Life Onboard
Flynn Marr 16 June 2026
Susan is sitting outside by the Sea View Pool with our breakfast. Well, it was lunch really. This deck is at the back of the ship just outside the Buffet and is protected from the wind by glass panels.
Stockholm was our last stop on our voyage and then it was back to Amsterdam. We had two days at sea on our way back which provd to be delightful. Since we have already had a look at the ship it seems a good idea to compress those two days into a single post and talk about a few things we have not covered yet about our cruise.
When you take your vacation pictures home you want to have captured more than pretty buildings, castles and majestic mountains. People will want to know what you did, what you ate, what was the experience like and these things require a different style of picture. So lets take this time to have a look at how we lived on board. And we will start with food.
One of the joys of cruising has to be the meals. To my mind of all the ways to indulge yourself food has to be the best! And the Eurodam did not let us down.
There were several options for eating but we found two of them to be the most satisfying: the buffet on the Lido deck and the main dining room. There were other options to be sure: there was a hamburger bar and a pizzeria but we avoided those, not because they were not good, but because of the amount of food available. Too much! We have found that when travelling we generally have a good breakfast and then nothing till our evening meal with a small snack in the middle sometimes.
The Buffet is located between the two swining pools and you can sit outside by either of them with your meal. Behind Susan through the doors on either side of the Bar is the Buffet.
There was also ample seating inside the Buffet as well which had excellent views through floor to ceiling windows. During rainy or chilly weather we ate inside, of course.
The buffet restarant on the Lido deck between the Seaview Pool and the Lido Pool was truly impressive. I has to be the most expansive buffet I have ever seen and it was open pretty well continuously from early morning till we got our coffee before bed. Unfortunately I did not take pictures of the actual food service which I now really regret. A lesson there: digital cameras don’t use film so take pictures of everything. I wish I had pictures of the actual buffet but it is too late once you leave the ship.
The Buffet food was very good. The choices were amazing and different options were offered every day. What I really enjoyed was that you could keep going back to the line which meant that you could take a bit of salad only, enjoy that, then go back for antipasti, enjoy that and then go back for a main course. It made the meal leisurely and you never had to crowd your plate.
I love a little Greek Salad!
A little Lox!
I love anchovies!
Mowbray Pie with salad.
And a cheese plate to finish!
As you can see, fine dining is a thing at the buffet. The food available is amazing. When we were on the Eurodam in 2012 the covid scare was still in the future. I know they have changed the way the buffet works now but back then they plated some items and you could select your own for the rest. I think now, post covid, you must say what you want and they plate it for you which is understandable.
But the food selection was spectacular and if that was the only option on the cruise one would really have no complaint.
The Rembrant Dining room was a delight. We took our evening meal here every night. This is the sign outside the door to the restaurant.
But there was another venue: the Rembrant Dining Room. This was the main dining room on the ship and we ate there every night. I love to meet new people and we were seated at a table for eight so we made six new friends.
But that aside, we loved the dining room. It was simply excellent. The venue was as fine as any restaurant and the food superb.
Every evening there was a different menu with several selections for appetizer, main course and desert. Service was professional, prompt and friendly and It was a mystery to me how they were able to serve so many people so efficiently and to have the food arrive hot.
The staff were well trained and were a pleasure to deal with. It is amazing how professional waiters can improve the meal experience.
I took this picture of the Rembrant Dining Room in the afternoon when there were no guests.
This is our table in the Rembrant Dining Room where we sat every night.
Susan at our table before the meal. The windows behind looked out on the ocean.
My father was raised in an era of elegance and discipline and being a military man he felt life was run on rules. I was raised that you dress for dinner, that the table is set with the knives and set to the right and the forks to the left. Modern society has left much of that behind and I miss it. I think that is why the Rembrant Room appealed to me: it was more formal than a Denny’s or Church’s Chicken, the staff were exemplary and the food was served in courses one after the other. And the waiter did not start by saying “Hi, I’m Andy and I will be your server tonight.” If I want to know his name I will ask!
Every night the Menu began with a choice of soups and/or salad and appetizers. The selection was different every night and the choices were mouth watering. The portions served were small to avoid waste, but, you could order seconds if the selection really pleased you! This I did often.
French onion soup. A small cup but just enough.
The shrimp cocktail was small but seconds were allowed!
Carpaccio is a favorite of mine that I first experienced in Rapallo, Italy.
Dinner was always accompanied by bread and rolls which were baked on board. One night as we entered the Dinning Room we were presented with a display of bred from the ships kitchens. They had very good chefs in the kitchen and they were capable of excellent baking.
Main courses were epicurian delights. When you consider that this dining room is in the middle of the ocean and the kitchen is not on the same deck level it is amazing that meals arrived hot and looking fresh like they had been prepared in the finest restaurant. But I think the pictures speak louder than my poor words.
Roast beef, nice and rare.
Lamb chops.
Pork chops. Aslo excellent.
At the entrance to the evening, a cake bearing the title of the festivities.
I love a good “crostata”. I learned to love them travelling in Italy.
And that brings us to dessert. There was a different selection every night and, as you might expect, they were as delightful as they were beautiful. This is where the option of having another became really useful.
And while on the subject of desserts, the Holland America cruises we have been on have had an evening where the chefs put on a display of just desserts for the passengers. This cruise was no different.
Around the pool on the Lido deck one evening they put out decorations, arranged tables, and filled them with every manner of dessert one can imagine. The lights were lowered and the evening began. It was quite a sight!
The evening became a social event with everyone standing around talking and sampling this and that and getting a sugar overload. It was wonderful.
Jello cocktails but I was not brave enough to take one!
There seemed to be an endless supply of little cakes. It is not possible in a blog this long to describe all of the sweet treats.
And there were big cakes, dozens of them. The decorations were truly impressive. This is only a small sampling of what the kitchen produced that evening!
I could post a hundred photographs of different desserts from that evening but space and time intervene. We have no choice but to move on.
There was gambling on the ship but Susan and I have little interest in it. And people are sensitive about cameras around the slot machines and card tables. There was also a show in the theater most nights. These were fun but not our favourite activity. Susan, however, found one of her favorite activities: shopping.
Susan is funny about shopping: we go into a store, a grocery store, clothing store, even a five and dime store, and her eyes glaze over and she disappears into the aisles not to be seen again for an hour. She loves it. I generally wander off and find a place to sit and drink cappuccino.
Space on a ship is limited and so is the range of goods one can find. There is a shop for small everyday items like books, souvenirs, sun tan oil, asprins and so on. There is some clothing, some of it very nice. The jewellery store was stocked with better quality costume jewellery and low prices up to some very expensive rings, necklaces and watches. The goods were obviously tailored to the interests and pocket books of the people on the ship.
The jewellery store was very interesting with lovely things on display. The shops were all arranged in the same area of the ship. You can see this area in the background outside the doors.
Susan found a very nice fur jacket that she looked at for a couple of days before actually buying it. This was a bit expensive but the shop had also had T-shirts, bathing suits, towels, hats and other items that were very affordable.
Outside the Jewellery Store during the sale of the Faberge Eggs.
On our way to St. Petersburg in Russia the Jewellery Store had a very interesting sale. Apparently a descendant of the jeweller Faberge, jeweller to the Tsars of Russian, was making reproductions of famous Faberge Eggs. Because many do not know about these eggs there was a lecture given in the theater one evening about their history. We went to this and I learned much that I had not known.
Faberge came up with these jewel encrusted eggs which were made of precious metals and each egg opened to reveal a “surprise” within: a small tableau, a figurine, a jewell. These were made for the Russian Royal family to collect or to give as gifts to each other or to honour someone.
The reproductions were careful copies but made with less expensive materials. However, they were still very expensive for what were: really just ornamental knick-nacks to put on a shelf. But they were beautiful!
And that was life on our Baltic cruise. There was so much more that I have not touched on, the spas, the swimming pools, dancing, the espesso bar and library, the special dining rooms. But it was too much for such a small blog post.
After leaving Stockholm we were at sea for two days and then on the third morning we woke up in Amsterdam again. We left the ship mid-morning and began our trip to our next destination and the rest of our summer. We walked from the cruise ship terminal to the Amsterdam Central Station and began looking for a train to Berlin.
The tracks we left on the Baltic Sea as we made our way back to Amsterdam.
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