We arrived early this morning in the port of Bonaire in the Dutch Antilles and following the slight mess-up of breakfast yesterday and the bore of sitting people you don't know we reverted to the cabin, actually the balcony, for breakfast. We eat lightly with fruits juice and bread and bagels. Its actually very nice sitting on the balcony watching the sea and clouds and this time with no ship up alongside.
We took a number of photos of this place which appears to be the nicer of the Islands visited so far on this trip and these photos will be added to the Photo Album and this Blog when we get back to Florida and if not then when we get home to the very cold wet and windy Weybridge
It was a fantastic day as Jennifer went snorkelling and Noel went Scuba diving, and in the afternoon Jennifer went paragliding and Noel shark fishing, IN YOUR DREAMS!!!, but it would have been nice under other circumstances. However after the beer we walked slowly back to the ship and we walked about two and half miles in the hot sun and rather than pay USD 15.00 for a Hamburger in a restaurant and where you can have one for free on the ship we headed back to the cabin and a cooling/cleaning shower before visiting the takeaway buffet for Jennifer to get them to mix up a salad of her choosing and Noel picked up a couple of plain white rolls with prawns and crab. The lunch times dishes of the day were Asian but somehow curry, garlic and onions which were there in copious amount would have put the old bugger down again for a few weeks. It was bad enough on Tuesday,Wednesday and Thursday suffering from the garlic but to try this would be suicidal.Sitting on the balcony watching the the tourist boats go by was very pleasant until the sun started shining directly in to the balcony and it was getting rather warm and so we retreated to the cabin where it is air-conditioned cool and very pleasant for a brief afternoon snooze.. Tonight we rerun to the main dining room and hopefully the new approach to handling Noel anti garlic, onion family etc. has been overcome which would be great.
Well I think after about six days on this vessel its fair to give a brief review. Although it does not feel it the ship is full but there are so many empty places on the ship and thy do not have the very annoying music everywhere and even the other night when in the front bar there was no music and this suits us down to the ground. If you you try to compare this vessel to the Fred Olsen Line ship we used late last year for Norwegian Fjords to be frank there is not comparison. The food is better on this ship, there is much m,ore space and you don't ever have to wait anywhere for assistance of even food queue and the on boars information systems are really great therefore not requiring the yards of paper that other carriers dish out on a daily basis. There is not the constant pressure to go on this tour and purchase this gift and how about a massage which is most refreshing and although we perhaps have only one more cruise in the planning stage for September 2018 this Holland America Line may figure in those plans.
We are due to leave this port at around 1730 tonight for Curacao to a Port called Willemstadt but hopefully not before we can get photos of a nice sundown, we shall see.
Unfortunately the ship turned around and went West and so we missed our Sunset opportunity however we sat on the balcony until almost 7.30 pm(Noel with a glass of Chardonnay) and it was warm and dark but yet most enjoyable to see the lights of the town receding in to the distance as the stars began to shine in the sky, really nice. Lets hope they get the dinner right tonight and they did. As we did not fancy a show we tretrurned to the room to watch a film
