Boarding the Prinsendam

March 12 – Boarding the Prinsendam.  Today is the worst of all cruising days, embarkation.  We ate breakfast and were ready to go at 11AM.  I had asked the hotel to get me a taxi for that time but none was coming.  Then I noticed that other people were getting in the cabs that were showing up so I asked the dispatcher when my cab would be there.  She said that the valet was asked to order it so I talked to him and he denied any knowledge of any such request and that he had a lineup of people to get cabs for and I would have to join that line.  Well, as most of you know, I don't tolerate this sort of incompetence well.  It's not that I get angry or make a scene with the idiot, I just find a way around the system.

 

I noticed that he had a guy out on the street flagging down cabs to come into the hotel.  So we just took our luggage down to the street and stood in front of his man and flagged down the first cab that came along.  In went the luggage and off we went to the port.  The hotel's guy seemed sort of put out that I had nabbed what he thought should be the hotel's cab.  I told him to give Rod's compliments to the valet.  I'm pretty sure he won't.  I like to go along with the system when I can but if the system becomes unreasonable I'm not above ignoring it.

 

We got to the port, checked in and were on the ship by Noon.  I got a surprise when we checked in.  The screening lady couldn't find our room on her list.  She said that room 385 was not shown on the manifest.  When we got to the check in counter I found out why.  We've been upgraded.  Now to most people this is the most desired thing that can happen on a cruise.  For me it is not!  I pick the room I like in the class and location I like and an upgrade, while the room might cost more, is often a big downgrade in the attributes I like in a room. 

 

We've been on this ship for a lot of cruises and cabin 385 is about as good as you can get for my taste.  Last year they added some new rooms aft on deck 8 and they are larger than the rooms on Main Deck and the one we got has a veranda that's larger than those on the Veranda Deck.  Since the room is all the way aft, and we prefer to be aft of the last bank of elevators, we decided not to go to the hotel manager to get the room changed back.  I should tell you that I found out that 385 is empty so moving back would have been easy. 

 

After taking a look at the new room we decided to keep it and see how we like it.  The veranda is no attraction for us.  Last time we were on this ship they upgraded us to a room on the veranda deck.  In 54 days I spent a total of 18 minutes out there.  And on the Veranda deck the space for part of the veranda comes out of the room so the room is smaller than 385 on Main deck.  Maybe I'll spend more time on this larger one.

 

There was some sort of security snafu at the pier and it was after 8PM until the last of our luggage got to our room so we didn't finish unpacking.  That will have to be done tomorrow.  We have two days at sea before our first port so there's no hurry.