Tales of the South Pacific - Embarkation Day

Cruise Day 1

Monday, September 29, 2025

Today we board the Holland America MS Zaandam for our 51-day Tales of the South Pacific Cruise.  We didn’t have to leave until 10:30 so we didn’t get up early, but we were up a little before eight anyway as we wanted to eat breakfast before we left.

After getting ready and doing our final packing, we headed off to the Grant Grill again for breakfast.  We wanted to eat light this morning, so we opted for a fruit plate and some pastries, but the fruit plate was huge, so we still ended up with a pretty big breakfast.

We got back to the room with a little time to relax before checking out, but it was soon time to go, so I called the front desk, checked out and asked for a cab, and by the time we got to the lobby, the cab was waiting.  It was a fairly short drive to the cruise terminal and luckily it was early enough that it wasn’t too crowded yet, so we got our check-in started early.

There was also a Princess ship in port that had 3600 passengers compared to our 1200, so I was a little concerned it might be very crowded, but we quickly were through customs and the Holland America check-in and took a seat and waited to be called to board.  Because we had once again booked a suite, we had priority boarding and after only a ten-minute wait, we were called to board, and we were quickly on board and in our room just after eleven.  This was our easiest embarkation ever.

Our luggage hadn’t been delivered yet, so after settling in, we decided to go down to the Neptune Lounge and see who our concierge was.  The Neptune Lounge is a place accessible only to suite guests and has food and drinks that changes at various times of the day, tables and chairs to sit, and best of all, a concierge to take care of almost anything you need.  The concierge is one of the main reasons we are hooked on staying in suites.

The concierge wasn’t in yet, so we decided to walk around the ship a bit and find out where our table for dinner was located in the dining room.  We like the fixed seating in the main dining room for dinner as we like to get to know our dining stewards and they get to know us and what we like.  We also chose the late seating at 7:30 as that suits us the best too.

We returned to our room and much to our surprise, the luggage we had shipped from Atascadero had just arrived, usually it is late afternoon before we get it and here it was barely noon.  We started to get things put away and just about the time we finished, the other luggage we brought with us arrived, and we were able to get everything put away and were settled in before two, this has never happened before.  Usually, it takes a long time to get all of our luggage, and I always worry that some of it is not going to make, but not today – it was worry free.

We went back to the Neptune Lounge and met our concierge Kyle, and she seemed very nice.  She answered a few questions we had and we got some snacks and returned to our room.  We relaxed until four when we had to go to a muster drill at our lifeboat station.  Those are always a big pain, but very necessary for the sake of safety.

Sail away was at five so we went up and enjoyed that and had our traditional “unleaded margaritas” as we sailed away from San Diego.  The weather was beautiful and warm, and it was very nice, and we were finally underway.

The sail away party is underway.

We are underway, that is the large Princess ship that was next to us.

The USS Midway Aircraft Carrier is docked near to the cruise terminal.  It is a museum now and you can tour the ship.

We returned to our room and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying sailing out of the San Diego Harbor from our balcony.

After the sail away we had a little time to relax before it was time to get ready for dinner.  Dinner was very good and afterwards we went to the casino where, surprisingly, I had a very good night and left with a profit.  As for Val, who usually does better than I do, she had no luck at all.  After the casino it was back to our room to relax before calling it a night.  Tomorrow is the first of six sea days until we reach our first port in Hawaii.

We enjoyed a beautiful sunset.