World Cruise

Life onboard the Viking Neptune is tending to have great similarities to our lives at home. Namely, that we tend to go from a dead stop to a full sprint in the blink of an eye. Examples of this occurred both last night prior to dinner (see Costa Rica post) and again this morning. This morning we were lounging in our stateroom, listening to the lecture entitled, "Simon Bolivar, The Liberator" when my alarm went off stating that our behind the scenes tour was beginning in less than an hour. Bob and I promptly jumped out of bed and began scurrying around trying to get dressed, getting the stateroom back into some semblance of order (similar to the fact that I clean the house before our cleaners come, I also straighten up the stateroom before the room stewards come in to clean), and Bob wanted to grab a bite to eat. Bob went to the World Cafe while I finished in the stateroom. I was on my way to the World Cafe when some of our friends met who we met at the French wine tasting me ran into me the stairwell and told me they were having a brunch on the pool deck. At this point, our morning went from a bit hectic to totally crazy ending with me running from one end of the ship to the other. I found Bob in the buffet line and told him that there was a brunch being served. He already had a plate in his hand so he found an empty table and placed his plate of food on the table. We then went out to the pool deck only to find out that the brunch was only just being set up and not ready. So back to the World Cafe we went and found Bob's plate waiting for us. Just as he began eating, two of my fellow suffers from the bike adventure yesterday walked by and I introduced them to Bob. We ended up chatting for a few minutes. At this point, I had to excuse ourselves and explain that we had a tour. The hour that we had to get to the tour had now evaporated. We proceeded to the first floor and found what we thought was our tour in progress...and uggg...everyone had their QuietVox which is the device that Viking uses so the tour guide is able speak into a microphone which is transmitted to one's individual QuietVox. So, I was off for a rapid journey to our stateroom to retrieve our QuietVoxes. I should add at this point that, not knowing that Bob would just be less than 6 weeks from his hip replacement surgery, we chose the same stateroom as we had on our previous World Cruise but our stateroom is 3 stateroom from the stern of the ship causing us to have long walks from the elevators. I got to our stateroom to find the QuietVoxes in there charger but, alas, Bob's earpiece was nowhere to be found. I proceeded to tear the stateroom (which, I will remind you, I had just straightened) apart looking for Bob's earpiece. Having found it in the bottom of his backpack, I was off again to make the journey from stern to bow. I made it to the atrium and ask one of the Viking staff which channel our QuietVox should be tuned to...only to be told that this was the end of the tour not the beginning and that I should check with Guest Services to confirm what tour we were signed up for. So I head over to Guest Service. I was told that we were actually scheduled on the 11:15 tour. I need to explain at this point that time on the ship is not necessaries the same time in port. The night before we were told to set our clocks an hour back which has to be done manually. Since I wanted to record how much torture I was subjected to during our bike ride yesterday, I connected to cellular service so my Oura ring could record my exercise which, inadvertently, changed the time so it was no longer in sync with the ship's time. This tends to really mess with times on one's calendar.
Now, totally sweating, I walked over to Bob and told him that we were on the next tour.
We then decided to head to the Explorer's lounge to watch the whitecaps. Yes, my friends, we have some movement being felt in the ship-not nearly enough-but motion none the less.
After some time watching the waves, I made the journey back to our stateroom to pick up our sunglasses as I knew that after our tour, we would want to go to the pool deck (as now neither of us have had anything to eat) for brunch.
I met Bob in the atrium with QuietVox and sunglasses in hand.
The behind the scenes tour was fascinating. We toured the kitchens, loading dock, main "highways" running north-south and east-west, engineering, laundry, crew quarter areas, and guest services area.
Finally, we headed to the pool deck for the brunch. The brunch was spectacular!
I received some emails that I needed to answer so after stuffing ourselves, we proceeded back to the stateroom.
I worked and Bob spent some time on our balcony to photograph the birds soaring around the ship.
Bob went to the photography workshop.
I continued to work and also to work on this blog entry.
I will meet Bob for the lecture on Central America Today at 4:30.
We will then have dinner at the Chef's Table for a Mexican centered menu.Read more