Hello from the ms Noordam.

Saturday Morning (revised Sat. afternoon); April 5, 2008 (fourth post of this trip)

A bit of a correction about our location in Bermuda. King's Wharf is on the north east end of the hook on the west side of the island.

I started drafting this post while we were in the middle of the Atlantic. At the current time, we are still on the ship, but docked in NY waiting to disembark. We will probably not be able to post this until we get our connection at home.

This was a different kind of cruise. Going to and from Bermuda took one night and one day at sea each way. Once we got to Bermuda, we did not move, and essentially used the ship as a fancy hotel. We really took it pretty easy on the cruise. We went to the SPA each day and did some walking around the King's Wharf area almost every day.

On Tuesday we bought a round trip fare to Hamilton on public transportation, and rode the bus into town and the ferry back ($16 total). The bus trip was quite an experience!. The roads are very narrow and twisty. Because Bermuda is a British Colony, they drive on the left side of the road. All of this, coupled with some very aggressive (but courteous) drivers, make for a thrill ride equal to most any Disney “A” ticket ride! The bus takes about an hour and the ferry is less than ½ hour.

The weather for most of our stay was pretty good. It was in the high 60's and sunny. Thursday it was rainy, but we had not planned to do much.

Probably the disappointment of the trip was that I was not able to dive. Everything was booked up.

The number of Stampin' UP! Cruise earners were considerably less this year. 394 demonstrators earned the trip (we think that last year the number was over 600). A few folks cashed out, so there were 341 demonstrators on the ship. SU booked the complete ship, so it was not full. They did offer employees the trip (they had to pay) and several demonstrators had additional family members with them. SU also apparently donated 185 rooms to Iraq Veteran's and their families.

Some of the statistics on the Noordam:

• Length: 935

• Guest capacity: 1979

• Crew: 819

• Tonnage: 81,769

• Engines: 5 diesel engines and one turbine for a total of 84,000 HP

• Fuel used per day: 80,000 gallons

• Potable Water Production per day: 450,000 gallons

Our first SU cruise was also to Bermuda. It was in a smaller ship and the cruise was very rough, with many folks having severe sea sickness problems. This cruise was also pretty rough at times. Even though Pat had a patch, she still felt pretty queasy last night.

As always, we thoroughly enjoyed the cruise! The event next year is not a cruise. Instead it is a week at an Hawaiian resort. Because of our extensive travel in the bus, it is very unlikely that Pat will meet the requirements for that trip. We have had seven great cruises and we cherish those trips.

Update: We were among the last to leave the ship, but that was not an issue as we have a fairly late flight (5:30PM). We got to the airport just after noon, but the Frontier desk did not open until 2:30. We found a place to eat lunch and we are now in the boarding area (3:00 PM). Since we have some time, I cracked out an bought a WiFi subscription to post to the blog and do some other things.

That is all for this post and this trip. We will start posting again late this month when we travel to Iowa.