Meet Viking Polaris

She feels brand new, yet for those of us who have been on dozens of Viking voyages she feels like home. The Viking Polaris is more beautiful than any ship I have ever seen, and more functional. A great deal of thought went into the design of this craft. At every turn one sees references to explorers and the lands they found. This ship was designed to carry passengers to Antarctica. From its specially designed bow to the “Hangar” in her stern, she is made for exploration. The hangar deck borrows an idea developed by the U. S. Marine Corps at New River. Zodiacs and Special Ops boats take on passengers in a dry hangar and then the vessels slide gently into the water. Polaris is authorized by NOAA, Scripps Oceanographic Institute, Cambridge University and a host of other institutions to conduct regular scientific studies in the water on which she cruises. In short, in addition to being a home for 300 passengers, she is a floating scientific laboratory. Tonight after providing a feast offering just about any culinary delight one could want, she sailed out of Duluth Harbor and into Lake Superior. She performs admirably here, though one can tell that her true home is the southern polar terra incognita. Glenda says Viking has taken the best of their river longships and the best of their ocean cruisers, jacked them up a notch and produced this class of expedition ships.

Duluth itself is rather remarkable. This industrial city of only 80,000 inhabitants is home to a symphony orchestra, a professional ballet company, and two opera companies. Its gritty mills grind the Durham wheat produced in this region, ship it to Italy, whose cooks swear that their good “Italian” Durham wheat makes the best pasta in the world. Duluth has temperatures in the 80’s today, even though last winter the city had over 130 inches of snow, and nighttime temperatures regularly below zero. Tonight there was a rock concert in the park with an audience of thousands of T-shirt clad residents who strung out along the quay to greet Polaris as we began our voyage to Thunder Bay.

With so many pictures of explorers like Neil Armstrong, Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on the walls; with their names and discoveries written in shiny brass embedded in the tiles under our feet; one cannot help expecting that great discoveries await us who fill her luxurious staterooms.En savoir plus