Christmas - New Years Holiday Cruise 2013

We have been taking a cruise nearly every month since we retired and sometimes more than once a month and so we have fallen behind, ha, in keeping our blog, Tom and Steve at Sea, current.  But we really had a wonderful cruise over the Christmas Holidays a couple months ago and so we wanted to include some great photos from that cruise in this post.....

We departed on Holland America MS Prinsendam on Sunday, December 22nd from Port Everglades at 5:30pm and sailed to Half Moon Cay, Bahamas, a private island owned by Holland America Lines.  

The Prinsendam anchored the next morning and we tendered onto the island which has all the facilities needed for a quiet, sunny day at the beach.

After two more days at sea, we anchored in the harbor at Cruz Bay, St. John US Virgin Islands where we were happy to meet with our travel agent, Janis Jones, and her husband, Jeff.  You might have read about our Thanksgiving cruise when we sailed with Janis and Jeff on the Seabourn Pride.  Well, this time Janis and Jeff were sailing on another ship, the Holland America Nieuw Amsterdam also out of Port Everglades but on a different itinerary.  When their cruise stopped in St. Thomas USVI, they took a ferry to St. John to have an afternoon at the beach with us - and, of course, refreshments!!

The next five (5) ports of call included, Antigua, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, Barbados and then Bequia that proved to be our favorite island on this cruise.  Below are various photos of our stops on this Holiday cruise, including some "eye candy" on a beach or two and lots of "selfies" haha !! 

After another pleasant day at sea, we stopped at Samana, Dominican Republic and then Grand Turk, of Turks & Caicos before returning to Port Everglades.

Below are photos onboard the Prinsendam of the Christmas decorations and some of the other guests we met, including Pat and Dawn and a singer from NYC - Kevin Spirtas.

We also ran into a couple we met on the World Cruise last year,  Connie & Goron Nordlund, who live sometimes (ha) in Norway but travel the world - usually on Holland America Line - like we do. 

One of the gifts Steve received for this cruise was from our travel agent, Janis - a set of cuff-links in the shape of an airplane since she knows his first career was with an airline (AA) and, in fact, after the cruise he received many more cuff-link sets from our table mate, Pat Gates of Reno NV.   As for Tom, he says, "traveling with Steve is gift enough" !!