The ms Volendam belongs to Holland America's R class of ships. It entered service in 1999. They gave us a Cruise Log at the end of our voyage, so here are some pertinent statistics...
Gross tonnage: 61000 tons
Length: 777.6 feet
Width: 111 feet
Draft: 26 feet
Guests: 1466
Crew: 599
Power: 5 x V-12 diesel/electric engines; total power 57909 HP (43.2 MW)
Max speed: 23.5 knots
Fuel capacity: 860000 gallons
Fuel consumption: 85 gallons/mile; per cruise average usage 285600 gallons
Potable water production: 370000 gallons/day
Potable water consumption: 174000 gallons/day
Total mileage on our voyage: 1832 nautical miles (3393 km)
Although this seems huge, the Volendam only fit about half as many passengers as Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas, which we did our first (and only other) cruise on! The Voyager is 1020 feet long and weighs 138000 tons. There are some big ships out there!
Here are some photos of the Volendam, taken by Ben in Skagway, AK...
As with our first cruise, the food was one of the highlights. We were slack about taking photos of our meals this time, but I promise you they were awesome! We had a set table for the two of us in the Dining Room at 8pm (with an amazing panoramic view out the back of the ship), but for the other meals we could choose between the buffet at the Lido Restaurant, or formal dining with random other passengers in the Dining Room. There were a couple other restaurants on board too, but they involved a cover charge and we enjoyed the Dining Room and the Lido so much that we didn't feel inclined to try anything else. It's a good thing the cruise was only for one week, since it wasn't unheard of for us to have a hot breakfast, a three course lunch, afternoon tea, and a four course dinner...!
Each night we would return to our stateroom to find a list of the following day's activities on our bed. There were all sorts of activities and entertainment... we played team trivia, went to afternoon tea, attended a park ranger's presentation about Glacier Bay National Park, took the kitchen and backstage tours, and learnt the art of towel animal folding. We also spent many an evening hour listening to our favourite string quartet (who played everything from Mozart to the Simpsons theme to Lady Gaga to the Imperial March!).
Each evening after dinner there was also the Showtime Entertainment - the main concert of the day - but we ended up skipping a couple of these. They'd been a highlight on our first cruise, but this time we didn't find them quite as good. The guest entertainer on the last night - apparently Holland America's favourite comedian - told jokes that I had read in Reader's Digest and Ben had heard from Jeff Foxworthy! The rest weren't that dodgy, but no doubt that's one of the downsides of a smaller ship... a smaller entertainment budget!
As mentioned above, we took a tour of the kitchens, where they prepare up to 7000 meals a day. This was one of the highlights for me - I found the logistics of it absolutely fascinating. Here are some stats you might enjoy...
Staff numbers...
Dining Room: 104
Kitchen: 67
Garbage disposal: 4
Dishes washed each evening...
Dinner plates: 3000
Dessert plates: 7000
Side plates: 2000
Glasses: 5000
Average weekly consumption...
Meat and meat products: 12500 lbs
Poultry: 5000 lbs
Fish: 2500 lbs
Seafood: 2500 lbs
Butter and margarine: 1100 lbs
Fresh vegetables: 12000 lbs
Potatoes: 5000 lbs
Watermelon: 1800 lbs
Eggs: 40000
Dairy: 4000 quarts
Sugar: 700 lbs
Individual sugar packages: 20000
Rice for crew: 3500 lbs
Caviar: 20 lbs
Flour: 4000 lbs
Ice cream: 200 gallons
Mind boggling, eh?! Here are some photos from the tour...
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| Our first glimpse of the labyrinth |
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| Meat section |
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| The Executive Chef |
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| Dish washing |
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| Dish stacking |
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| Cutting up mango |
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| Preparing scones for afternoon tea |
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| Bread! |
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| A dragon on display in the kitchen |
And now for some photos of another highlight... returning to our room after dinner each night to find a new towel animal waiting for us!
On the second last day, they offered a session on folding towel animals, so of course we went... and bought the book! After returning to our room, I made two towel animals with our available towels... and was amused to find, upon returning later that evening, that our stateroom attendant had not seen fit to make us a towel animal that night, but had merely arranged mine on the bed and replaced the sunglasses with the printed eyes they use!
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| Cobra and elephant |
(And if the possibility of getting your very own towel animal isn't an incentive to come and visit us now, I don't know what is...!)
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| Us on one of the two formal nights |
To be continued...
7 comments:
The average weekly food consumption gave me some amusement!!!! wow that's a LOT of food!!!! Love the cute towel animals. Looking forward to post 3..!
Oh wow... all that food! The amount of bread dough rising makes my breadmaking efforts look rather minuscule! :) It must have be amazing to tour the kitchen.
Hmmm... maybe you're not that far to visit if we get our own animal towel. Hehe! :P
What a gorgeous couple in the last pic! :-)
Those statistics are fascinating. Wonder how much you get paid to be a 'garbage disposal person' on a cruise ship?! And does this indicate that the staff are only allowed to eat rice LOL? ;-)
Loving all your interesting posts as usual...and always a buzz to see pics of Angharad too :-)
Sonya.
Haha Sonya! Well, one of the stats I didn't include is that there are 3 chefs just for the crew members' meals! There are 2 Indonesian chefs and 1 Filipino chef, as that's where most of the crew are from. So I don't think they ate the same meals as the passengers!
I would have been interested to know their wages as well. Both of our waiters had wives and children back home, and they work on the ship for 10 months at a time before going home for a few months. Unlike the garbage disposal guys though, the waiters have a rather scenic view from their workplace, and it's different every meal!
I'm coming to visit for a towel animal! They are amazing... as if your blog :) Enjoying it as always!!
Chantelle xoxo
Haha... I love that you have so many commenters and prospective visitors due to the towel animal enticement! :D Have to admit I find it rather enticing myself... Very cute! :D
Ok, we'll start planning our visit - get practising your towel animals please!
(Unfortunately I'm only kidding!)
This brings back lots of memories. We were much more restrained in our eating habits though - we generally only ate one meal a day. It just happened to start from when we first dragged ourselves out of bed, and finish when we retired for the evening! ;-)
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