of fun with that before turning in for the night.

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