While I mostly write about ports and port experiences, on this sea day I write about some of the social events on the ship.

Today we have our third block party, where we all go into the hallway, the staff comes around to fill our glasses and we get to know our neighbors. We know a lot of them already but in the last few weeks in Barcelona and IJmuiden we picked up new people while losing some old cruisers. The number of passengers went from slightly under 750 to a little more than1100, an almost 400 net increase. This means longer waiting time for the elevators, slower dining room service (I suspect that is why they moved the late show on the World State from 8:30 to 9:00 PM) and new neighbors. Our room stewards say they have a net increase in 6 occupied rooms in their bloc to tend to.

We got to meet some of our new corridor mates. No pics because it is hard to take pics while holding a wine glass in one hand and an hors d’oeuvre in the other. The new Captain made his rounds along with most of the officers.

Tonight’s dinner, was dressy, and I didn’t feel like dressing up so we ate in the lido’s hot dog stand. I did throw a sports coat over my Raven T Shirt for the introduction of the new Captain, Paul Adams. The night before last we said good-bye to Captain Rens van Eerten.

Volendam has two captains rotating on 6 month schedules. I’ve sailed with Captain Paul when the captain of Koningsdam had a family emergency. Paul flew 36 hours from London to Hilo and all his bags were lost. The ship had a tailor and altered an officer’s jacket and sewed on the rank for his introduction. When I spoke with him today, he said that it took 3 weeks for his bag to reach him.

On Koningsdam Captain Paul went from table to table around the pool introducing himself. He did the same today, but he didn’t come into the hot tub to greet Suzi and me. But we did get a chance to talk later. Holland America Captains are accessible.

Over the last few weeks we’ve had several special events. We had a Beer Festival during the past week. One of the beers featured was Bud Light. What can I say? They also featured German food but did not train the, mostly Asian, serving staff in the lido (Holland’s fancy word for cafeteria) about German food. I asked for sauerbraten and red cabbage. I got a plate of sauerkraut and red cabbage. I tried to explain to the server the difference between sauerbraten and sauerkraut. He scrapped the kraut into the garbage and gave me – two sausages. Not wanting to waste more food, I took them and enjoyed them. But as I sat at my table I heard two other passengers trying to explain the difference.

The HAL Orange party celebrates the birthday of King William of the House of Orange, the current king of the Netherlands. I did wear orange. Don’t tell some of my ancestors that I celebrated the birthday of a William of Orange, any William of Orange. It was a great party. The reason I like the HAL Orange parties (there is one on every cruise, we happened to be on a cruise on his real birthday) is because they don’t take it too seriously, or seriously at all. It was worth it to see Suzi with Orange hair.

Another other party to write home about is derby (They pronounce it darby) Night. It was a traditional event on most old time transatlantic cruises. Crew members have stick horses and move forward on the roll of the dice. On ocean liners people placed real money bets. I did it when I crossed with my grandfather as a kid. Two whole dollars in 1961! It was a relief from BINGO night. We all got betting slips, put ours in the bucket for the horse we wanted to win and names were drawn from the winning bucket for a bouquet of flowers.

They also had a hat contest. The entries included a woman from Wisconsin. Can guess what her hat was” Daniel, the Cruise Director asked? “What is that? — I mean What a Hat?” The winner was judged by applause. I guess there are a lot of Green Bay Packer fans on the cruise.

One final Note. The North Sea is an energy producing area. However most people think of North Sea Oil. We spent hours, out of sight of land, sailing past windmills. Hundreds of them.