We have been home for four days now, and survived the Christmas Holiday. It is now Monday, December 26, and we are pretty much back to our normal routine. We will use this post to make an evaluation of our Viking Ocean Cruise Experience. We had really looked forward to experiencing a higher end cruise line, and we will now give some of our thoughts on what we liked and…
We are planning for our 9th Transatlantic Cruise for December, 2022. We will be sailing on the Viking Neptune. The decision process to get to this point was sort of a round about journey, we had not really planned for a cruise of this duration in 2022. In fact, we had already planned for and booked a 7-Day cruise to the Caribbean in November, 2022 on Princess Cruises. The November…
Here is the Itinerary for this Trip. We will be spending three nights in Barcelona on our own before we board the Viking Neptune. We will have one overnight stay in Barcelona on the ship before we depart. There are only two port stops on the remainder of the voyage, one day in Funchal, Madeira and one day in Saint Martin. The remainder of the cruise is sea days where…
We have been putting together a list of sights that we may visit while we are in Barcelona for three full days before our cruise. Some of the sights we have visited before, so they may become secondary sights in favor of seeing something new. The only exception is a visit to the Sagrada Familia Church, which is a must do, or redo in this case. We have visited Barcelona…
A couple of weeks ago, the Viking Cruise Excursions opened up for reservations. Also, on a slightly different schedule, dinner reservations for the specialty restaurants also opened up. The timing of the opening of these reservations is based on cabin classification. The higher the class of cabin you reserve, the sooner you have access to reserve excursions. This allows people that are paying more to have first dibs on selection…
Our trip is fast approaching, we will be leaving in three days for our flight over to Barcelona, Spain. There has not been a lot of tri planning activities going on recently, we have been busy trying to make sure things in our family life are squared away. Both of our mother’s are keeping us on our toes as we try and go on this trip that will not be…
Sometimes we had our doubts it would happen, but the day to start on our trip finally arrived. It was nice that we did not have a really early morning departure and could sleep in just a little. It was especially nice for me because I had stayed up late last night watching Clemson paly North Carolina for the ACC Championship in football. Congratulation to my team, Clemson, for winning…
Continuation of our Travel Day to Barcelona……… With our luggage in tow, we headed out of Baggage Claim to find our shuttle bus into the city called Aerobus. The YouTube movie I had watched about the route we needed to take to get to the shuttle bus stop was spot on, although it seemed much shorter in real life. We got to the shuttle bus stop and purchased our tickets…
Today, we were thankful for finally getting a good night’s sleep. We both were worried we would wake up way too early after having retired last night about 9:15 PM. I woke up about 4:00 AM, thinking my watch said 5:00 AM, but knowing it was way too early, I went back to sleep. I was surprised we both slept in until about 7:45 AM, and were thankful for the…
We both had a much better nights sleep last night than the night before. We are almost fully adapted to the 6 hour time difference from home. I got up about 6:15 AM, about my normal time when I am at home. I was able to make a cup of instant coffee and work on the blog while Stephanie slept in a little longer. We did not have any specific…
Today, we embark on the Viking Neptune Ship, but first we had a few other things to do this morning before checking out of the hotel. Since we were not able to attend Mass last night for the Immaculate Conception, we were planning to go this morning at 9:00 AM. When I woke up at 6:00 AM, it was still dark outside, but I could tell it was also cloudy,…
We slept well last night in our quiet cabin. The voyage has been really smooth so far, of course, we are still tied up at the dock!! I was up about 6:00 AM, ahead of the alarm we had set for 6:30 AM. I wanted to be sure I was dressed and ready for the room service order if it was delivered early. Promptly at 6:45 AM, room service arrived…
Today is our first full day at sea underway onboard the Viking Neptune. We had nice and calm seas yesterday when we left Barcelona, but overnight we had pretty rough conditions, and that continued into this morning. So much for getting back our sea legs and getting used to the sea conditions on what we thought would be the smoothest part of the trip, sailing in the Mediterranean Sea. We…
Today is another Sea Day, and when we awoke this morning, it was still dark outside. We had forgotten to set our clocks back last night and it was now much earlier than we wanted it to be. The Captain had said we would be going through a cold front last night during yesterday’s noon weather report, and it was now really cloudy outside and had been quite rough last…
Today we have a port call in Las Palmas, or at least we think we do. The original time that Viking Guest Services told us we would be in port for this change in Itinerary was 1:00 PM, and staying until 8:00 PM. As of today, we are now scheduled to arrive later and the tour is not even scheduled to start until 3:30 PM. We are not sure when…
We slept much better last night, the seas were calmer than we had the previous two days and nights. We also gained another hour back on the clocks so we are now only four hours later than at home, having gained back two hours on the cruise so far. Adding the hour really makes it easier to get up “early”. Stephanie had said last night that we needed to get…
We set back our clocks again last night and we are now only three hours later than home. We got to sleep in an extra hour and still got up the same time as yesterday. That is why we really prefer transatlantic cruises in this direction! I got up a little earlier than Stephanie and headed to the coffee bar on Deck 1. It was fairly busy, but I still…
We slept in a little this morning. I was out and about at about 7:00 AM, and Stephanie was still resting. It was a nice sunrise this morning and I was able to get some photos from our balcony. Sunrise was about 7:15 AM, and afterward I showered and headed out to get my coffee and blueberry muffin from the coffee bar on Deck 1. Stephanie stayed in bed sleeping.…
We have three more days at sea before we arrive in St. Martin. The weather has been fantastic, and much warmer early on than we had anticipated, and from talking with other guests, that was pretty much the consensus. The seas have been much calmer for the past few days, and it is very helpful that the swells and the wind are mostly coming from the stern. Today was just…
Stephanie and I both slept in a little today. Our late night “party” in the Explorer’s Lounge had kept us up much too long. But we did have fun! We had another sunny morning, and the seas were not bad, there was a larger swell, so the ship was rocking some, but not badly. The wind is still from our stern, so it is really nice out on deck. We…
We are on day 5 of our 6 days of crossing the Atlantic Ocean to St. Martin from Las Palmas in Gran Canarias. It was nice to gain another hour if time back last night, but I still woke up at about 6:15 AM. The sunrise had already happened, and it was fairly bright outside, even with our curtain mostly pulled closed. I spent some peaceful time on the balcony,…
This morning we made landfall in St. Martin in the Caribbean. It was nice to see some land after six days at sea. Unfortunately, as we will explain in this post, the sight of land this morning was the best part of today, followed by our departure this afternoon. We set an alarm for 6:20 AM so that we could get ready and eat our room service ordered breakfast before…
This cruise is rapidly coming to an end, we have a sea day today and one more tomorrow before we arrive in Ft. Lauderdale on Thursday morning. That will be the day all of the disembarkation fun starts. The weather has been great for the entire trip, the only real rain we have had was for the 30 minutes when we were walking back to the ship in St. Martin. …
Well, it was inevitable, we had to come face to face with reality that this is the last day of our cruise and of our trip. Tomorrow will be a painful travel day, full of waiting and probably some travel stress. I woke up about 6:15 AM, but went back to sleep for another 30 minutes before I was ready to get up and get going. I did my usual…
Today is the dreaded Disembarkation Day, and the always tiring travel home day. The alarm went off at 5:30 AM, and I got up and showered and dressed. We had found out that the coffee bar on Deck 1 was scheduled to open early this morning, so I headed down there at about 5:40 AM to get some fresh made coffee and a raspberry croissant. There were a few other…