Holland America Line - Maasdam Review

This was an interesting cruise, we started out in Boston and ended up in Denmark.  We were able to visit countries that you wouldn't ordinarily plan a vacation to.  In some of the places we were the first cruise line to visit.  The local folks really enjoyed meeting us.  That was a great experience.  They weren't the usual jaded townsfolk with cruise lines coming and going all the time.  The tours were simple, mostly sight seeing from a bus, but they were wonderful.  The tour guides were informative and very friendly answering all of our questions. 

 The only downfall of this particular cruise was our accomodations.  We booked an inside cabin to save money.  We also picked a cabin that was midship and not near any elevators or stairwells.  We've cruised many times and knew how to pick a good location so noise and movement wouldn't be a problem.  The location was great, the room was not.  It was dirty, not cleaned properly.  We had many, many problems with the toilet not flushing.  We also requested a non-smoking room.  About half-way through the trip we started getting a lot of cigarette smoke filtering into our room late in the evenings.  We called the management and they checked it out but couldn't come up with a solution.  We had to live with the smoke and toilet problems for the duration of the trip.  They didn't offer to move us to a different location.  They had no solution to our problem, we just had to live with it.