Day 70 Mar 23 - Caribbean Sea

Well this is it, day 70 of our 70-day Grand Voyage of South America, the Antarctic and the Amazon.

It's a bit like end of term at school. Nothing much happening and not sure what to do before the break-up for the holidays.

At 10.15 we were all invited to the Queens Lounge for a glass of champagne followed by a detailed presen-tation by Cruise Director Thom on the disembarkation procedure for tomorrow in Fort Lauderdale.

I supposed he was trying to make it as idiot proof as possible so he did go on a bit.

He also explained the importance of completing the Guest Satis-faction Survey Forms that the company pay so much attention too.

He did suggest the highest mark of 9 would do quite nicely!!

This was then followed by an elaborate Grand Farewell from the crew.

I don't know who was left running the ship but it appeared that crew from every department were ushered onto the stage to the cheers of the guests who had been looked after so well by them over the last 70 days.

Well done to the excellent crew.

Finally the Captain was introduced for his final message to us the guests.

Part of his presentation was to honour the employees of the months for February and March.

The names of two well deserving crew members were announced by the Captain and quickly they appeared next to him with beaming faces.

As well as being honoured in this way they also received a monetary award.

At lunch time a 'Grand Show Buffet' was being showcased in the dinning room. It says bring your cameras!

We however did not go and see the spectacular display instead prepared our baggage labels, filled in the Guest Satisfaction Survey form and started to write up today's blog.

In late morning Deden delivered the baggage tags so Maria took on the task of labelling up all our bags ready for handing over to the housekeeping staff for overnight safe keeping.

Tomorrow hopefully we would easily find them in the cruise terminal luggage hall. The bags are easily identifiable in colour and in addition have a yellow florescent luggage tag, courtesy of CSI, that should easily catch the eye.

Frank Buckingham, raconteur and travel expert extraordinaire, has asked us to join him for a farewell drink in the Java Bar before dinner. In this picture above, taken courtesy of Rosalyn's camera, joining Frank are Rosalyn, George, Jennifer, Robin, Maria and myself with an unknown lady seating behind us.

So other than that nothing much else was on the agenda today.

However I received a rather nice letter from the Guest Relations Manager offering us a not unsubstantial sum of money as a redeemable on board credit “for the patience and understanding we had shown with the various problems that affected our cabin”.

I must say this was quite a welcome surprise and will immediately help out with the considerable funds spent on the ship's Internet.

Thank you Garry.

One of the delights of traveling with Holland America on Grand Voyages is their use of a 'Bell Boy' to summons guests to dinner each night. This picture was also kindly supplied by Rosalyn showing me being summonded to dinner. Before the first and late dinner sittings this lovely young Indonesian crew member called Bagus, suitably attired and with cylaphone in hand, walks round the ship musically announcing that dinners is about to be served.

We will spend a little time tonight thanking various crew members for their hard work in helping us enjoy our voyage. It will give us the opportunity to show our appreciation.

This will be my last daily blog page for this voyage. I hope that those that have followed our journey have found it interesting and informative.

This has been my first attempt at a fully fledged blog and I have enjoyed the task although at times it was a little stressful meeting the daily deadlines.

For us it is a kind of permanent record of what we encountered during this 'trip of a life time'. It also served to keep our family and friends updated on what we were getting up to while so far away from home.

My concluding page to the blog will be an Epilogue which I hope will succinctly and fairly represent our overall view of this Grand Voyage on the ms Prinsendam.