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My daughter needed a vegan diet and the chefs really provided good food for her.  This is always a problem for us traveling away from home.  This made our whole cruise experience great.  While the weather was not quite as good on our trip as expected we had no real problem with the rough seas we experienced.  Mother Nature can not totally be controlled or predicted and definitely some on our cruise suffered from sea sickness.  The Noordam had a very good acupuncture specialist on board who is capable of providing relief to this malady.  I bought his services for other maladies and was very satisfied.  Holland America has provided this type service on other cruises and I really appreciate that.  

We also really enjoyed the Noordam Singers and Dancers shows and also Clara Helms, a great singer.  Anna and Svetlana played beautiful music several times a night in one of the lounges so we were able to enjoy great music most nights.

This cruise gave us an overview of Hawaii.  We started our trip with a six day on our own stay on the big island of Hawaii.  We loved our stay there but would not have had any idea about the other islands.  Now we know that while the other islands we visited on the cruise each have great points about them, our heart is with the big island and we will return there for future trips to Hawaii next winter.  We had a veranda and it was worth the extra cost because this ship is crowded especially for lounging around the pool.  Our best excursions were to the seahorse farm in Kona and the gardens in Kauai.  As far as the food was concerned it was great with especially good pineapple.  Their coffee is so so and it isn't the good Hawaiian coffee we had on land.  Their workout area does not allow for stretching or floor work at all.  The large area that is used for classes could be left for people to use when class isn't in session.  But it is locked up and there is no room anywhere else.  There were also a lot of complaints about their "water policy".  The security people as you boarded back after a day ashore made you either drink or pour out all liquids.  They said it was not their policy but the ships. We felt this to be abuse especially since we had bought our water on the ship for our excursion. Be prepared for this to either chug or pour out.  Some people had bought some type of plan to use the SPA area during the cruise and I can see that might be an advantage since the showers while good are tiny.   All in all we enjoyed our introduction to Hawaii on this cruise.