Part VII - Shipboard Life and College Fjord - June 9

This morning I awake with a start at 4:00 AM and begin a pattern that will persist throughout the voyage. I try to go back to sleep, but a small ray of light is seeping through the blackout curtains and I'm afraid I might miss something. As quietly as I can, I dress and let myself out of our cabin. I walk up two flights of stairs and go into the exercise room, closed at this hour, to weigh myself. Treadmills, rowing machines, exercise bikes, stair steppers, and free weights are available for those who wish to work out. I head for a beautiful balance scale and weigh myself for the first time this trip. I have lost two pounds on the land portion of the cruise.

I head for the Lido dining room where I discover a twenty four hour coffee pot and pour myself a cup of strong, tasty black coffee. I pull out a chair in front of one of the floor to ceiling windows and sit down to watch as we head up College Fjord.  This narrow arm was named by a group on an expedition whose members decided to name the glaciers in it after the Ivy League colleges they had attended. The day has dawned gray and overcast. As we move up the fiord, we can see rocky hills rising from the water and disappearing into the low clouds. Soon there are pieces of ice floating in the water as we navigate up the fiord.

After an hour of drinking coffee, I go up one flight of stairs to the Sports Deck and wander into the Crows Nest, a bar with plenty of comfortable seats and panoramic windows facing forward across the entire width of the ship. At this hour I am alone up here. Few people have discovered this vantage point yet and fewer still have risen this early in the morning.  I sit in front of the window watching the light increase only slightly.  After an hour or so I head back to the cabin to collect Irene and Mom who seem to be stirring.  We agree to meet in the Crows Nest after they have dressed.  I go back; after a while they join me, but they are both raging for coffee.  We go back to the Lido dining room for coffee and then head for the Rotterdam dining room for breakfast.

The Veendam has two dining rooms. The Lido Restaurant, located on Deck 11, is a large dining room with two buffet lines, as well as a Continental breakfast bar that serves as a soup and salad bar at lunch. The dress code is casual for all meals, and the food is good.  For buffet food, it's exceptional. A variety of international foods is served, frequently an Indonesian or Dutch dish. Seating in the Lido is open, so passengers can choose their meal partners.  The food is tasty and there is great variety.  Many people eat all their meals in the Lido to avoid having to dress for dinner.

We discover early on Monday that Mom has not been assigned a table with us, or one at all for that matter.   We had already scoped out our table, which was located right next to a huge aft window and had a commanding view of where we had been.  The Maitre D’ takes one look at his chart and our predicament and says, “This is my fault; I’ll take care of it.”  It’s pretty hard to stay mad at someone who accepts responsibility to quickly.  He immediately assigns us to a different table, on the lower floor where a ship’s officer would be our host for dinner.  We let him know we would prefer to stay near where our original table was located, but his good humor and helpfulness mollify us.

The Rotterdam dining room is a much more formal and imposing space where waiter service and hot and cold running help is the rule.  The menu is varied and high quality.  We had been quite concerned because Holland America Line defines the dress for all dinners – formal, informal, and casual.  Formal suggests tuxedos for men and gowns or cocktail dresses for women; informal means jackets and dresses, while casual does not permit jeans, shorts, or tank tops.  Both Mom and Irene had been concerned about not having “nice” enough clothes, and I don’t own a suit any longer.  We had considered skipping the formal evenings in the Rotterdam and going to the Lido for dinner.  Dinners in the Rotterdam dining room are five course meals – appetizer, soup, salad, entrée, and dessert.  The menu always includes some sort of seafood for both an appetizer and entrée as well as a couple of soups, one a seafood bisque and two interesting salads.  On a typical evening entrees include Pan Roasted Pacific Rock Fish, Veal Medallions Oscar, Shrimp Alfredo, and Sweet and Sour Tofu.  As an alternative, orders from the grill include Filet Mignon, Terriyaki Turkey Tenderloin, and Hallibut Steak.  All entrees are served with potatoes and vegetables.  People who are really hungry can order several entrees or a couple of appetizers.  The waiters will just keep bringing the food.  Desserts include cheese cakes, baked Alaska, wonderful chocolate assemblages and mousses. As a special treat, the head waiter will prepare Bananas Foster.  No wonder people gain weight on cruises. There's also a fancy mid-night snack served.

Irene negotiates with the Maitre 'D for a new table where we can all sit together.	The Rotterdam dining room is the fancier and more formal of the two dining areas on the Veendam.	A typical, beatifully presented hors d'oevre in the Rotterdam dining room.	Our table in the Rotterdam dining room.

At 10:30, while we cruise in College Fjord, the Kitchen Tour of the Veendam is offered.  Beginning in the Rotterdam dining room, where we pick up a brochure, a line of people winds through the elaborate kitchen of the ship, where 1275 passengers and 550 crew members are fed three full meals a day in addition to constant snacks.  The dining room staff alone consists of ninety-four people including four Maitre D’s, five head stewards, fifty dining room stewards, twenty-five assistant dining room stewards, two doormen, and eight wine stewards. We head through the dish washing area where 15,000 dishes are washed and sterilized daily. Every inch of stainless steel surface gleams. The area is spotless. In the garden manager's area we see a vegetable artist carving flower arrangements from root vegetables. An ice artist is preparing a huge ice sculpture to be placed in the dining room entrance this evening.  In the bakery a pastry chef is making marzipan flowers to decorate cakes and pies.  A snack of smoked fish is laid out in the fish prep area before we walk past an assemblage of dead fish and shellfish on ice.  We pass storage areas and enter the hot food area where preparations are going on for lunch.  Huge stainless steel tureens contain soup simmering for lunch or dinner.  We see the food prep line where waiters will line up to pick up individual orders for delivery to each table at three meals a day.  I chat briefly with the executive chef, a personable man who oversees this huge operation.  I’m used to seeing mass food.  I sometimes have had the pleasure of eating high quality food.  Both can be easily understood.  Serving high quality food in truly massive amounts is quite an accomplishment.  I head back to the cabin to see how far we’ve cruised up the fjord.

The baker prepares bread for 5000 servings a day.	Fruit display in the Veendam kitchen. It will be in the dining room this evening.	Dirty dishes go from here to the giant conveyor dish washer.	Food artists prepare vegetable scultures like this for every dinner.

We head out to the deck to watch the glaciers flow past. There may be mountains reaching above the clouds, but you can't tell by us. The colors are flattened by the clouds leaving only dark greens, grays and whites, except on the glacier. The huge Harvard Glacier stretches across the head of College Fjord, its blue ice a sharp contrast to the general lack of color. We glide up to within about two miles of the mile wide and 300 foot height of the glacier. Between us and the face lie icebergs that have calved off the glacier as it moves down from its mountain source. The blue created by the extreme pressure put on the ice leads it to exclude all light but blue. Incidentally, glacier ice melts more slowly than refrigerator ice. It lasts forever in drinks.

The glacier flows from the mountains into College Fjord	The Harvard Glacier carries glacial dirt on its curved route from the mountains to the sea.	Close-up of the glacier face shows the treacherous ice as it prepares to calve.	Irene views the shoreline from our cabin veranda.	The glacier is bright blue from the ice's density.

The Veendam sits quietly at the edge of the ice pack for about an hour as we look at the large Harvard glacier and other glaciers coming down to the water. Then we start to glide back down the glacier and begin to head for open water. We head down to our cabin to dress for dinner. Mom and Irene put on nice dresses and I wear my new blazer and gray slacks - no tuxedo, no gowns. We go down one flight of stairs and walk past the spot where the ship's photographer is taking pictures of everyone in their finery. We go to our table where Marv and his wife are waiting and Kevin, the ship's navigation officer, soon appears in formal uniform with his magnificent fiancée Ummi on his arm. Kevin provides the wine, the dinner is wonderful, we don't feel particularly underdressed, and Marv is a total drip. To cap the dinner all the waiters disappear, only to reappear led by one of their number dressed as a moose and all wearing moose caps. They parade around the dining room to the accompaniment of the dining room orchestra and serve us all a wonderful chocolate mousse.

We go to the Rubens Lounge for our first major entertainment, a musical production with the ship's cast called "Up on the Roof: The Songs of the 1950s and 60s." The songs are well performed with dancing and high quality music. The music seems too full for the six dancer singers and a lead singer to manage. I later discover the music is "sweetened" by the sound mixer, but all the lead singers perform live. The room itself is a two level affair with lounge chairs and tables. Drinks are served at the tables and visibility is somewhat limited, but comfort is pretty high. Like other rooms on the Veendam, the Rubens Lounge/Theater is glitzy to just short of garish.

Our show over, we repair to the cabin and to bed. It's been a long day. Night life on the ship, however, continues long into the night. The Sports Bar has a large screen TV with ESPN playing. There are other bars, some with sing-alongs for people who remember the music of the fifties, others with quiet jazz bands playing. The Crows Nest band plays "The Girl from Ipanema" over and over along with similar quiet jazz. The music plays quietly as people sit in the windows watching the view go past and scanning the water for whales. Occasionally one shows his back after blowing. Sometimes he will flip his tail as he sounds. Sunset tonight is 10:35 PM and it never really gets dark. As we sleep, the captain is making steady progress towards Glacier Bay 460 nautical miles ahead.