This adventure was a 55-day Mediterranean cruise beginning and ending in Ft. Lauderdale(March 11-May 5), so we followed our usual routine and rented a car near home, drove down to Dori's in Lake Worth, spent the night, and were on our way the next morning. The big difference this time is that Suvi is a real person at 14 months old. When we did this for the World cruise in Jan. 2015, she was a little bitty baby. Now she runs around, plays with Simon the dog, and loves to be read to. Needless to say, it was a fun visit.

The next morning, we were off early to avoid the South Florida rush hour and to turn in the car by 8:30am.

We were early for the rental car office hours, so we cooled our heels at the marina in the same shopping area, which has fast, free wi-fi. And oh yes, there was a beautiful sunrise and a little downy woodpecker tapping on the palm trunks.

After a while we turned in our car, loaded up our bags onto the port shuttle bus provided by the car rental company. We cooled our heels again in the terminal building for a couple of hours until the ship's passengers had disembarked and the crew had cleaned up the ship. Holland America's smallest ship, the Prinsendam, which has a capacity of 800 passengers, (The Amsterdam can accommodate 1250.) had just completed a 2-month tour around South America and would now head across the Atlantic. 42 passengers took both cruises back-to-back. We'd been on a number of HAL ships, but not this one, so we were excited to see the difference.

As we boarded, we were greeted with a violin/piano duo at the base of the atrium. How elegant.

The pool on the Lido deck did not have a retractable cover like the bigger Holland America ships, so the seating out here is a little more exposed. On the other hand, there are some windows that slide open on the pool level for better viewing and picture taking. We noticed that there were very few spots on this deck that were not windy. Normally this is my favorite place to hang out on the ships, but being exposed to weather and the fact that there were no power outlets were limiting factors.

We inspected the Lido restaurant while drinking our complimentary mimosas. We eat here normally because we like the self-serve cafeteria-style restaurant. No waiting on wait-staff.

 
We checked out the fitness room, which we used on sea days early in the morning when it opened at 6am. It was quite a bit smaller than on other ships, but it was not crowded at that early shift. We did not use it once we started the ports because we walked so much, usually with quite a bit of vertical elevation, that we rested on the few sea days we had. Just outside the fitness room, a Venus-like statue holding a fresh bouquet was a nice touch.

 
A view from Deck 5 of the back staircase. Our room was near the stern on the Main Deck (Deck 6). We did not, on the whole cruise (no matter how tired we were from our onshore adventures), step into one of the elevators. We climbed the stairs to get everywhere. This was another reason we did not feel the need for the Fitness Room on sea days. Just a note here is that the Lido is on Deck 11. I did participate in Tai Chi on the sea days. The Chinese Tai Chi instructor, Sui, taught a 16-step version of easy Tai Chi, which worked out well for this cruise. Unlike the World cruise, we didn't have that many sea days other than crossing the Atlantic, because the ports in the Mediterranean are so close together.

Detour!

 
On the first full day of the cruise we made a detour to Nassau to let off an ailing passenger. It took a full half day to do so.

 
We backed into a berth next to these 3 giant ships. The Prinsendam has an extension on both sides of the ship's bridge, so the captain and pilot can see where they are going for maneuvers like this. The other item to note here is the local pilot is at the controls. The ambulance was waiting on the dock. Bahamian bureaucrats boarded the ship to do all the paperwork for this unplanned stop. Eventually, the patient, his wife, and all their luggage were unloaded. We hoped that they had good travel insurance, because this was an expensive stop.

 
You can see the detour we made on this monitor. We'd been here before on our 7-day cruise on the Norwegian Sun in 2011 and had noticed how exposed these luxury houses are to viewing by cruise ship passengers (and rising sea levels).

 
We attended the captain's reception, a gala affair. Tamaryn-Anne (Tam) Hurly, the Australian cruise director (who was 14 weeks pregnant at the beginning of the cruise), introduced the captain, who then introduced his officers. We'd seen Bart, the hotel manager, on the 2012 World cruise when he was working as second in command on the hotel side.

We met Tim Roberts, the British captain, up close and personal at the Cruise Critic gathering in the much smaller Crow's Nest on the bow end of the upper deck (12).