Hi friends,
The room doors are heavy and close with a strong sound. All the various doors throughout the ship do so. This caused Ben some trouble later, as you shall read
. A key card is used for entry to your stateroom. If you don't want the steward to use his pass keycard to enter to put the room in order you just slide a stiff shaped and printed card into the outside key slot to ask for privacy. There
is a mail holder outside of every stateroom for the New York Times small newspaper that comes daily. Also for the evening information sheet about the trip so far, the weather, the next port's history and possible shopping tips. It contains anything the Captain wants conveyed as well. That first evening we found a *very* important letter from the Captain, which I will tell you about in a later post.
The toilet flushes by vaccuum so the lid is put down in order to flush it. Otherwise you could get a huge and unpleasant blister on your posterior! There is a
very deep bath tub that is not likely to slop water over onto the floor if the
ship lurches, and a sink in a counter-top with a mirrored cabinet across one corner which holds a few things the ship supplies, like a shower cap, shampoo, skin
lotion, and so on. A few little things. There are metal holders at each end of the counter on the wall to hold water glasses. A shower curtain, bath mat, towel racks, a tub mat to prevent slipping and a waste basket completed the tiny bathroom. It had a raised doorstep to prevent water from moving into the stateroom in case of plumbing troublejs. There was a sign on the wall directing that towels to be replaced be left on the floor and that in order to conserve water and energy not to waste water or towels.
We returned from dinner in order to go to bed early, since we were both tired.
All was rearranged as requested. Sheets and blankets were turned back, and a gold foil wrapped chocolate candy, impressed with the twin ship Holland America logo lay on each pillow. By the end of the trip we had quite a collection of the
golden coin-like candies. There was also a heavy cotton shopping bag for each of us with the logo on it for our use aboard or ashore, as we pleased.
The central area of the stateroom had a three-seater couch on one wall with a print above and the dressing table across the room. There was a chair for the dressing table, a waste-basket, a big round upholstered "poofy" or stoollllll, inside which you could store things or use to put your feet up, or for extra seating
. There was also a small oval movable table in front of the couch at a height from which it would be comfortable to eat a meal if you pleased.
We met our fellow table-mates. We were ten at table. Three were Chinesewomen, three were from the U.S.A. and four were Canadians: Ben and I, and our friends Margaret and Maurice whom we arranged to travel with this time. We met them on a previous trip. I'll tell you something about them all in my next post.
Last time we took a trip I didn't finish telling about it here on the forum because it took too long, and other things in life intervened. This time I intend to write to you all about the trip immediately so I get it done before that happens again! :-)
Friendly good wishes, Mary
