59 England - Around Salisbury

 

58 England Salisbury

One of first visits in England was to Salisbury. Of course the thing you go and see there is the Cathedral. Such a magnificent church, its spire is the tallest in all of England and it is home to one of best preserved of only four surviving original Magna Carta copies. Wonderful stain glass windows and amazing monuments and tombs...

After the Cathedral we wandered back to the car taking in some of Salisbury amazing architecture.

 

57 England, Amesbury

Whilst in England we stayed in Amesbury, 3 hours from Dover, 30 minutes to Salisbury and 5 minutes to Stone Henge.  We were staying with Garry’s family which was nice being able to catch up with them on their territory instead of Australia.

We didn’t see alot of Amesbury, but Keith took us for walk and we did try their fish and chips... very nice!!

 

56 England

Once we arrived in Dover we were lucky enough to be picked up by Garry’s sister Loraine and brother in law Keith.  Having only just come back from a trip of China themselves they made the 3 hour trip from Amesbury, stayed overnight, picked us back and drove straight back to Amesbury.

They looked after us well and we visited Cornwell, the Cotswolds, Brighton and locally Salisbury, Avebury and Stonehenge.

I will cover each place we visited in a separate blog entry each as I think that will make it a little interesting to see the photo’s along with the town....

(we are currently in Paris for another 2 days so I will try to get as many up with this nice fast WiFi)

 

55 Ryndam, Holland America..... My Review

This was my first time on a Holland America Product.  We have cruised nearly 300 days and only 2 weeks of that was on Royal Caribbean the rest has been Princess, so that will by my comparison.

Precruise – All went smoothly, we book with Holland America directly on their website.  You can book anything online and you will be charged immediately.  All documentation was printable from the website.

Embarkation – Dover

This would the easiest embarkation we have ever had.  We arrived a little early (10am) so they gave us a boarding ticket (A ).   We then sat and waited for check in to begin.  We terminal has been done up and you have free wi fi... There is also a small coffee shop set up.  Check in was easy and by 11.30 they were ready to board us.  That was a bit crazy, with no proper line we headed to a room with the security scanners... The photographers tried to set up 2 screens to take embarkation photos.  This does not work when a room full of people try to converge on the single door behind them.. They tried to capture everyone’s photo but the odds were against them... We were amazed as once through the scanners we were heading onto the ship.... hey where is immigration!!

 

55a Ryndam Cabin

The Ship – for all it is worth now that she is going to move over to P&O

Our Room.... OMG is all I can say... it was lovely and big.... Yes it was an inside cabin...  The bed had room on either side of the bed.. with bedside tables.. There was a 2 seater lounge, a desk with a mirror on an arm with a light around it to help with putting on your makeup and a good size TV......ACK no fridge!! But ice was not a problem.  Safe and plenty of wardrobe and storage.  The bathroom.... what can I say, 2 people can stand in front of the mirror.... Shower hmmm, same size as princess, just different shape.

Everything seems a little fancier... beautifully colour printed “On Location” newsletter letting you know what is happening each day.  A lovely booklet ( A4) with an introduction to some staff and a tear out page for each port as a port guide.  Included places to see, places to eat and places to shop. Chocolates on your bed each night and I can’t forget “towel animals” every night.  Each night there is beautifully printed card on the bed... if not telling you that there is time change, then a goodnight message from the captain.

Laundry – Being spoilt with our free laundry on Princess we just could not face having to venture back into the laundry... We did see it briefly once... much like those on the Sun and Dawn Princess.  We actually took up the Laundry package... Approx $150 US for 21 nights... what a bargain... well we thought so ... no wasted time trying to get a machine... no wasted time racing back to see when it is finished... no wasted time trying to find quarters for the machines.  We put laundry in each day... you are given a small material laundry bag, you fill it, you fill out the form, put it in the bag and leave it on the bed....  I think it is harder to get free laundry on HAL loyality so there were not many of us doing a lot of laundry... we would put it in at night and by lunch the next day it was in our room and if we put it in the morning, it could well be back in our room ready to wear to dinner that night.

 

55b Ryndam Food

Food  -  It was very good.  In the Lido Buffet the selections were excellent with different stations set up for different things... my only complaint about the food in the Lido was that full breakfast did not start until 7am ( we had some early ports ) and there were times that you could not get anything at all during the day.  When you came back onto the ship after a long port day sometimes a bowl of soup would just hit the spot... nup... you can get sandwiches or salad... or be greasy and have a hamburger from the grill...

The dining room food was excellent and it was very rare that we did not like what we chose.   The selection was not as varied as princess over the 3 weeks, but I would have to say quality far outweighed quantity... Princess might have had a lot of different meals over time but not all were good...  Also top marks for presentation, would rival any top star restaurant.

Service is another issue altogether.   This was more miss than hit...  Holland America seem to have far less staff than princess do..  We have sat in the lido for over an hour and still be surrounded by our dirty plates...  Funny thing was I watched the one steward clean every table around us and with hardly anyone else in the restaurant the plates still stayed.  Eventually after pushing our plates to very end of the table they were collected LOL.

Dining room in general was much better, though once again it was those finishing touches that Princess out shone HAL.  I never forget the first night we sat at our table and once the appetisers were served Garry and I sat back and waited and waited and waited... Everyone else started eating... we looked at each other and we looked around and you know,  the pepper shaker on the table should have been the clue...  they don’t pepper your food!!!!   I know that sounds fickle but we have just spent 50 days of it.... that pepper, that smile, that Bon appetito  is your cue to start eating  LOL......  So, we got used to that ...  Then came Lobster night.... out came the beautiful surf and turf... lobster tail sitting on the shell looking scrumptious..... we waited and waited and waited... we looked around not a waiter to be seen...... What we have to remove our own Lobster .... what will we do with the shells LOL.....  Too spoilt with Princess...  Once we got over these initial shocks of self service our two waiters did really well.

Drink Service – We purchased a wine package for around $230US (includes 15%) for 7 bottles of wine... Now once again HAL do it different and not well.  They have one drink waiter for each section of the dinning room.... basically he ran from table to table, he would take your order then you would wait and wait and wait and eventually during main course you would get your wine.... He also was in charge of re filling your glass, your food waiters didn’t handle drinks at all.  Best service was when you had wine left over and it would be at your table when you arrived.  Lido buffet was worst as I think there was only 1 drink waiter doing that whole area....

Once we learnt how to work the system things ran smoothly (we would take a glass of wine with us to dinner).  Probably the best thing all cruise we did was move off anytime dinning to traditional.  Each night our table would be set up with our wine and our waiters knew exactly how we like things.