11/16/2022

Sea day.  And that means lots of activity available.  Which doesn’t necessarily mean we did everything available.  We just did the fun ones.  Like attend an astronomy lecture, a painting class, a cooking demo, a planetarium show, line dancing, a lecture about the History of North Africa and that is only a fraction of available diversions.  Lots of walking around the promenade (and back and forth to the guest laundry).

 

Bob and Paul snuck into the Painting class to take a picture or two and the girls didn’t even notice us because they were so into creating their Spanish tile.  Our lunch featured the product of the cooking show – the head chef had a lot of fun (his secret sauce is white wine – one cup for the recipe and 2 cups for the chef!). The Ship employs 110 cooks – that’s got to be crazy!

 

 

                                    Shirley Ann and Michelle painting Spanish tiles

 

A favorite pastime is sitting on our Veranda and pondering the different things that pop into consciousness.  Like is that a whale?  Why is the ocean blue – and what exact shade of blue is it? Realizing we are sailing along the Guinea current with the northern Tradewinds pushing us on and how did they discover that?  How did the sailors know where they were and where they were going in the days before GPS and radar … sextant, astrolabe and chronometer?  When should I retire?  How will we build the new smokehouse?  Who do I talk to when I pray to God?  – you get the picture – James Joycean streams of unrelated – yet somehow strangely related threads to ponder.  The waves crash against the ship in a syncopated cadence providing a soundtrack to the ponderings.

 

At 5:30 the Explorer Society met.  These are repeat Viking cruisers.  There is a champagne (or ginger ale) toast, snacks, entertainment and of course the obligatory sales pitch.  Some interesting facts – like Viking has an 80% rebooking rate.  Met some people who have had many trips – a couple from Oregon got a prize for the most trips on Viking – but we didn’t hear how many.  

 

Tonight we ate at one of the fancy restaurants, Manfredi’s – Italian cuisine.  Pasta, scallopini, chicken parm, cioppino, lemon pasta … and tiramisu and gelato.  We have 4 times we can eat at the fancy places courtesy of our travel agent, Tonya Young at AAA (thanks Tonya).  Then a nice stroll to walk off the calories (even though we all know there are no calories on a cruise).

 

We will set our clock back again tonight, gaining another hour as we cruise a bit more to the west.  16,287 steps today for those who did a lot of promenading before sun up. 8509 fr those who didn’t.  (One trip around the promenade is 550 steps.)