Cruise!

So to get to all of our locations, we sailed on the Holland America boat, Eurodam.  Our vaca was entitled Gems of the Baltic.  All in all I would give Holland America and the Eurodam an A+ but there were some things about the vacation that were worthy of note.

Side note: Everyone, with all the recent cruise disasters, was like "Are you really going on a cruise?" and I was like "Yes, it's not like we are sailing on Carnival".  However, a few days before we left, Mr.'s co-worker told him that Holland America is actually part of the same corporation as Carnival so I was like "AHHHHH!!!!!"  Anyways, as I said, it was fine so I was wrong to worry.

Food

Cruises are well-known for the amount of food served on board.  This was Mr.'s first cruise and my fourth so in fact, I assumed I was well aware of how much people eat on these.  I was very surprised at the amount of food people were actually consuming.  Do you really need 7 pieces of sausage, a bowl of fruit, three eggs, 4 pancakes, a muffin, a bowl of cereal, an omelette, and some oatmeal for one breakfast?  Honestly, it was disgusting.  I am not a big meal eater and tend to graze as it is but the gluttony was judge-worthy.  I know, to each his own, but it just seemed a bit much.  Moreover, we would be at dinner and would opt-out of an appetizer because we didn't want all that food and we would be looked at like we had three heads for refusing.  I will say, even with all the gluttonous side-eyeing I did to the other passengers, Mr. and I may have really over -indulged in desserts so I am being a bit hypocritical.

Seniors

The crowd on board were pretty much all old people.  I have found that old people are my metier.  Normally, I make Mr. do all  the talking but I was Chatty McChats and all of the elderly people knew my name.  Mr. was like "Who are you?" because being social is not my thing.  I told my dad though, I was getting good recommendations for when I have to put him in the home.  Even so, I will say that we were the recipients of some ageism.  We would be sitting at afternoon tea and the look of utter horror that would come across people's faces when they would be told to sit with us was amusing.  We worked our charms and in the end, we always had a good time.  I am not one to try to find friends on vaca.  I pretty much like to hang out with Mr. and that's it so not having anyone really our age around didn't bother me at all.  As a matter of fact, I loved having the older people on our tours and such because they were always the first to complain about anything I had privately complained about to Mr. and so we got our answers and problems fixed before we actually had to bring it up with the tour leaders.  Hee hee.

Shows and Activities

There were a number of different shows and activities set up for our amusement.  There was a comedian we went to see one night, we hit up the afternoon tea, swam, read, lounged, sat around and listened to the afternoon trivia but didn't actually participate and went to pilates (Mr. too!  He wasn't lying when he told me he was inflexible but confessed he actually liked it.).  You have to participate in stuff on the cruise or else you are just sitting around so we did.

Room

Mr. and I lucked out and got a room that was on the end and handicapped so it was HUGE.  We had a balcony which we sat on here and there but really it was too cold to be sitting out there for any length of time.  Our toilet stopped flushing twice which was a bit of a loser but was quickly fixed.

Seasickness

Mr. gets nauseous just thinking about boats so he was very scared to go on this cruise.  I told him he won't even notice it and even though we came equipped with lots and lots of seasickness prevention tools, I was right.  He was fine.

Health

The first two days we were on board as a temporary measure to prevent the spread of illness, the staff served all buffet food.  I wish they had continued that the whole trip because buffets can be gross.  Also, the staff sprayed you with anti-bacterial every time you boarded the vessel or entered a dining room.  Kind of crazy but I liked it although in the end, Mr. and I did pick up a nasty cold.