Kiel welcomes Holland America Line’s “Zuiderdam” first of five maiden visits this season
Holland America Line’s “Zuiderdam” arrived from Stockholm on Saturday morning for her maiden visit to the Port of Kiel. The HAL cruise ship is the first of five to make debut calls to Kiel this season, the company said in its press release.
The “Zuiderdam” is on a twelve-day Baltic cruise which started in Copenhagen on May 5th and has already taken her via Tallinn, St.Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm to Kiel. During her stay in Kiel the mainly English-speaking passengers will be making daily excursions throughout north Germany. Possibilities range from guided tours of the Kiel Fiord, visits to the hilly area known as Holstein Switzerland and to the UNESCO world cultural heritage site Lübeck, to variously themed excursions to the metropolis of Hamburg.
Also on offer to tourists are panoramic trips to the Kiel Canal, the beach resort of Laboe or the Hanseatic town of Lüneburg. Peter Todeskino said “Kiel has much to offer its visitors and is also an ideal spring board for excursions into the Schleswig-Holstein region and to Hamburg”. Around 1800 hours, the “Zuiderdam” will leave the Ostseekai Terminal for Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast. The ship was built in 2002 by Fincantieri in Italy as the first in the Vista Class of vessels for the shipping companies of the Carnival Group. She is of 82,305 GT and is 285 m long and 32.20 m wide. Her cabins accommodate 1,962 passengers.
