Fri June 13, 2025
Hi Gang! Yes it’s Friday the 13th! And we just left the port where the Titanic sailed from before sinking! Are we worried?? YES!!! But luckily Friday the 13th isn’t unlucky… right??? Well we’ve been safe so far so let’s hope we make it safely to Dover tomorrow!
So as we wait to see what Friday the 13th has in store for us we went about our sea day routine. We decided to sleep in as long as possible to avoid any bad luck (yeah, that’s the reason, right?). But of course we started off with education.
The topic was “A City on the Sea” which was a behind-the-scenes look at life on board the ship. They discussed so many aspects of the ship but some were:
The staff is very diverse covering almost 50 different nationalities.
They make their own water using evaporators and reverse osmosis.
For a 14 day cruise they use 90 pallets of food. Per day they use
1 ton of flour, 75 lbs of carrots, 100 lbs of onions, 160 lbs of bananas, 500 lbs of chicken and 40 lbs of coffee! They shared that all of their bread is made fresh in the bakery every day (and it’s really good!). And lastly they sai the most suitcases ever brought on board by one person was 22!! (And I swear it wasn’t Kathy! Lol).
After that we had a nice lunch (and I promise we didn’t eat all the cakes since it was cake day – check out the cake pic!). After lunch we had to start the dreaded task of PACKING! Dang I hate that! But we got it all in and they’re not over the airline allowed weight (not sure how not!).
After packing we went to the second educational event called “Holland America Line’s Original Story”. It started in 1873 so they’ve been around for 152 years. Back during the big immigration rush from Europe to the US, over 11 million people immigrated via ships. One out of 10 chose Holland America since they treated their passengers the best (and still do!).
Holland even built a hotel for the immigrant passengers. They got rid of steerage class and served 3 meals each day. Word of mouth spread about how clean the ships were and their ticket sales grew substantially. Many Jewish people escaped Europe on Holland and during WWII the Nieuw Amsterdam ship carried 4,000 troops for WWII. The bottom line is Holland America has built a very strong brand.
When that was over we got what I guess was our third educational event of the day which was watching the Disney movie “Polar Bear” at the indoor pool. It was described as “A mother polar bear and her cub swim across the waters that was once the ice of the Arctic Tundra, as the film tells us the story of how she and her family survived during her youth.” It was a great movie and one I’ll have to watch with the grandkids!
After that we got ready for dinner. We ate in the Italian specialty restaurant named Canaletto. For starters we shared the Antipasto Plate and both got the Grilled Tiger Shrimp as well as the Veal and Sage Meatballs. For our mains we splurged and both got the Lobster Tails (of course!). For dessert I got the Tiramisu and Kathy got Chocolate Cake. It was a great meal to end a great cruise!
After dinner we went to the show which was called “Hey Mr DJ” which covered many iconic voices and iconic hits. Great music and a great show. Afterwards we roamed around thru the various live music venues just taking in the music. We then called it a night.
Today was our last full day on the ship so tomorrow we’ll take their shuttle to Heathrow airport and fly nonstop back to Charlotte. Funny thing is my youngest daughter, who has the Wanderlust just like her dad, is finishing up a two week trip to Italy and Croatia and will be flying thru Heathrow as well. But the bummer is our flight times don’t overlap and we’re in different terminals so we can’t meet up. Oh well, maybe next time! Hope everyone had a safe and lucky Friday the 13th!
PS: I’ll do one final trip update on Sunday since we’ll get back late on Sat.
PSS: Hope all the Dad’s out there have a great Father’s Day Weekend!
The Wandering Italian 