Cruising The Caribbean - Changing Ships

Cruise lines have started something that has made it very convenient for us with some of our travel arrangements. If you are able to carry off your own luggage you can exit the ship early in the morning. The early morning window of time worked out well for us and we exited the ship right after breakfast. We made the phone call for our parking garage shuttle pick up and hoped that we wouldn't have to wait too long.

To our surprise our ride was there quickly and we were soon on our way to the Miami parking garage to pick up our car. Smoothly and quickly we were on our way. We needed to go to my son's house and get my new contact lens that my eye doctor had sent before continuing on to our next ship and setting sail.

Contacts in hand, hugs from all the grandkids and we were on our way to Fort Lauderdale to board our ship for our next cruise. This one would be a holiday cruise and include Christmas and New Year's. We chose Holland America because it had been our experience that they decorated the ships enough to make it truly feel like the holidays.

We parked at the cruise side of Park N Fly located between the airport and the cruise port and within minutes, we were shuttled to the Nieuw Amsterdam. Embarkation was smooth but I think that was partly due to the fact that we were a little later than usual in arriving. We weren't all that hungry so we
went about booking our specialty restaurants and the spa thermal room for Bob. After a quick light lunch, we sought out our stateroom and found it to be clean and in good order.

The rest of the afternoon we spent looking over the ship and acquainting ourselves with the changes that had been made. The Nieuw Amsterdam had just come out of dry dock a week ago where they had refurbished much of the ship. The smell of new carpeting was strong and as I watched the carpet pil as new carpet does, I was thankful I didn't have to be the one to keep running the vacuum.

Some of the changes looked nice others I thought had taken some of the old world charm away and replaced it with more sleek modern looking furniture and decorations. But the Christmas decorations were throughout the ship and Christmas was only a day away.