As many of you know Cindy and I went on the Nieuw Amsterdam boat last week. The games started when we first booked the ship. They had a sale going for $449 for window rooms. Since Cindy got sick on the last cruise and we had to get off after 2 days we asked for them to upgrade us. So we got a guaranteed F cabin which is a full view room. When they assigned the rooms they had to upgrade us again since all of the F rooms were taken. So we got an L room of which there are only 10 on the ship. The room was at the very front of the ship with a port hole looking forward and 285 sq ft (about twice the normal room). But we really wanted a balcony room so I asked about an upgrade. They came back with $39 each for very nice locations. So we took a VQ spa suite with a balcony. Ya just gotta know how to play the game. More on this later.

It was the first sailing in this area after its inagural season in europe. Two days before we leave we get a message from the travel agent that we will be getting on 4 hours later than planned since there were a lot of intestinal problems on the way over. In fact, even though there are only a few reviews of the ship online they did mention the same thing so apparently it has been a problem since day one. So we got there at noon and had to go to the convention center for 4 hours before we could get on the boat. Cheap sandwiches instead of a nice sitdown meal. It actually turned out to be a good thing. The US government made them spray down almost every public surface with some bug killer so at least there was nothing there to make you sick. They even sprayed the mirrors in our room. For the first three days they would not let you get near the food either - you were handed a cup of coffee in the buffet and they didn't even have salt and pepper on the tables - you had to ask for individual packets. At least no one got sick. The ports were Grand Turk, San Juan, St. Maarten and a private island and were very nice even if we did not go on any shore excursions. Funny thing about that - Cindy signed up for 3 different excursions (I wasn't excited about any of them) and they all got cancelled. We almost mised the hurricane but it was very rough several days and there were a lot of clouds. That worked for me since I went out with my metal detector several times and didn't have to worry a lot about getting fried. On the first stop I found what looked like a great ring. About 20 diamonds in a cross with a silver colored ring. Unfortunately it is not gold or diamonds but the fun is in the hunt and it could have been real. I sure was excited when I first saw it!

Now for the "free" part. On the way there they were over booked out of Nashville. Only problem was that they only had one seat left all day so we could not take the bump. On the way back they said they were over booked out of FLL but never asked us to get off. Out of Tampa they were over booked and we got called right before we got on the plane. We got $974 to get off and had to stay overnight (at our cost). And my ticket already was free from a bump from last years convention. So the bump almost paid for the whole weeks cruise.