29%…..

Day 39/138 2022/2023 Viking Neptune World Cruise. Another sea day!

Its Football playoff Day on the Viking Neptune! And more importantly, its our Art Exhibition Day!

We woke up to watch the first football game at 9am our time to see the Philadelphia Eagles play the San Francisco 49ers. I had Richard have the World Cafe/Room Service send me some fruit and a vegan yogurt for my breakfast. Its was all I could stomach after another night of coughing. I can feel my ears popping so I know that the congestion is leaving my head.…finally…but it sure has been very slow progress on the road to a full recovery!

Our Art Exhibition was to start at 11am today, so some of us decided to volunteer at 10am to help set up the Exhibition before the the show started.

Sharon and me volunteering to set up the Art Exhibition.

Looking at the Art in the Exhibition in the Wintergarden on Deck 7.

While I was working on the set up for the Exhibition, Richard was on Deck 8, Explorer’s Lounge watching the football game.

The game was also available on a channel in our stateroom tv, but fans, like to gather together to cheer on their team(s)!

I took a ton of photos of the Art Exhibition today! Art teacher Deb’s husband, Jim counted all of the art created for the Exhibition and there were 631 pieces! That is the most art ever created on any cruise ship Deb has taught art on! I guess we are definitely a ship of ‘overachievers’!!

I especially like the purple looking piece on this chair.

My sea scape in amongst the mural of sea scapes.

More exotic birds.

Dancers. My Bollywood piece was at the end. I drew my own instead of using a stencil provided by Deb.

Dot Mandela jewellery boxes. So very bright and colourful and each different in its own way.

Doodle art book marks.

More dot Mandela jewellery boxes. It was at this point I realized I didn’t see my art work and sure enough it was still back in my art bag in our cabin, so quickly went and got my art work and put it in the show! If we didn’t put it in the show, we didn’t get the bottom for the jewellery box, so I’m glad I remembered and got the bottom of the box, when I picked up my artwork.

Crossing the Equator pop up cards.

My birds! They‘ve now got matting on them too!

And finally the big turtles! My guy is second from the right. I did a whimsical, stylistic turtle instead of the true turtle colours.

The Wintergarden is a great room for displaying art!

And more of the undersea mural.

The Art Exhibition ran from 11-1pm and then we were to gather for a group photo at 1:15pm. I arrived at 1:13pm and the photo had already been taken, Oh well, no group photo for me.

Luckily Richard had taken a photo with me, Deb and Jim earlier this morning. I’m so thankful for Deb’s guidance and assistance on this cruise to help me with my artwork! They will be departing in Auckland with lots of photos of all of our work!

As we were waiting for Team Trivia to start at 12:15pm in the Explorer’s Lounge the Captain came onboard to give his daily update. During his update, he mentioned that we would not be going to Waitangi, Bay of Islands, New Zealand tomorrow, because it was supposed to be a tender port, and with the weather conditions we would be facing in the port, the Captain has changed our course. We are now heading directly to Auckland and should have the pilot board the ship tomorrow in Auckland at 5pm. So far we are really striking out with 29% of our ports being cancelled so far. We have had Nicaragua, Santa Barbara, KAUAI, and Waitangi, Bay of Islands all cancelled. So out of 14 ports we were to have visited, 4 have already been cancelled or 4/14 or 29% of all of our ports to date have been cancelled. A bit frustrating I would say, but we don’t control the weather and safety is so very important, so we continue to sail on at 12 knots, in foggy grey skies, to Auckland. We won’t have time tomorrow to see much in Auckland because of our arrival time, and because we have Chef’s Table reservations for dinner tomorrow night, but we’ve got a full 3 days to explore Auckland, which will be wonderful!

After picking up my artwork it was football time in our cabin!

Go KC!

And they did it! It was a very close game, but a good one to watch.

Let’s hope Mahomes can rest and rehab that ankle in the next 2 weeks. He certainly wasn’t himself, but he did give the team the run they needed at the end of the game to get them into field goal territory, and also took a late hit penalty, which also helped the field position.

While the football game was on, I decided to finish up my card to remember something on the ship which we were assigned our last day in art class.

My inspiration. A Bordfolk Bunad egg cup holder dressed in Norway’s traditional dresses called a bunad.

These egg cups sell for about 19 euros. I don’t know the price on the ship unfortunately but I do think they are very cute, and very Norwegian.

So tomorrow will be a sea day now instead of being on terra firma. I would like to get to the gym soon, once I feel better. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to cycle for a short time. I’ve not been eating much so its not the need to exercise off pounds, its just strictly to keep the strength in my muscles.

Now I’m off to do some research on Auckland. We have an included tour booked one day, golf another day and we were planning to do some self exploration another day, so now its time to figure that all out! I would like to pick up some more art supplies while we are in a decent big City, and we also have a few other things we need that I’ve made a list of. I wish I had brought another pair of warm pyjamas so we will be shopping for those in Auckland. We did get another warm duvet delivered to the room and that has helped, because I find it cold in the cabin at night. We still have many days to go on this cruise so we may as well be comfortable!