Desperately Seeking Sunshine # 2: A Floating Arts Centre

Due to unexpected technical difficulties, I was unable to carry on blogging while I was on the ship. I landed at Fort Lauderdale yesterday and am now back in Canada, so the blogging begins now and will continue until I’m all caught up.

 

Since this was my first-ever cruise on Holland America Line, I think a detailed look around the ship would certainly be in order. As I’d previously mentioned, the M.S. Nieuw Statendam is one of three ships in the Pinnacle Class, the largest ships of the Holland America fleet, shown here at dockside in Nassau.

 

With 12 passenger decks, Nieuw Statendam can carry over 2600 passengers. I know this may sound like a lot of humanity, and it is, but in cruise ship terms this is a mid-size ship. Unusual technical note: this ship uses diesel generators to produce electricity, which is fed to two 19,000 hp electrical motors that drive the propulsion system. One significant result is that there’s less ongoing engine vibration at the stern compared to traditional diesel engine propulsion. The ship entered service in 2018.

 

Enough technical stuff. What did I mean by calling this ship a “floating arts centre?” 

 

Commissioning works of art from contemporary artists is a long-standing tradition at Holland America. Their ships have for decades exhibited the work of multiple artists and designers. With this vessel, the trend goes to extraordinary lengths. No matter how much I walked around the different decks, I never caught the same piece appearing twice in different locations. With that, here’s a gallery of just some of my favourites, from the sculptures in the elevator lobbies…

 

 

 ...to pictures on stair landings…

 

 

…and from tall, narrow pieces placed at the zig-zag bends in the corridors…

 

 

…to the biggest single piece, the extraordinary stainless-steel sculptural creation which takes up most of the atrium and, ironically, prevents it from feeling to me like an atrium at all. 

 

 

A key centre of daily life is the Dining Room (that's actually it's proper name), with huge panoramic windows over the stern. The room's whole look gives a nod to the elegant two-deck design used on so many of the old classic ocean liners before the jet age. Sadly, the staircase in this room didn’t get used for people to make grand entrances as in the olden days, since the upper level was reserved for diners using the same table at the same time with the same table-mates throughout the cruise, while the larger lower level was for those who wished to treat it like a normal restaurant and “come when you wish.” 

 

 

Note: there were very few tables for two on that lower level, and there was an especially long wait for them on Tuesday night, which happened to be Valentine’s Day. Hmm. Shortage of smaller tables was also an issue for many people in the buffet. Overall, the buffet was much more cramped for space.

 

Aside from the artworks, Holland America’s other new signature piece is the Music Walk, the main passage from midships to forward on Deck 2. This cruise line has gone wholesale into promoting music, with four different types of music in three different venues along the Music Walk available to music lovers every day. Lincoln Center Stage promotes classical music, both full-scale and light classics (my favourite venue, as anyone who knows me could guess). 

 

It's no accident that the stage backdrop and the starburst chandeliers both hint at the spectacular architecture of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York. B. B. King’s Blues Club, with its own in-house blues band, uses the same space later in the evening. 

 

Billboard on Board features assorted popular music and quizzes, “ask for your favourites,” and such, all performed by two pianists who also sing. 

 

 

Finally, there’s the Rolling Stone Rock Room, with its own in-house rock band.

 

All of these are free-flowing open spaces, but conflicts are avoided by some nippy scheduling, with performances in each space lasting no more than 45 minutes. Here’s a schedule from one night to give you the idea.

 

There’s also a traditional large theatre spanning decks 2 and 3 at the bow, but with an additional and very sophisticated multi-screen audio-visual setup. Here, most nights featured the Step One Dance Company in assorted performances – something quite different from the usual Broadway shows and show tunes which many lines feature in such a space.

 

The music wasn’t confined to the Music Walk either. Several of the decks were named after famous composers: Beethoven, Gershwin, Mozart, and mine: Schubert. On the Schubert Deck, even the corridor carpets reflected the musical theme!

 

 

Outdoors, the ship includes a feature which has been thrown out, like the baby with the bath water, on many modern ships: a full-length promenade on Deck 3, circling the entire ship except the tip of the sharply raked bow. I had some excellent walking time there.

 

 

Also outdoors: two good-sized pools with adjacent hot tubs, one midships with the now-compulsory large movie screen above it. I didn’t actually go there at all, because I was too taken with the large open pool deck at the stern, the Sea View Pool. With ample sun and fresh air, what nicer place to spend a day on the Caribbean? By the way, that's a Celebrity Cruises ship towering over us. The glass windows above the end of the pool belong to Tamarind, an Asian-fusion gourmet experience which is the absolute showstopper among the ship’s five premium restaurants. Some of my best pictures of the trip were taken from the open-air outer end of this deck, with its magnificent view all around the ship’s stern.

 

 

Even here by the pool, there were a couple of pieces of shipboard art glowering down at us!

Note: the starboard side of the Sea View Pool is the home of the Sea View Bar, and also of the ship’s quite sizable smoking section, adjacent to the bar. If you don’t like the smell of smoke, you would have to stick to the port side or go out farther towards the stern. 

 

Finally, as some of you have read in my previous post, I decided to try an inside cabin for this cruise as a test run, to see if I could stand it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could. Even though the cabin was very compact (that’s putting it tactfully), there was no shortage of storage spaces for my things, and plenty more that I didn’t use. There were North American and European plug sockets and USB ports on the desk, and on both bed tables. The bed was comfortable, the air exchange was every bit as thorough and rapid as the advertising states (a complete exchange every 4 minutes), and I was satisfied. 

 

A real bonus was a large, almost bathtub-sized, shower stall.

 

 

My only question would be to wonder if every cabin has different art works. On such a beautiful ship, so strongly geared towards the arts, somehow that seems far from unlikely!