Nov 1

Nov 1 Day 3 - Amber Cove, Dominican Republic

This morning, ms Rotterdam is sailing toward Amber Cove, Dominican Republic, with a scheduled arrival time of 1:30pm. I get to enjoy some nice sea views from my perch at the Grand Dutch Cafe for my morning coffee and blogging work.

The Grand Dutch Cafe has a small selection of pastries available during breakfast, but no hot offerings that I could find such as a egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. I will double-check on this tomorrow because I am not 100% sure of that.

I have been ordering the large drip coffee, which shows up on the bill as two regular coffee drinks for a total of $4.50 or $5.31 including gratuity. That seems pretty steep for drip coffee. And, I am not sure if this would count as two drinks toward the 15-drink-per-day limit on the Signature Drink Package. If you know, put it in the comments below.

For lunch today, we made reservations at Pinnacle Grill, Holland America’s signature steakhouse. Lunch is available here for $15/per person + gratuity. The lunch menu is much smaller than the dinner menu, as you would expect. Rickee ordered the Spinach Arugula Salad, and while the greens were fresh and crisp, the dressing was not to her liking. I started with the Crab Cakes, which were delicious.

For her main, Rickee ordered another salad, the Shredded Chicken and Bibb salad which she requested with bleu cheese dressing on the side. Once again, she was underwhelmed. My Pinnacle Burger was served with a bacon jam that sort of overpowered the flavor of the burger. I ended up scraping off the jam. Honestly, the meat was not as good as I remember from my last Pinnacle Burger on Nieuw Statendam.

Both of our desserts were good, with very large portions. We were not able to finish either one. We were a bit disappointed in our lunch at Pinnacle, other than the standout crab cakes. Nevertheless, we are going to try Pinnacle again for dinner later in the cruise.

*Warm chocolate fudge brownie with coffee gelato*

After lunch, we visited the library on Deck 2 forward which is a very nice space with lots of books available for guests to enjoy. There is no formal check out process. You can just grab a book and return it to the book drop when you are finished.

When we arrived in Amber Cove, we made the decision to remain onboard and enjoy our wonderful balcony. We have been to Amber Cover quite a few times. There are many excursion opportunities available here, so if you visit, it is well worth booking an excursion. I did go ashore to take some photos and video of the ship.

At 4pm, it’s time for Team Trivia, hosted this afternoon by Aya, one of the cruise staff.

*Aya prepares to indulge our trivia addiction*

Today’s trivia theme is food and drink and Rickee and I ended up winning! The prize? The highly sought after Holland America Caribbean pins!

There was another trivia this evening right before the 7:30 show, so we played again and won again! Two wins in one day! After trivia, we went to the show “Seven World’s One Planet” produced by BBC Earth. The show combines amazing video set to live music performed by the Rotterdam classical music performers. The World Stage theater is one of the nicest on any cruise ship with huge LED screens that wrap around the audience.