My Passport’s Travels

Sunday, June 7 2026

She’s here! Our cruise ship, the Rotterdam, is sitting across the bridge waiting for us! Once we were ready for the day, we rolled our bags outside of our door (with 10 minutes to spare before 8am pickup) and headed down for breakfast.

We had checked to see if Do All Day, the restaurant downstairs, was open, and unfortunately, it was not. (We would have loved to have those donuts again!) Free breakfast buffet from the hotel, it is! While the hotel has many, many wonderful things going for it. Breakfast is not one of them. As we started down the stairs to the restaurant, a party coming up warned us to be careful, the stairs are tricky. They were solid black and hard to see the front edge. But we made it down safely. The buffet had lots of lovely breads and cheeses, but the two coffee machines at one end of the buffet could not keep up with demand. In an already small room, there were people trying to walk through the buffet lines while also working around the two huge lines for the coffee machines. I also somehow managed to almost knock over a stack of plates as you had to get them from shelves under the buffet and they were tucked back. Thankfully, I was able to catch them so nothing broke or fell. While not the relaxing breakfast we had envisioned, it did fuel us for the morning. And we did get to pass this cool wall of record albums on the way.

After breakfast, we went back to our room and gave everything a final lookover before checking out. The weather was beautiful, so Mom suggested walking to the ship. We checked out of the hotel and were informed the bus was going to be at 11:30 instead of 10:30, which made walking sound even better! We asked the Holland America representative at the hotel and he said it would be fine. I even double-checked with him “If we choose to walk and not take the bus, it won’t be a problem for our bags to ride on the bus?” And he confirmed it would be fine. So off we went! Mom noted at the time, she thought it interesting he didn’t ask for our names or room number.

Off we went – and the walk was lovely! This is the ship we sailed on yesterday for our tour.

It was cool as there was a stiff breeze on the Erasmusbrug (Erasmus Bridge), but the views were great!

This poor building needed help standing up! 🤣

It’s amazing to see how close you can get to the cruise ship at this port.

The last picture was taken at 10:23pm as we approached the port entrance. We walked straight into the first document check where we received boarding group 2, through security, up the escalator to formal check in for the cruise (stopping for a picture with Louis the Lion) and found seats in the waiting area. They called our group at 10:44 for boarding. I think it’s a new record!

Once on board, we rectified the less-than-exciting breakfast with a trip to the lido deck buffet. Actually, we had no choice, it was so early, they sent everyone up there while they finished preparing the public areas and staterooms. The buffet has lots of different stations – hot food, specialty of the day, made-to-order salads, Asian, pre-made sandwiches, bread, dessert. It’s going to be a good option for meals.

After lunch, we started wandering around the ship. This mural is on the side of the building where we checked in.

Around 11:45, they announced our staterooms were ready. We went down to deck 1 and found 1178 – it is lovely! Our oceanview stateroom has lots of storage (although we’d find out later, our suitcases are a little too big for under the bed), hooks for jackets and purses, and a motion sensor nightlight outside the restroom. We also met Asep, one of the two stateroom stewards taking care of us this week. (Wayan is the other.). He is going to split the bed for us this evening.

They had provided today’s The Daily for us.

And safety documents – in both English and Dutch!

We had also noticed our luggage had not been delivered yet. Not an issue, it was still really early. But I checked the Air Tags to see where everything was and, huh, they are still at the hotel. The bus was supposed to leave around 11:30.

We decided to keep exploring the ship for now. Loved this picture of the inside of a violin!

Elevator floor picture!

Deck three has a walking track outside and we stood watching the shore crew loading the ship. The drug dog was so cute! He was having the best time – he’d sniff pallets, then stand on his hind legs to hug his trainer or find one of the stevedores and lean into his legs until they stopped to scratch his belly or play with his ball. You could see he was everyone’s friend.

We also watched a small checked bag fall off the front of a forklift where the driver couldn’t see it. He could feel it as he rolled over it, though. He very carefully got out and handed the poor, mangled bag over to someone on the ship, to the crowing laughter of his co-workers.

Around this time, I was starting to really panic about our bags. I took my phone off of airplane mode, just in case the issue was the Air Tag info not synching properly. No, that is not the issue – I received a call at 12:33 from the Netherlands. Holland America was calling to see when we were going to arrive at the bus because they were holding it for us. The gentleman had evidently made no note that we were walking to the ship! We felt so bad for our fellow passengers who had been waiting who-knows-how-long for us! Sure enough, within 5 minutes of the phone call I could see our bags traveling down the street heading our way.

We stepped inside to have our first drink of the cruise! We both ended up with Amaretto Sours (my first drink was a rum drink that had too much rum even for me, but the drink package meant it wasn’t a problem to swap it out). We had a nice view outside and some fun people watching until it was time to head to the Bow to watch sail away!

There weren’t many passengers out there, but one couple next to us started yelling at people below – they had family ashore who had come to see them off! They were all taking pictures of each other and having a great time. Shortly before 3pm, the captain came on to let us know that we were going to be about an hour late leaving because supplies were not as timely as they had planned for today. Mom and I took this as a sign to head around the ship and explore a little more. I realized the tower under the beautiful weathervane on the Holland America office building was not a clock! It showed the wind direction!

People could walk right up near the ship!

We ended up on deck 11, on the jogging path that is next to the family pool roof (which can slide open and closed depending on the weather). It had one section opened, so we could enjoy the sail away music while we waited. Mom had commented earlier that it looked like we were on another cruise where I was bringing down the average age – and the DJ proved it! The party music was all from my high school and early college years!

Finally – the Boat Men arrived, which means we’re ready to leave! The ropes are away, the ship’s horn has scared the living daylights out of me, and we are sailing! We were surprised to see the pilot boat cut between us and shore.

We sailed past the Hanseatic Spirit, she had docked yesterday evening and was leaving after us today. It’s a tiny vessel that only sails with 200 passengers. Then we passed the (other) Rotterdam – who saluted us with her horn! Even knowing it was coming, I still jumped when we returned the greeting.

Because of the depth of the river, the Rotterdam could not turn around. We actually sailed backwards for the first 20-30 minutes or so! Once in the industrial area, there was enough room for us to stop and turn around. (Thanks to the gentleman on the Facebook group for this sailing who share a picture his friend took of our sail away!)

Since we were unpacking in the stateroom, it was time to find my favorite cruise line channels – the bow view and the map view. Holland America also treats you to an aft view, which had better background music (although it would occasionally be replaced with the bow view).

It took over 2 hours for the Rotterdam to make it to the North Sea. During that time, it was mostly industrial, but green space sprinkled throughout and so many modern windmills! The last stretch was basically lined on both sides with windmills!

Unpacked and dressed for dinner, we headed up to deck 10 for one of the specialty restaurants: Tamarind. We had a great meal! It started with shrimp crackers and three dipping sauces (Who knew I liked shrimp crackers? Actually, they were like rice cakes, but lighter – basically a vessel for dips.) We shared the Taste of Tamarind, an appetizer platter with shrimp tempura, Korean beef bulgogi tacos, Lumpiang Shanghai (pork spring rolls and my favorite from the platter) and a Satay sampler (a skewer each of beef, chicken and pork Satay with peanut dipping sauce). I had the crispy duck with udon noodles while Mom enjoyed the wasabi and soy crusted beef tenderloin. Mine was good, but she picked better! We were both full, so we opted against having dessert, deciding instead to grab a fancy coffee on the way back to the stateroom. (By way of this animated koi pond outside the restaurant!)

Back in our stateroom, we are moving – the ship is sailing around 15 knots, and since we’re so low, we’ve got great views of the waves. There’s a motion-activated nightlight under the closet outside the restroom. Very nice for finding your way in the middle of the night! We set our clocks back an hour and went to bed after a wonderful first day aboard!

Trip Report Index

Previous
Thursday – Saturday, June 4-6, 2026 – Flight over and Rotterdam 
Sunday June 7, 2026 – Embarkation day
Monday June 8, 2026 – Day at Sea

Current
Tuesday June 9, 2026 – Invergorden, Scotland

Coming Soon

Wednesday June 10, 2026 – Day at Sea
Thursday June 11, 2026 – Seydisfjördur, Iceland
Friday June 12, 2026 – Akureyri, Iceland
Saturday June 13, 2026 – ľsafjörður, Iceland
Sunday June 14, 2026 – Reykjavik, Iceland and Helsinki, Finland
Monday June 15, 2026 – Helsinki, Finland and flight home