Day 52 - Downunder 2016 - Thu - 11/17/16 - At Sea to Sydney

Today was our final day at sea. It's hard to believe we've been on the ship for 52 days so far and we'll conclude with 53 total days. Today was our last devotional time with Rev. Barry and his wife, Julia, who played the electric piano. I read the gospel passage from Mark 15:33-37. There was the wonderful Filipino crew show at 10:30 followed by a mass crew choir singing 'We are the World'. Then for the first time in many cruises we took time to substantially complete all our packing.  

We hadn't seen our friends, Ann and John for a few days, and after Angela returned a book to them we learned that John had been quite sick. On this cruise I haven't observed a lot of coughing, but it's been there nevertheless.  

We've really liked sailing on the Maasdam. For us, it's a near perfect size ship. It was an easy two story stair climb from our room to the Rotterdam dining room for dinner. The 11th floor Lido has not been overcrowded and the Lido Market approach to service really works well. There were sufficient activities to keep us engaged on sea days without feeling too much that we were missing something by not participating in all of them. In general the ship appears to be well maintained with the possible exception of a lingering sewage smell outside our cabin which we discussed with our stateroom attendant, Yudha. During the trans-Pacific and early part of the circumnavigation, substantial sections of the hallway and stair carpeting have been replaced.

Things that concern us a bit are:

 The librarian's position is being eliminated. We understand this to be a fleet wide change.

The shipboard internet continues to be slow and expensive. We ended up purchasing an Australian SIM card ($30AUD for a month with 3 gigs of data) and also use a Glocalme SIM CARD simulator $10AUD for 1 gig of data useable within 30 days (a real bargain).

There is pressure to reduce or eliminate the lectures and/or interdenominational devotional and worship times. We feel these are quite important on the longer cruises with sea days.

We hear rumors the Maasdam has been sold. Between the Captain and other crew, nobody has confirmed this. This ship has itineraries scheduled through 2018.

There was a bit of repeat on entertainment and movies because of this being a Collector Cruise. This should be able to be easily fixed, but I have doubts it will be.

 

This afternoon the BBC Earth game show was debuted on this ship. The questions asked seemed to be the same as we experienced on our Koningsdam cruise earlier this year, so that will need to be addressed due to the high number of HAL repeat cruisers. Dr. Wright gave his final astronomy presentation to a standing ovation that was well deserved.

 

After dinner tonight in the Rotterdam Dining Room, the bar servers and kitchen staff sang a farewell song in Indonesian. Patrick McMahon presented yet his third show this cruise. It was clearly his best of three shows (all of which were high energy). He also brought Kara, the HAL Cats vocalist, on stage to do an amazing cover of the Neil Diamond/Barbara Streisand song, 'You Don't Send Me Flowers Anymore'. His show was so good that we came back for the last half (the best part) of it after watching the night's movie, Disney Films' Oceans which was good.

About 11:50pm we put out our packed suitcases, and started a very short night before disembarkation.  

While the destination is important, remember to savor the journey.