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.
Sunrise From Our Balcony
I decided to skip my usual cappuccino and just get a black coffee. I had a cappuccino and a latte yesterday, and I just think that was too much for my digestive system, either too much coffee, too much cream, or both. The coffee is strong, and I never have any type of cream at home. I also think I am having a tough time with the drinking water on the ship. I am sure it is purified seawater, probably from reverse osmosis. I do not know if it is treated with anything else, but since we are on a water well at home, we are just not used to any kind of treated water. We miss having the ability to have more bottled water, Viking only offers it when we are going to or coming back from a port.
I was also told last night that bottled water is available in the Gym, so we will be checking that out, just so we can have a few bottles in the room.
I finished up yesterday’s blog post while I had my coffee and muffin. The internet is just about useless at our current location, not quite halfway across the Atlantic Ocean to St. Martin. This is typical, there is just not any coverage from Satellites here, there is certainly not much need.
I am having to write the posts on my local version of the blog that is on my laptop, and copy and paste it to the live version whenever we get a stronger internet connection.
About 8:30 AM, I headed back to the cabin and Stephanie was up and almost ready. We headed to the World Cafe buffet for breakfast and it was pleasant. I have been enjoying the over easy cooked to order eggs, especially since someone else is making them! Breakfast has been about the most consistent n quality of all of our meals.
We sat at our breakfast table for quite a while just enjoying watching the ocean go by. We also were giving our cabin steward, Irene, enough time to clean our cabin. We finally headed out just to walk around and find a peaceful place to sit. Since the wind is from the stern, there is not a lot of breeze, but the downside of that is it feels hot out in the direct sunshine. Today’s temperature is supposed to be around 78 degrees.
Walking On Deck 2
We decided we needed to walk today, so we headed back to the cabin to change into our gym clothes, and then headed to Deck 2 to walk laps. Each four laps around the deck is a mile and we walked eight laps. About half way through we saw our new friends Angie and Tony from the UK sitting on a bench at the stern of the ship. They had told us this was one of their favorite places to sit in the mornings, and it is peaceful listening to the churning water from the propellers not far below.
They were cheering us on each time we walked by, and we told them that they reminded us of the time we were in London during the London Marathon, but just slightly less crowded!! When we finished our laps I told Stephanie we had roughly walked for 10 miles in the 35 minutes it took us for the eight laps. She was wondering how that was true, and I told her that the ship had moved about 10 miles during the time we walked, so that was what I was going to count as our distance.
Beverages At The World Cafe Bar
We headed back up to Deck 7 at the stern and sat at a table and enjoyed the views of the ocean. We are now seeing flying fish and it it always fun to watch them fly when the ship’s shadow spooks them. It was close to noon and we decided to have a morning beverage. Stephanie had a Peach Bellini and I had cranberry and vodka. I might have to try getting a Bloody Caesar one day, but I was not in the mood for the spicy drink today. We are not even sure they can make one, it is like a Bloody Mary, but with Clamato Juice instead of Bloody Mary mix. There is also a spicy mix added that has Worcestershire Sauce in it.
The Captain gave us the noon report and it was good to hear that the weather will remain good for today and tonight, and is expected to be similar tomorrow. He told us that at midnight tonight, we will be half way across the Atlantic between the Canaries and St. Martin, our next stop.
At around 12;30 PM, we headed into the World Cafe for lunch. They had announced that today’s lunch was German themed, and it sounded like something we would enjoy. I got a brat, purple cooked cabbage, and Germán potato salad. Stephanie had a Weiner Schnitzel, which was actually very good. We both had Spätzle, a noodle dish, which was also quite good. Of course, I had to have the Apfelstrudel, which was served warm with a vanilla sauce. I enhanced it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was very good.
We did a little walking around on the upper decks to let our lunch settle. We scouted out a few places to sit in the sunshine, and found one on Deck 8 at the stern, there were some really comfortable chairs there and we turned them so we could see out over the stern of the ship.
We could not sit out there long, the sun seemed intense and we did not want to get sunburned. It was so nice outside that we went back to the cabin and put on our bathing suits and sunscreen, and headed back up to Deck 8 to a quiet area with sun loungers.
We stayed in the sunshine there for about an hour, Stephanie napped most of the time and I just looked out over the ocean. We were worried about getting too much sun, and it was rather warm there without much breeze. We headed down one deck and sat at a table in the shade and played cards, and Stephanie did a very good job of humiliating me for about an hour as we played Rummy. I had a cranberry with Vodka, and then another, and Stephanie had water. Maybe that was the reason she excelled at cards today, her water versus my vodkal.
Shaded Table For Some Card Playing
Since I was having so much fun at cards, we decided to stop playing and head over to the main pool and find a shady area there. The glass cover was retracted, and we found two sun loungers in some partial shade, but soon it turned cloudy and was much cooler and more enjoyable sitting outside.
We both ordered a tropical drink from the pool bar, Stephanie had a drink called a Red Lobster and I had a Mai Tai. They were good, but both were just way too sweet for us to drink. We only had a few sips and we both had enough.
Stephanie switched to a Peroni Beer and I switched to a Vodka tonic. They were both much better. Stephanie wanted to get some fries from the pool grill, and she headed there to get a plate full for us to share. She came back with a large plate stacked with freshly cooked fries and also had them add some fried onion rings. It would have been enough to feed a family of four for a week. The onion rings were excellent, they seemed fresh, and were really crispy. If they were frozen, they were the best we have ever had.
It was getting cooler outside with out the sun, it had turned really cloudy by this time and it was also getting late in the afternoon. We had decided to go to The Restaurant again tonight based on the menu we saw on the Viking App. At about 5:15 PM, we headed back to the cabin to shower and get dressed for dinner.
Once we were ready, we headed to the bar on Deck 1 to have a pre-dinner glass of wine. Around 7:00 PM, we headed up one deck to The Restaurant and were seated. It was not a table I liked, it was out on the edge of a set of three two person tables in a row, and was right across from the main access for the waitstaff to the kitchen. I asked to slide over to the middle table, and they let us move there. The inside table was right next to the window and was already occupied with a couple almost finished with their dinner. They were pleasant to talk to, but were only there long enough to finish eating their desserts.
Another couple was eventually seated at the table we had moved from, and they were a couple that had been on our bus tour with Viking in Barcelona. While we were waiting for our dinner to be served I was talking with the first couple we met to our right and Stephanie struck up a conversation with the new couple. It was a little strange.
Our appetizers arrived, I had some type of lobster and fish soup, which was pretty good. Stephanie had Brie wrapped with Philo dough, which was one of the items she had seen that helped to make our decision to come here for dinner tonight. We had the Coppola Zinfandel again tonight with our dinner.
After we finished our appetizers, the wheels sort of fell off the dining experience, at least on the service side. When the wait staff brought out our main dinners, they got them completely reversed, they served me Stephanie’s order of grilled Mahi Mahi, and server her my ham wrapped pork tenderloins. They almost left before we could get them to change them out. We both thought that was just terrible service for a cruise line of the stature. We did share a plate of ravioli, and that was probably the best part of dinner. It had a slightly lemon flavored sauce on it which was different, but quite good.
Then to top off the service debacle, they brought some appetizer dishes to the couple next to us and they were not even for them. They had already eaten their appetizers and had already been waiting for quite a while on their main courses to arrive. After they placed the incorrect items on their table and realized it was the wrong table, the staff hurriedly picked them back up and headed off to another table to serve them to the correct guests. These two instances of serving errors were the worst we had ever seen on a cruise ship before.
We had some good conversations with the newer couple next to us while we ate our dinner. It was now time for our desserts, but we had never been served any more wine since we had first been seated. It was like they just forgot to bring us more, and were not there enough for us to ask once our glasses had gotten mostly empty. Then they overfilled the wine to make up for not having brought it out earlier and then brought out our desserts, it was just too much wine to drink this late in the dinner. For our desserts, I had some type of deconstructed Black Forrest Cake and of course, Stephanie had cheesecake with strawberry topping. We were full, the food had been good, but we had not enjoyed the dining experience with all of the errors and lack of attention with the service. There was no way we could finish the wine after all of the waiting and eating, so we just left the fairly full glasses on the table.
We went back to the cabin to get our nightly stash of the six mini bottles filled with our own supply of Seagram’s VO. We decided just to sit in the Atrium area and enjoy the piano player one floor below. They have really comfortable couches and hardly anyone was in this area. We saw quite a few people heading to the main theater for some type of mentalist show. We had a couple of drinks in the quiet area, and Stephanie did a WhatsApp call to her mom to check in.
We decided to head up to the Explorer’s Lounge to enjoy Zeus, the guitar player. Our new friends from the UK Angie and Tony were there and we sat with them at the bar.
We had a few drinks enjoying the music and then just enjoying our conversations. It is sort of the same crowd there at the bar each night, and most are really fun people. There is one couple that usually shows up, and they sat on the other side of our UK friends. This other couple is the “most Viking cruised” couple on this trip with 15 cruises. He is very quiet and she is very pretentious. She even commented that we, the four of us, were having too much fun and we were not including them in our fun. Then, when they were leaving, somehow the conversation came up about butlers on cruises and of course, they had to tell us all about all of the Cunard cruises they had been on where they had high dollar suites with personal butlers. UGHHHH.
We had a great time, but had stayed out longer than we wanted. The only good thing was that we were adjusting the clocks again tonight and gaining an hour back to sleep.
We headed up to the cabin and called it a night. It was about midnight, but only 11;00 PM on the new time.