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Holland America Line

MS Veendam

Your Rating:
Reviewed by:Tim Agg
# previous cruises: 21 to 30
Date of Trip: August 12, 2007
Itinerary: Baltic/Black Sea/Russia

MS Veendam, Baltic Cruise, August 12 - 22, 2007. This is a rave review for a great ship, a fantastic itinerary and a splendid experience.

Not only was this our 20th or so HAL cruise, we had previously spent some 50 days over 5 voyages on the Veendam, so boarding this ship was akin to coming home - she is comfortable, friendly, and with a very good kitchen and decent wine cellar. We expected a lot from the ship and were not disappointed.

Our port intensive Baltic cruise well exceeded our expectations, and we would recommend it to anyone open to interesting cultures, art and architecture, history and social change and, not the least, the ships, ports and connections of the Baltic marine highways.

On this trip we were both experimenting with digital cameras. I hope to be able to post some photos, though it might take another week or so.

There were a few pieces of furniture that need to be replaced. Overall, though, she is in excellent condition and aging well. We liked the Crow's Nest for daylight viewing, the walk-around promenade for exercise, sea air and ship-watching, and the Ocean Bar for pre-dinner socializing. The casino gulped down our money as quickly as any! The aft pool was a good temperature and never crowded. An unusually large number of passengers gravitated to the shops every evening - really, how many Russian souvenirs can you buy? Veendam is a mid-sized ship of about 55,000 grt and about 1250 pax - these days, small and intimate!

We take food and wine seriously. We think HAL has improved overall in recent years. There are on board cellar masters, good wine tastings and cellar-master dinners (in the Pinnacle). Also, we have seen real improvement in fresh fish dishes - prepared with real care and imaginative sauces. We received our beef and lamb as rare as we requested.

The Lido was fine for breakfasts and lunches, with fresh and well-presented food, and lots of choice. We used the main dining room, most evenings, eating once in the specialty Pinnacle - we were well satisfied with both, although we did hear comment about inconsistently food and service in the Pinnacle. Service in the dining room, in the bars and from our cabin steward was without fault. As an early outer-deck walker, receiving cheery smiles and greetings from the deck crew was a bonus. We like the HAL crew for their professionalism, understated but fun sense of humour and their dedication.

We carried luggage a month, even though our cruise was only 10 nights - and we came nowhere near using all our cabin's storage space. The cabins are spacious, well furnished, and the bedding, towels and robes are splendid. We had a shower/tub combination, into which full-sized people fit just fine! We paid for the cheapest outside cabin, and were upgraded to a midships A deck cabin, close enough to stairs and an elevator bank, but quiet. There was just sufficient movement and engine noise to lull us to sleep in seconds.

The cruise staff were pleasant and helpful, and there was no pressure to participate. We did not go to the shows because our shore plans usually meant getting up early. Our on-board activities included a couple of wine tastings, a culinary demonstration and cooking class, and many miles of walking the outer promenade deck....plus dumping $20 into the slot machines most evenings. We skipped the captain's reception this cruise, but accepted invitations to a cocktail party, the alumni party and another event organized for Canadian passengers - where we discovered that most of our compatriots lived within a 50 km radius of us! We made some good friends aboard, with whom we enjoyed conversations about each day's adventures.

This was a port-intensive 10-night cruise: Copenhagen, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Visby, Warnemunde, Aarhus, Copenhagen.

For ship geeks, this is a great cruise for its great variety of ships and ports. If you love history and politics, it is endlessly fascinating (and the Aurora and Vasa bring marine notes to the history). We were also hugely impressed by the architecture and art we found in all the cities, especially C20 art.

We did not expect to find the history and economics of Scandinavia and the former Soviet bloc to be as interesting as it was (we discovered the limited perspectives North Americans tend to get on these things). And did I mention the art? -

Some quick impressions: Old Tallinn is one of the most picturesque towns I have ever seen, as is Visby. St Petersburg never lets you forget the power of Russia - no wonder the Bolsheviks didn't raze it, and the Nazi's tried to. If you think you hate art, go to the Hermitage; when you get to the Rembrandts, stop and look; when you get to the Impressionists and C20 artists, stop and look again.

Helsinki is handsome and friendly and civilized.

Stockholm is all of that and more - I live in a drop-dead-beautiful city, and I think Stockholm is hard to beat, and one's first sight of the Vasa is a jaw-dropping experience (2-weeks earlier, I thought the Mary Rose and Victory were too). Rostock is showing strong recovery, with billions of investment in ship building and other things - and it was my first exposure to a European city that had been heavily bombed in WW2.

Aarhus has a great contemporary art museum.

And Copenhagen is charming - modern in the midst of all its history - and allows some rough edges to show, including the only homeless and drug addicted people we saw - made us think of home...! What's great about this itinerary is that in most ports you can use your own two feet, rather than organized tours, to see exactly what you want to see - we were well served by good maps purchased and carefully studied weeks before the voyage.

We enjoyed a mix of passengers - mostly Americans, but with a strong contingent from Canada, Australia, France and the Netherlands. Over the years, we have learned to pick out ship-board friends carefully and, this time, met several people whose lives were unlike ours but with whom we created an affectionate bond and shared stimulating conversation.