Holland America 7-Day Canada and New England Discovery, Aboard the Zaandam
Aug. 26 – Sep. 6, 2022
Two highlights of our first day: 1) Our Delta flight was neither delayed nor cancelled! 2) I got to meet Josh Kantor, Fenway Park organist, my cyberfriend of two years, In Real Life!!
You can skip all the ‘blah blah’ and go right to the photos.
Last February or March, our friends Tom and Kerry told us they had signed up for a seven-day tour on Holland America Line (HAL) from Boston to Montreal. Hmmm. I had been longing to go on this cruise on any cruise line for at least eight years. And the fact that they were traveling on HAL, where I had already started accruing Mariner stars, sealed the deal. It took only about a week for our travel pal Marilyn and myself to discuss this cruise opportunity with our respective partners, and begin the registration process.
In the interim, Jas and I took two mini-vacations, the first since Covid began. We needed to relearn how to vacation, so we flew to Dallas and drove five hours to Amarillo to visit my son Tyler, along with his wife, Leslie, and stepdaughter, in their new-to-them ranch home on the edge of the Palo Duro Canyon. After a few days with them, we drove back to the Dallas metro area to visit my elder son, Scott, and attend one of his beer league hockey games.
About six weeks later, we drove 7½ hours from Youngstown, OH, to Interlochen, MI, to visit Tyler and Leslie at their summer digs on the grounds of Interlochen Arts Camp, where Leslie teaches contemporary dance. We spent a day hanging with our Youngstown neighbors at their summer home on Torch Lake; several hours here and there hanging with Tyler and Leslie, tasting wine, picking flowers and lavender, walking through our favorite Sunday farmers’ market, and eating out; and several very enjoyable hours in Interlochen’s Kresge Auditorium, enjoying the music of Bonnie Raitt and her band, and opening act singer-songwriter and guitarist Chris Smither, whose performance we enjoyed very much, from the fifth row of the auditorium.
Having remastered traveling and vacations, we began getting excited for our upcoming cruise.
The Fly in the Ointment
My Covid test, with almost invisible C-line, but still Positive. 8/17/2022.
As I said previously, I had been looking forward to a Boston to Montreal cruise for years! I tested negative again on the 20th, and went about my business of making music, carefully masked. I played for my summer student’s lesson on the 17th, for his jury on the 18th, for a cabaret rehearsal on the 18th, and for the cabaret performance on the 20th. I was still coughing, fatigued, and now knew what people meant when they said they had “Covid Brain.”
HAL’s Covid protocol up through September 6, 2022, was that all passengers had to be fully vaccinated and boosted within 14 days of sailing, and had to take a proctored antigen rapid test within two days prior to sailing. Every passenger had to complete an online health assessment (have you been around anyone with symptoms? have you had symptoms? …). I was on the cusp of being too close to our date of sailing for having tested positive. I had to call HAL’s Seattle headquarters and talk to a representative whose job was to discuss test results and travelability. I had challenges uploading test results to the VeriFLY app and the ArriveCAN (Canada customs) app. I was on hold waiting to speak to the representative for three hours! During this time, I started packing, willing to believe I might be able to sail. When I finally spoke with the representative, she reviewed all my data and said I should be fine. She said the HAL medical personnel at the Port of Boston would test me one more time. But I still had minimal confidence that I was going on this long-awaited cruise.
Getting There
Anyplace we must fly to begins with a one hour-plus drive to Cleveland, Akron, or Pittsburgh. And if it’s an early morning flight, it also involves a hotel stay near the airport. I thought I’d be smart and book a mid-morning flight to Boston, so we could skip the added expense of the hotel stay and associated dinner. But Delta tricked me. Within a few weeks, they had changed our flight twice—first from 10:30 to 10:00, then a second time to 6:05. In the morning! You can bet I grumbled multiple times about that tricky move.
But Marilyn and I made it happen. We booked rooms with extended parking at the Crowne Plaza near CLE, and ate an early dinner at the Tavolo 72 Ristorante at the hotel. We reserved a 3:30 a.m. airport shuttle, and were asleep by 8:00 p.m. When we got to the airport before 3:45, we learned the Delta ticket counter wouldn’t open until after 4:00 a.m. Ugh. But before too long, we were through the ticketing process and quickly through TSA. We got a so-so meal from one of the food court restaurants, and headed to the gate.
For months, we had been in fear that there would be a problem with flight cancellations. The airline industry has had so many problems during the pandemic. In my mind, if this flight was cancelled, we would just throw our bags in the back of my car and spend Friday driving to Boston so we didn’t miss our Saturday departure. Fortunately, there were no glitches or cancellations. We arrived in Boston at 7:30 a.m. and were met by a Holland America Line representative.
The transfer to the airport only took about half an hour, and the nice young driver pointed out interesting buildings and told us about the outrageous real estate prices in this beautiful old city. We were clearly not in Youngstown any more, where there are far more 5-figure home prices than 7-figure!
We arrived at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, built in 1912, and even though our previously assigned rooms weren’t ready for us, the desk clerk was able to find rooms we could move into immediately. Jas wanted to lie down for a bit, so I went downstairs to the Oak Long Bar and Kitchen for breakfast. The Petit Dejeuner was exactly what I wanted to supplement the inadequate airport breakfast.
Back in the room, Jas wanted to wander the Copley Square area and find something light to eat. We roamed a little, admired the gorgeous Boston Public Library, and then noticed the cafe on the corner of the library. Jas ordered a muffin and coffee, I got a bottle of water, and we sat to watch WGBH being broadcast from the corner of the cafe. That was fun!
Our next calendar item was the Red Sox game at Fenway Park at 7:10, but the weather forecast said there would be a couple of hours of thunderstorms. Were we going to make this game, or would it be called for rain? We just sat in our room, reading and checking weather.com and the Red Sox website. Around 7:00, it was obvious the storms were gone and we were going to be able to experience Fenway Park, see The Green Monster, and watch the Sox (spoiler alert) win a game!!
From my Facebook feed, here’s the story of what happened around the bottom half of the sixth inning:
“For the two years that began in March of 2020, most every afternoon around 3:00 found me by my laptop, watching a Facebook Live concert on https://www.facebook.com/7thinningstretch2020 by Josh Kantor, the Fenway Park organist and musician extraordinaire. He was doing his best to keep his fans’ minds off the fact that there was no baseball happening anywhere. Many of us who were watching became online friends, and, where geographically possible, friends IRL.
“Every day, near the beginning of his show, we would all stand, wherever we were, and sing as he played ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’ The only lyric change was ‘I DO care if we ever get back’ rather than ‘I don’t care’.
“Josh’s brain is filled with thousands of songs, all genres, all decades. If you request your favorite song, he can probably whip it off his organ in a heartbeat. All he asked in exchange for his playing our requests was that we donate to feedingamerica.org or our local food bank. I don’t believe there was any tally kept of the number of hungry people who were fed by our love of Josh and his music and our desire to help him make a difference.
“Josh made a difference in the pandemic and quarantine lives of hundreds of people.
“I was absolutely overjoyed last night to meet Josh IRL at Fenway, and to stand nearby as he played ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ for the seventh-inning stretch.
“What a way to start my vacation!”
Embarkation, Aug. 27, 2022
Saturday morning, we repacked everything to get it onto the coach with us, set our bags by the door for transfer to the coach, ate breakfast in the Long Bar, and chatted with diners on either side of us who were going on a similar but longer cruise that would leave shortly after ours left. After about an hour wait for a working bus to arrive, we got onboard and headed to the Port of Boston. And the first thing I did was to sit down and have a chat with one of the ship’s doctors. After discussing when I had first tested positive for Covid, and when I had first tested negative again, I had a [silent, inside my own thoughts] “aha” moment when I realized the doctor was not going to tell me what to reply on the assessment. When I counted backwards from Aug. 27, counting Aug. 27 as Day 1, I was within 10 days of my first negative test after Covid. When Miss Must-Always-Tell-The-Truth was filling out the assessment at home, I counted the way we were taught in elementary school: 18 to 19 is 1, 19 to 20 is 2, blah blah. Using that method, I would fail. But when I just counted backwards from embarkation day—Saturday as 1, Friday as 2—it worked out okay. I knew I was negative. Jas (who was also being told he might not be able to sail because of being around me while I was sick) had NEVER tested positive. And the doctor’s silence gave me the courage to say what needed to be said to prevent my being forbidden to sail. I signed my attestation and continued the check-in process. Whew! That was the end of three long weeks of worrying about whether or not I would be allowed to board the ship. Within half an hour, I was walking around the ship like a free woman!
We checked out our Neptune Suite, explored the other decks, determined the location of the restaurants we’d dine in, watched the safety video, found out where our lifeboat was (just in case), and headed for the bar. At 5:00, we watched from the top deck as the ship pulled away from the dock. At 5:30, we met our travel companions at Table 33 on the upper level of the Main Dining Room, and enjoyed the first of many delicious and beautifully served meals.
That night we went to the bar for a few more drinks, then crashed in our rooms. It had been a long two days.
Our travel companions were Tom and Kerry, the ones who initiated this whole vacation plan. We had traveled with them in 2020, on our last January vacation to El Dorado Maroma, on the Riviera Maya south of Cancun, Mexico; and Mike and Marilyn (affectionately known as M&M to Jas’s and my J&J), who have been our primary travel companions since 2013.
Let the fun begin.
