At the Captain’s Table

We had the unusual privilege of attending a dinner tonight with several of our current shipmates who were with us on the Viking Inaugural World Cruise from December 2017 to May 2018. Lara Knutsen and her husband, our Captain Atle Knutsen, arranged the meal in the private dining room of Manfredi’s, the excellent Italian restaurant here onboard the Viking Mars. Captain Knutsen was our Skipper during that entire five-month cruise, and Lara served as the ship’s hostess. I will never forget her kindness to us Vietnam veterans as we approached Saigon back in 2018. That visit was the first time many of us had been back to Saigon since the war. Lara arranged for the vets to have coffee together a couple of times each week with Commander Porter Hallyburton and Admiral John Lippiett. Commander Hallyburton was one of the first U. S. prisoners of war shot down over Vietnam and was in a communist concentration camp for over seven years. Lara and Captain Knutsen are two very special people to us, and it was a joy to be back with some of our old friends who literally traveled the world with Viking.Read more