Day 20/138 2022/2023 Viking Neptune World Cruise, Day 2 of 6 sea day.
We lost another hour overnight, so we are now 4 hours different than we are used to in the Eastern Time Zone. After having spent an entire winter on Vancouver Island in 2020/2021 and quite a bit of time again on Vancouver Island and the West Coast of the USA later in 2021, we are used to a 3 hour time difference from ‘back home’, but 4 hours is a weird one to get our heads wrapped around. We had scheduled a Zoom call for today at 11am, but after the time change, we had to re-schedule the call, so it did not interfere with Team Trivia. It is definitely hard to plan around unscheduled time zone changes which happen for us overnight, and I’m sure we have a few more time changes before we get to Hawaii, given Honolulu is currently 2 hours different than our present ‘no man’s land‘ time zone.
We are motoring! We’ve been going 18-19 knots all day today or ~21 mph and the ship has been rocking and rolling like crazy! In fact one of the staff today on the Neptune said that we are getting free dance lessons from the Captain because we are swaying from side to side so much.
Not a good time to be making the crossing to Hawaii! But I guess it would have been much worse had we gone to Santa Barbra, as well as not left L.A. a bit earlier than scheduled!
I have been managing without the behind the ear sea sickness patches and spent the day just with the pressure point wrist bands on, which so far have been working out great for me. Richard is feeling a little bit ‘off’ tonight with the swaying of the ship, so he has his ear patches on as well as the wrist bands.
I woke up to check my hotmail email this morning and lo and behold, the last email I had received was from last evening! Something was definitely not right here. I started to try and recover my email by going into MAIL, and choosing the Outlook MAIL, and then entering my Outlook password. Then Outlook wanted to send a verification code by text, which I was able to receive, and I entered the code and then changed my Outlook password. After changing my password, I couldn’t get the Outlook hotmail to open. Grrr….so I then got the bright idea to try to actually go to wwww.outlook.com and sign in that way, with the new changed password, and sure enough I was able to get into to my emails. I then googled to see if Outlook was having mobile email issues with IOS devices and there was a notification online that there was an issue, so at least I knew I could check my emails, but I had to check my email from the web version on the Outlook website. I mentioned to Richard I was having email issues and sure enough he tried to sign into his email, and he had the exact same problem, but he could not seem to get the verification code as I had done on my email, because of the spotty internet service we were getting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He decided to try and resolve his email situation after we had breakfast.
We decided again to have breakfast ‘Al fresco’ on the pool deck at the World Cafe. The staff were setting up the chaise lounges for sun bathing, so we knew it had to be a bit calmer eventually, given the fact the chairs had been completely secured yesterday during our sailing.
The temperature was a very pleasant 19C or 66F and while we were outside without jackets, some people had sweaters on because of the ocean breezes. I had a real hankering for a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich for breakfast so I went to the toaster and toasted up an English muffin, grabbed a couple of slices of well done bacon and a grilled tomato, and found some mayonnaise on the buffet. I did not find lettuce, but I still enjoyed making and eating my BT sandwich for a breakfast treat. There is nothing like a homemade BLT, especially when the tomatoes come out of our garden back home! YUMMY!
I went to Mah Jong again today and I was not very lucky. No Mah Jongs! After Mah Jong we had Team Trivia and our team of ‘Club Med’ decided to call ourselves a different name today, to try and be a bit more inspiring for a win. It didn’t work. In fact today we even had a failing grade at Team Trivia. I mean who knows the names of Henry the VIII’s wives and the order in which he married them for 6 points???!!! Certainly not our team! At least we did get the fact that Avatar was the largest grossing movie ever; that the medulla oblongata controls involuntary functions; and a carbohydrate is made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen and that Greenland is the largest Island in the World. Hopefully we will do better tomorrow instead of a failing grade!
Our entire Trivia Team was able to get a table together in the World Cafe for lunch after Trivia, so we all enjoyed the buffet today which featured English Fish & Chips, with Mushy Peas (I love mushy peas), Roasted turkey carving station, and a wonderful Butternut Squash soup. There is so much great food to choose from on the buffet at the World Cafe, it is sometimes hard to decide whether to just have soup and salad, or go for a freshly made pizza slice and salad or?? The food is plentiful and delicious!
After a brief pit stop back in our cabin to pick up my art portfolio, it was off to art class where we were going to learn to paint a coral reef using some of the techniques from yesterday’s art class. The demand for participation in the art class seems to be huge on this cruise and the instructor is fantastic to try and accommodate everyone who wants to learn how to do water colour painting. Our class today is only Day 1 of a two part class, and Deb our art instructor warned us that after today we would probably not be very happy with our work in progress art project.
Day 1 Work in Progress Coral Reef. We will see how this turns out tomorrow. I do know what Deb means. Seems like a lot of salt and not a lot of coral reef action, but hopefully it will turn out and be a beautiful watercolour greeting card. (I’m not holding my breath).
I needed a hot water bottle today for a lingering hip issue and Richard was able to find me one at the medical centre on the ship. So if you need a hot water bottle, you can buy one onboard, rather than trying to bring one from home. I usually use an extra large heating pad when I’m at home, but heating pads were one of the items we were actually prohibited from shipping with our Luggage Forward service in our large 50lb suitcases. Anything that is electrical that could be a fire hazard is prohibited. In fact our cabin steward AYU told us that she is only able to charge her phone at night in her cabin since the power is off in her cabin on Deck B during the day when she is not in her cabin. Viking is very strict about making sure the staff do not leave anything plugged in that might combust while they are away from their cabin most of the day. This makes sense to me and I’m glad that Viking has this policy for our safety!
The gym was calling me today and I found a great time to go to the gym when it is not crowded on a sea day! 4pm! Now my secret is out though! I was able to get an exercise bike for 35 minutes as well as put up the assisted squat rope to the ceiling; use the machine for resistance pulls which are great for my golf swing and do some floor work on my mat. They even have a foam roller at the gym which I used on my wonky hip too, to try and loosen the IT band and hip flexors. The staff are great too at the fitness centre. I overheard two staff giving people exercises to do on specific machines as well as offering to print off some exercises to do on another machine. Its great that the gym doesn’t have to be an intimidating place with a bunch of machines which people don’t know how to use, and I was glad to be able to work out without a lot of people in the gym to be able to move around more freely and do some different exercises.
I’ve found that I really like the product that Viking has in the showers in the women’s locker rooms. The body wash, shampoo and conditioner is different than the Freya product in our cabins and for my hair, the shampoo and conditioner seems to not tangle or frizz as much as the Freya product in our cabin. I did bring with me my own ‘Aveda Rosemary Mint Purifying Shampoo’ to help clarify my hair every few weeks.Since the water onboard is desalinated sea water that has through steam evaporation and then been turned into distilled water, it is doing a number on my usually shiny, not frizzy hair. I know…first world problems right?! At least I’ve got something to help with the problem every few weeks by using clarifying shampoo!
I don’t believe I’ve shown pictures of the locker room or spa area so I took a few pictures when there was no one but me in the locker room this afternoon. Again, what a great time to go to the gym when everyone is busy with something else!
This co-ed area has a warm pool with jets and metal type loungers in the pool on one end. There is a hot tub also which you can see is raised and walled in the photo. In the distance are 4 heated loungers that when you lie on them feel like you are sinking into Zen! The co-ed area also has a steam room (loved it) a snow grotto (did it for 5 minutes after a work out), and an ice cold water bucket which I have yet to use.
Each of the locker rooms has a sauna with a bucket of water to throw on the coals. I like saunas, but much prefer the steam room!
The cold plunge pool in the women’s locker room. I imagine the men’s locker room has the exact same layout and includes a cold plunge pool.
I really enjoy the space of taking a shower in the locker room as well as the rain head shower head, which we do not have in our cabin! The water pressure is fantastic too, so every few days when I need to wash my hair I’ve been finding my way to the women’s locker room after a workout, to get cleaned up on Deck 1 at the Nordic Spa. The bath robes are nicer too than the in cabin bath robes, with a heavier weight and nice terry cloth inside. Perfect for wearing to sneak back to our cabin from the elevator near the spa!
Stacks of nice bathrobes at the spa!
The spa even has a bathing suit spinner machine to partially dry out bathing suits after use.
Spa waiting area.
I returned from the spa area to our cabin to find that we had a room drop notification announcing that we would not be going to the island of Kauai because of the unavailability of tour guides and bus drivers on the Island, so instead we will be spending two days (Jan 15/16) in Honolulu, in Oahu. We were not planning on spending much time in Kauai anyway, so while I would have liked to golf on Kauai, which is what we had planned, we will find something else to do in Honolulu when the internet is a bit more stable and I can do some research on something fun for us. So far we’ve had two ports cancelled and we are only 20 days into the cruise. I guess in this post Covid world the entire world is having trouble finding staff and on an Island like Kauai it is probably very difficult to be fully staffed when tourism was so hard hit during Covid.
We went to Manfredi’s for dinner, but I really was not in the mood for what was on the menu. I’m missing my homemade pesto and pasta sauces that I make and really wished I could just ask the kitchen to make me something that was not on the menu. The head waiter (restaurant manager) came by and I asked him if next time we came to Manfredis I could get angel hair pasta with pesto, chicken, sun dried tomatoes and olives with some Parmesan cheese and he said they could definitely make that for me. They have only a few pastas which are: fettuccine, angel hair pasta as well as gluten free spaghetti noodles. I’m really happy I asked, so that next time I can order what I’m feeling like instead of a cream or tomato based sauce. The head waiter said they also have aglio e olio which is a simple garlic and oil sauce for pasta. PERFECTO!
We went to the Star Theatre (on Deck 2, front of the ship)to see Canadian Magician Ben Price perform, but Richard was not enjoying the severe rolling seas that are rougher up front, so we returned to the comfort of our stateroom where we could watch the show on Viking Live TV.
I was able to check my hotmail again tonight and I believe the problems I’ve been having with both my Iphone and Ipad are resolved finally. I saw that someone had tried to sign into my hotmail account from somewhere near Spain, so I am glad that Outlook shut it down and let me know I had to change my password. I have NordVPN on my phone and Ipad, but I currently have them set for the USA, and I was definitely not in Spain, or using a VPN from Spain last night!
Day 2 of 6 sea days was definitely a busy one. There is always lots to do on sea days and it seems the days fly by as we sail into warmer temperatures with the Carnival Miracle cruise ship also headed on a similar path as us. In fact at lunch today we could see the Miracle in the distance. Its a strange feeling when we’re at sea for so long and don’t see much of anything and then all of a sudden make out far in the distance another cruise ship!
The pink ship near the Neptune is the Carnival Miracle.
Let’s hope the weather calms down soon and we have smooth sailing to Hawaii over the next few days!
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