Sea days are the best days….

Days 5 Viking Vesta, Malta, Morocco and the Mediterranean

March 17, 2026 -St. Patrick’s Day - A Sea Day

Finally! A sea day! We love sea days!!! The perfect day to do nothing or everything that the ship has to offer! As you can see we were not visiting Sicily on this cruise but we were sailing right by it on our sea day.

Last night’s Viking Daily said there would be Mahjong in Manfredi’s at 9am this morning so we had breakfast in the World Cafe and then off to Mahjong I went with my travel tiles and my National Mahjong Society Card. I knew the ship had Mahjong sets but I also like my own tiles and in case there were too many people playing I could always use my own tiles.

As it turned out there were 3 of us who arrived first so I showed the other 2 ladies how to play 3 handed Mahjong. As we were playing Mahjong another lady showed up and she was waiting to play with us. I noticed she was blowing her nose with a sneezing and blowing her nose while she waited. I am uber hyper sensitive about not playing mahjong with sick people -especially since it takes me a long time to recover if I get sick. I ended up winning and getting a mahjong and just then another lady showed up. Perfect! I let the sneezing lady replace me and the new lady and I moved to another table and used my tiles and played two handed ‘messy’ Mahjong. This way I didn’t have to play with the sneezer/nose blower!

We played 2 handed for about an hour and half with my tiles and then we both said we were done. It was time to move on to the next activity.

I blogged and caught up on some emails and then it was time for lunch.

Our friends from Australia David and Julie who are on this vacation with us had their 36th Wedding Anniversary today so because we were at sea, I decided to paint them a St. Patrick’s Day/Anniversary card. I’m glad I brought my watercolor paints, markers, palette and water colour postcards. I really miss going to watercolor classes that we had on sea days on the Viking Neptune World Cruise!

I ended up going to the gym after starting the card for David and Julie. I had a big workout in the afternoon while the Viking Explorer’s Society cocktail party was taking place. About 90% of this ship is repeat Viking guests so the cocktail party was going to be on Decks 1,2,3 in the Atrium. Neither one of us wanted to go to the cocktail party as I do not drink and Richard does not like the aquavit that they use for toasting!

I knew that the gym would be completely empty at this time and that is when I decided to go! Good timing! I had a great workout and no one else was around!

I quickly showered and got ready for dinner after my workout. We were meeting David and Julie at the Chef’s Table for dinner where the themed meal for the evening was Mexican.

We raided our mini bar and gave David 2 Carlsberg pilsners, a bottle of gin and a couple of bottles of tonic, along with the card that I made them for their Anniversary!

Chicken on a nacho chip. Everyone else had octopus on a nacho chip but because they thought with my shellfish allergy I shouldn’t have octopus, I had chicken.

Chicken inside some kind of corn polenta type thing with cheese and green sauce. The texture was a bit weird but it was tasty.

Prickly pear granita to cleanse the palate with some cayenne pepper on top. I wasn’t a fan.

Beef short rib in mole sauce with pickled red onions and sweet potato puree. Delicious!

Chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and chocolate crumbs. Very delicious!

After the Chef’s Table we went and played a few hands of Blackjack on the interactive gaming tables. If you lose your money you just start again and they refill you with more money. So it is a win win situation!

All in all a great sea day and a very relaxing day enjoying the beautiful Viking Vesta!