We woke up this morning to the Konigsdam docked right outside of our hotel window. We don’t board until 2:00 PM so we have time for a bit of a lazy morning.
We walked over to the cruise terminal and asked if we could leave our checked bags before boarding, and they said absolutely yes. We went back and packed those up and dropped them off and that made for a much easier process later in the day. We walked along the waterfront for a while after breakfast and then around noon we headed over to begin our boarding process. It was organized and easy but took a while.
When we arrived to our room we found it quite nice. It was cleaned and our luggage had arrived. Here is a picture of the room.
We had a muster drill before leaving port. They do not muster by the boats anymore. First you watch a short safety video in yoru room, and then you go to your assigned floor for muster where you are directed to a location by number. Our location was one of the specialty restaurants on board Sel de Mer, where we sat at a large table and promptly met two women from State College. They were nice and we chatted for a while. We were then given instructions on the process to put on life vests etc… and we were free to go. We went back to the room and got ready for our dinner.
At dinner we were assigned a table before we arrived and it’s printed on our key cards. We were pleased to find that our assigned table is right beside a window facing out from the back of the ship with fantastic views. We were able to watch the coastline of holland disappearing behind us. Our dinner stewards Suma and Alit were very nice, and Melvin our wine steward was a little bit standoffish at first but we softened him up before we left. Seated next to us was a group of folks from Pennsylvania who were part of a larger group organized by the ACTs retirement homes – so they were close by to us. As dinner ended we arrived at the Lock that would take us out of Holland and into the open sea. We were able to go out on the Promendae deck and view the lock and see it close, and the water level rise so that we could go out on the higher side and into the sea.
Here’s a photo of the lock when it’s open as we just got tied up.
Once we were tied up, they then closed the lock and let the space under us fill with water so that we could sail out at the higher level –
Once we were through the lock and out into the ocean, the pilot boat came to pick up the pilot who had guided us through the water in the Holland waterways.
We did a bit more exploring of the ship, and since we had skipped lunch and had an early dinner we split a pizza at the New York Deli and Pizza which is overlooking the pool where they had a movie playing. It was a good first day on the ship. We are at Sea all day tomorrow.