04.20.2024 N. Atlantic Ocean Day 7/7

Our final sea day of this 7 sea day stretch. Hot and humid again today. It is 85 degrees with a real feel of 92.
After breakfast we attended
Viking Resident Historian Iconic Lecture with Dr. Bryan Babcock: "History of West Africa."
Discover the heritage of ancient empires, slavery and colonialism in contemporary West Africa.
We followed that with going to the Winter Garden to attend the
Make a Memento Challenge.
Join us as we unveil exciting guest creations inspired by our travels on the Viking Neptune World Cruise. The creativity of some of our fellow guests is amazing. Myron and Viking Guest Choir performed “A Lion Sleeps Tonight”

Our afternoon was busy as well. Diana attended the Puzzle Workshop with Mr. Russell Lee: "The Fun and Fascination of Word Labyrinths."
Sharpen your wits on some fun and diabolical word puzzles. Diana has attended a few of these and they are really hard.
Myron had choir practice at 2:00 pm.
At 4:30 it was Guest Lecture Mr. Douglas Field: "Dakar and the Cap-Vert Peninsula." Uncover the panoply of West African culture in and around Senegal's capital city.
On the photo of the map included with today’s blog post it shows our Viking Neptune ship in the dark blue heading to Dakar but what was interesting to Diana was the narrow country called The Gambia. Sound familiar? It’s where the author of “Roots” Alex Haley believes his ancestor Kunta Kinte was taken from the jungle and sold into slavery.
We have spent the past few days learning some of the history of African slavery. There were 12 million people sold into slavery from Africa and surprisingly the number to the US was on the smaller side with 450,000 slaves brought to the US. Brazil had a huge appetite for slaves and was the last country to abolish slavery. Islam nations also had a large slave trade as well as India.
Dinner tonight was in the Restaurant with Tony and Monica. Filet and wedge salads. Yum! Wonderful conversations where we covered topics such as cruises, slavery, cities we have visited etc. The sunset during dinner was photo worthy.Read more