MS Maasdam
Holland America Cruise Line
Sunday July 22 to 29th, 2001
Western Caribbean
Yes, we took yet another cruise this year. This time we hit, Cozumel- Mexico, Georgetown- Grand Caymen, Ocho Rios- Jamaica, and the private island called Half Moon Cay. Here's the maps to prepare you for our little adventure.
First off is Cozumel, we landed at San Miguel, by Playa Del Carmen.
Next we landed at Georgetown, Grand Caymen, on the left side of the island.
Followed by Ocho Rios, Jamaica, at the top right side.
Don't have a map of Half Moon Cay, but it was just a private island so there wasn't much there, just the beach area and buildings for the cruise passengers to use. It was truly beautiful though, I highly recommend going there.
So now you know where we went, lets get down to the good stuff, PICTURES!!!!
Ok, as you know we always arrive a day early just in case. We arrived Saturday, kind of late, I pretty much got to the hotel, chatted with mom a while and went to sleep. We tried to get an early start and actually got to the boat before it started boarding.
SUNDAY
This is the ship at dock. It's almost exactly the same ship as the Veendam, the only differences being slight interior design changes. When you come up to the dock, the ship's baggage handlers immediately take your luggage and get it on board for you. It has to be scanned and ok'd for weight and stuff. You're only allowed to carry on a small bag, and even that has to go through x-ray, and you also have to do the metal detector thing, which is ok with me for protection purposes. Once you get to the check in counters, (sounds like an airport huh?) you get your boarding passes, room keys, and shipboard card for buying stuff. Then you wait. Here's me waiting. It turned out to be really hot and humid so I tried to cool off by rolling my pants up a bit and putting on my flip flops. You can see all our carry on crap. We never travel light, I don't think that's humanly possible for me to do. Because mom had a suite we had the chance to board first, which is always cool.
Ok, here's the boarding shot, not bad, but it's fuzzy for some reason, I blame the computer.
The Room.
We start with the balcony, it was huge. We had 2 lounge chairs, small table and a large table with 4 chairs around it. It was the same length as the room, just not as deep of course.
We had a living room with fold out sofa and 2 beds.
The mini-bar was cool, we had champagne on ice and fresh fruit when we arrived. We had a mini-fridge fully stocked with assorted sodas, beers, and water.
The way it was designed you'd never know that the bar was there. It's all in the cabinets and behind the glass. The lighting was cool, the room felt very homey.
We had this small changing/makeup room kind of thing where the closets were, and lots of closet space. The bathroom was off this room. Mom liked the picture on the wall, it's of a farm with cows in it. She thought this was a funny thing to have on a cruise ship going to the Caribbean. I agreed, some flowers, islands, palm trees, sunsets, but cows??????
We'll move on to the next page for our departing shots......