Coming Home to the Zaandam

 January 21, 2023

As I mentioned before, our room overlooked the railroad tracks. But if we walk down the hall to the elevators, the view is from the front of the hotel overlooking the water. Yesterday we looked out the window on the way to breakfast and saw a Disney ship docked. Today it is our turn! The Zaandam was there waiting for us to board!

Our first view of the Zaandam from the hotel window.

Breakfast today was eggs again and sausage that had replaced the bacon from yesterday. Bob had his usual oatmeal but supplemented it with blueberries provided as topping for the waffles. It was easy to spot other cruisers at breakfast. I grabbed a cup of coffee to take back to the room and enjoy while I did a little shuffling and repacking.

Bob took off for a morning walk. I tracked his iPhone as he walked and saw he almost went as far as the Coast Guard station...the opposite direction of his jaunt yesterday. At one point the app had trouble zeroing in on his location and showed he was in the middle of the bay. Knowing Bob, I wondered if he had taken a swim or ended up finding a stranger to take him out on a boat! 😄

When Bob returned it was still too early to leave for the ship. I had booked our room under an AARP discount code on the Hampton Inn website which implied we could have a late checkout until 2 pm. When I checked at the front desk they acted like I was crazy for even asking! We were able to have our checkout time extended until noon, but no longer. Our assigned boarding time for the ship was 12:30 so that worked out OK. I was getting tired of waiting in our room and suggested we go outside to kill time. It was a beautiful day and we might as well do our waiting in the sunshine.

Waterfront Park, which had been pretty deserted the last two days, was abuzz with people. It didn't take long to see that many of them were in costume. Turns out there was an Alice in Wonderland event going on. I Googled it and found the following description:

Follow Alice down the rabbit hole and enter a virtual world of adventure, intrigue and impossible things at this immersive Alice in Wonderland event.

For one day only, the streets of San Diego, CA will turn into a giant, escape-room-style experience on Saturday, January the 21st, 2023. Don’t be late!

Solve clues which just get curiouser and curiouser, take on mad and mischievous challenges, and uncover a dark conspiracy at the heart of Wonderland.

The website for the experience noted it was sold out. We found a bench in the park and just observed until it was time for us to go to the ship. It made for some great people watching!

The cruise port was just a couple of blocks away from our hotel so we joined the parade of other passengers wheeling their luggage to the ship. With the cruise port being downtown, there are several hotels within walking distance. 

On our way to the Zaandam. Quite the contrast between the modern cruise ship and the historic Star of India docked next to it.

Getting checked in was the quickest we had ever experienced for a cruise. We never stopped walking from the time we arrived until we were seated, waiting for our boarding group to be called. Our assigned time was 12:30 but we were called to board 10 minutes earlier.

Our cabin is located at the very back of the ship on deck 7...a long hike from where we boarded near the front. I was a little unhappy to get there and find that our key cards were not outside the door as they were supposed to be. 😣 I left Bob to wait with our carry-on bags and backpacks while I went to guest services. After spending 45 days on the ship in recent years, you would think I would remember the layout, but I forgot that you cannot walk through on Deck 4. So instead of going down and then forward, I should have gone forward and then down. So I ended up walking up to deck 5, then forward and then back down the steps to deck 4. And after all that II had to wait in a long line to finally get key cards made. While I was there I had also had them punch holes in the cards so I could clip them onto the beaded lanyard that I always use. (The lanyard was a craft project on a Norwegian Cruise Line ship from several years ago.) A few minutes after I got back to our cabin the original cards were delivered. 😠

After a quick lunch at the lido buffet, the luggage got delivered. I was worried we were going to struggle to find places to put all of our stuff. I chose our cabin specifically for its location, but it is a bit of an oddball layout. I will get into that in a day or two. In the end we found a place for everything and it seemed workable.

Our room steward, Putu, stopped by and said we would only get our room serviced once a day and it was our choice...morning or evening. We chose morning but I requested that our ice bucket be filled both morning and evening.

As we were getting close to sail away (and losing our cell signal), I did a quick FaceTime call with my sister to show her our cabin. I was just finishing up when Bob walked in. He had gone exploring, mostly to give me space to unpack.

He suggested we go up to the Sea View pool for sail away. Quite a crowd was forming and music was playing. We got a chance to meet the cruise director, Ryan Baird, who I had learned graduated from the same college where Bob and I went and was from a small town not far from my hometown.

Sail Away Selfie

I recognized Sailor Steve dancing. I had been following his YouTube channel and knew that he boarded the Zaandam back in October 2022 and was planning to cruise continuously until December of 2023...over a year! I didn't get a chance to meet him, but hoped our paths might cross sometime during the next couple of weeks.

Golden Hour sail away.

An interesting boat we passed.

The USS Midway

This shows how close the cruise port is to the San Diego airport.

The most exciting part of any cruise...the beginning!

San Diego has a very large military presence. Ever see the movie, Top Gun?

As part of the sail away party, CD Ryan offered to buy anyone a drink who could name the first set of locks that we would sail through in the Panama Canal. I was the first with the answer...Miraflores...and got to enjoy a lime daiquiri for my response. Bob had left (for just a minute he said) to go check on the pickleball court. When he didn't return, I went up to the sports deck and he was in the middle of a game!! 

For dinner, the main dining room (MDR) menu didn't impress us so we ate again at the buffet. Afterwards we went back to the room for awhile and Bob started a movie. New interactive TV's had just been installed in the last week on the Zaandam. What an improvement over the old style TV's with DVD players that had been in the cabins on our previous Zaandam cruises. To watch a movie in the past required checking out a DVD from guest services and hoping it wasn't damaged (which many were.) The new TV's are interactive and feature movies on demand...with quite a sizeable number of titles. But...the downside to the new TV (at least in our cabin) is that it takes up half of the already small desk space.

The scheduled entertainment in the theater (The World Stage) at 8 pm was a video presentation on the 150 years of Holland America. We had seen this previously on our Alaska cruise and enjoyed it. But the Eurodam was a larger ship with multiple video screens. After watching for a few minutes we realized the single screen on the small Zaandam just wasn't going to be as impressive so we left.

A piano/violin duo from the Ukraine was just starting to perform in the Explorer's Lounge so we went there instead. They were EXCELLENT! I'm sure we will be enjoying more of their music as the cruise continues. From there we stopped at the Ocean Bar to listen to the band. The musicians had just joined the ship for this cruise. It only took one song to realize the female lead singer just wasn't very good so we bailed and went back to our room.

I worked on my blog while Bob continued his movie that he had started earlier. The clocks get moved ahead an hour overnight and will do so more than once as we make our way east to the Caribbean. Losing an hour wasn't a big deal since the next day was a sea day with no particular plans.

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