Good Afternoon travelers,

I just returned from a repositioning cruise with Holland America Cruises on the Vaandam.  The cruise was from Vancouver, to San Diego, California and was only 3 days long.  This cruise has to be the best cruise I have ever taken.

Let me start with Vancouver, Great people and a great place, nothing like what I was expecting.  Vancouver is a large city with allot of high rise building, but the people are so friendly and helpful.  Vancouver is setting up for the next Winter Olympics and there is all tons of construction going on but we saw a movie being filmed and we where actually in the scene without knowing it.  I have to tell you this story, we awoke and left the hotel in search of breakfast (there are tons of coffee and breakfast houses around downtown) and as we walked we noticed that the people of Vancouver dressed strange and just racked it up to the fact that they are west coast people.  Well as we approach a stop light to cross the street the woman stops us (head set and radio in hand), does not say anything just hold her hand out in the "stop' command and we her "Action" from down the street and she says "We are rolling" and all those strange people we noticed started to talk and walk around.  When they yelled "Cut" the woman told us they are filming an American movie on the street and that everyone on the street is the background for the movie.   Interesting we thought, what a way to be in a movie and not know it.

Ok now to the cruise, Holland did a great job from the start of our cruise.  Boarding was very easy and quick and the staff on board was very friendly and helpful.   The staff always said Good Morning or Good Day as they walked past us; they asked if you needed help if you looked lost.

This cruise was a short re-positioning cruise, meaning that the ship had just finished doing cruises to Alaska and needed to be positioned in San Diego for Hawaii cruises.  This cruise was inexpensive in price and worth every dime we paid.

Food was great on the ship, entertainment could have been better but for a 3 day vacation of doing nothing at all this was the place to be.   If you have never cruises this would be a great start.

I will be producing a group on this cruise next year, so if anyone is interested contact me for information.