The voyage followed extensive upgrades at Fincantieri’s Palermo shipyard which added new staterooms, dining options, public areas and a specialty wine bar to the 2003-built ship.
New are Canaletto, an Italian specialty restaurant, 34 staterooms, an Explorations Café in the Crow’s Nest, a larger Pinnacle Grill restaurant and a Pinnacle Bar with a focus on US Northwest wines.
An expanded and upgraded retail arcade includes the high-end jewelry shop, Merabella. A home theater-style screening room was installed for audiovisual presentations to small groups. And the ship gained an environmentally friendly ‘wet cleaning’ machine, to replace the dry cleaning process using perchloroethylene.
Further, Oosterdam implemented new enrichment programming in the form of Digital Workshops powered by Windows and led by Microsoft-trained teachers.
For the remainder of 2009, the ship will sail alternating 12-day Eastern and Western Mediterranean cruises between Venice and Barcelona, a 16-day Atlantic crossing, one 19-day Panama Canal voyage and six seven-day Mexico cruises round-trip from San Diego.
