Key West - Feb 16, 2015 Pics

Just to make sure the pictures don't get out of order, I am sending a separate posting. Hope you enjoy…

Ryndam - Feb 15/16, 2015

What the heck is that thing in the sky, man it is bright, oh yeah, the sun, haven't seen my old warm friend in the sky in a while, so good to see and feel you again. Here we are in the land of cruise ship ports, I thought Fort Lauderdale was big, never seen the Miami port but the this port here in Tampa is no slouch with three ships in today, two massive and then our little 1300 passenger Ryndam. Check in was a breeze, walking on the gangplank toward the ship we see the very friendly face of a former dining room steward Willy, wow someone we know - it is a small world after all. Using a single word to sum up this ship after day one, would be intimate. This ship has recently gone through a make over, clean, bright and fresh are more words that come to mind. Love the Pinnacle (had dinner there last night), love the Explorers Lounge, Love the Showroom, they have a great tiered set up with cabaret style tables and chairs by the stage. The showroom also has installed state of the art sound, lights and great screens, fantastic. I am sure as I explore this ship some more there will be a whole lot of "love's" to be had.

This ship is also FULL, really FULL. We booked this last minute as most of you know (four days prior to departure) and the only room we could get was an inside cabin, more on that later. We were able to get an outside for our last week but we are okay and will just enjoy this experience. Coming up to Key West, music just began and it is time for me to head to a lecture on this first port.   

Key West, Travel almost 300 miles southwest of Miami and you wil find the tiny island of Key West. This island offers a year round tropical climate with temperatures constantly floating in the 80's. Ernest Hemingway called Key West home in the early 20th century as did Tennessee Williams. With many outdoor entertainment venues this port is a very nice way to kick off a holiday cruise. Our plan is to just walk off the ship and wander around. Which is exactly what we did, strolled this very touristy town. We stopped in at the Hard Rock for a lunch and then headed to the Butterfly Conservatory (highly recommended to us). A great experience as I have never seen so many butterflies in one area at one time. Stolled some more and had to stop at Kermit's for the Key Lime Pie, absolutely delicious. Back to the ship by four, all aboard was five. A little R&R as then ship left and sailed off into a magnificent sunset. Now we have two sea days to really explore this ship, wonderful.  So, all good so far. Captain's reception tomorrow….

A few pictures of our couple days here, hope you enjoy… 

Tampa - Feb 14, 2015

Say what you want about US destination flights and the that you have to pay an up charge on just about everything when it come to US Carriers but, now that we are used to our current world environment I must say that United Airlines were great in delivering us safely and comfortably from Vancouver to Tampa. The crew were always smiling and friendly especially when I boarded the plane in Vancouver with a profusely bleeding little finger - they handed me about thirty napkins. What happened, well they wanted me to make sure my carry on fit inside this metal bracket, well for me to make sure if fit I had to really stuff it in there and by doing so my finger bashed against the side, ouch…

Overnight at the Hilton Garden Westshore Airport Hotel was very pleasant and a recommended place to drop your head if you are coming in late and and need to drop your head for a night before boarding a cruise ship. Not much around the Hotel, but clean and quite. If you had a few days here I would suggest more of a downtown location.

Time to Pack...

As many of you know we have a few health challenges that we need to address on an ongoing basis. You could say that right now we are in between things where we are waiting for some results. Unfortunately we need to wait until March 10th. Well for any of our followers, you know that we usually do not sit around and mark the days off the calendar waiting, especially here on the wet coast of Canada. So what to do, well... we look at the many possibilities that Holland America offers during this time and low and behold they have the perfect Southern and Western Caribbean cruise to help us during this waiting period. So with many phone calls and e-mails later we have just now, meaning yesterday, just dotted all the i's and crossed and the t's and we leave this Saturday (Valentine's Day) to Tampa, Florida where we will embark the MS Ryndam (our first time on this ship) for a relaxing wonderful three weeks of floating around the Caribbean to all ports new to us. Are we excited, you bet, we always wanted to get down and explore the Caribbean, some may recall that even though we have over 500 cruising days we only scratched to Caribbean surface, so here is our opportunity knocking, so we are going in. Hmm, now to determine what to pack for a sun filled holiday? I know I better hurry I only have a day to get organized. We will be blogging this adventure, so as usual we welcome you along. New this time around is Facebook, Jan finally signed me up and wow what a cool toy. I will be posting links on my Facebook page to simplify the viewing process for any of my Facebook friends. Well I should really say once I figure that part out. For now, I will say see you in Tampa on board the Ryndam... did I say we are getting excited. Our itinerary is as follows:

Happy New Year !!! 2015

Well that year went by fast. I guess if you spend a total of 124 day of the 365 days on our favorite ship, the MS Amsterdam, then time will fly by or in our case, float by.

I jumped in the truck last night to capture the last sunset of this amazing year, hope it comes out clear enough to appreciate. We rang in New Years at a friend's and neighbour's home, walked to ten kilometer Stanley Park Seawall this morning ending at the crazy Polar Bear Swim in English Bay, now that is crazy.

We are still gelling our plans for 2015 check back occasionally as I will update our year on the first (or close to it) of each month. We do have a few ideas in the cooker we just need to clear a few things up before moving ahead.

Happy New Year to all of our followers, All The Best to you in 2015...