Day 4 - 2022/2023 Viking Neptune World Cruise
Merry Christmas everyone and if you celebrate Hanukkah, Happy Hanukkah!
It’s quite different being on a cruise ship for Christmas. Nothing closes, activities continue, the lectures are scheduled, concerts abound, and all of the bars and restaurants are open. Things are a lot different on a cruise ship than the reality of most other places in the world where friends and family gather and places that are open, try to operate with skeleton staff.
Last evening, for Christmas Eve (we had to remind ourselves it was Christmas Eve, because it feels so different than our normal Christmas Eve), we had a fantastic concert by an amazing guest vocalist who is onboard the Neptune for two concerts only.
YANIV is a polyglot who speaks over 32 languages. It was amazing to see him switch from one language to another when he was singing, and he had such an amazing range too! After an entertaining evening we returned to our cabin to find our daily Viking Daily newsletter where I diligently highlighted our planned activities for Christmas Day. I was looking forward to a sea day after spending a very busy day in port yesterday in Cozumel.
I was up a bit late writing the blog last evening and the ship was really rocking and rolling, but I was able to have a good night’s sleep, since we had switched sides and things were ‘normal’ now for me….
OR WERE THEY?
This morning I woke up and oh my goodness I felt awful. We were heading through some very choppy seas in the Western Caribbean and things were definitely not right with me!
The Neptune’s position this morning when things were pretty choppy; just east of Belize and north of Honduras. I definitely was in a very bad state.
The good thing about taking this World Cruise, is I was prepared for sea sickness, as I had read Rose Brooks 2021/2022 World Cruise blog last year and when she suffered from sea sickness, she just called room service to have them send up some remedies. I asked Richard to call room service for me, while I tried to keep focused on the horizon.
Sure enough, a basket of Ritz crackers, ginger ale, and green apples arrived to help me through the morning. It’s a really good thing we had not ordered room service last evening, because there was no way I was going to be able to eat anything from the room service menu today.
I was able to eat and drink a bit and felt a wee bit better, and since Mah Jong was starting at 10am, my goal was to try and get to Mah Jong. I took a quick shower and I still wasn’t right, but thought if I don’t power through this, I would end up spending the day in bed, and I knew that wouldn’t help matters. I pulled out the sea sick bands and the behind the ear sea sick patches and put them all on, and then went to Mah Jong.
The lovely ladies I play Mah Jong with kept apologizing when they threw the green dragon which we call ’green’, knowing how sea sick I felt. I was pretty quiet at Mah Jong today, made another bad error, but still managed to play 3 games without having to leave the game for illness.
Christmas song trivia was up next with Mike and Sharon and as I was heading to trivia at the Explorers Lounge, the Captain came on the P.A. System and announced the seas would soon be calmer as we had been going through a rough patch. Yeah! When I got to trivia Sharon showed me I had the sea sick bands on incorrectly, and within about 15 minutes, the seas started to be a lot calmer, and I started to feel about 85/100. Now I understand what it means to be sea sick and why people eat crackers, green apples and drink ginger ale at sea. If anyone else has some more tips for sea sickness relief please let me know. I’ve also been told to look at the horizon, do deep breathing and don’t get overheated. All of which I tried today. It’s quite a strange sensation when you can’t make it stop, because the ship has to keep going, and yet the sea sickness keeps lingering. I would rather not resort to the sea sick medication (which we have with us - both on the shelf and prescription), because I’m still trying to find my ’sea leg’s’ rather than just take pills to make it go away for the remaining 134 days on the ship, if that makes any sense.
Rather than write a long blog today instead I wanted to share some festive photos I took wandering around the ship this evening. Viking has done a wonderful job of making the festive season come alive on this brand new ship and everywhere we look, the decorations are so very tasteful and beautiful.
The stairs to the Atrium on Deck 2.
Our friend Mike from Thorold coming to get us for dinner together in The Restaurant.
A festive deer
Excellent use of photography on the large LED screen in the Atrium
Very tasteful ornaments on the Christmas trees in the Library area.
Mike and Sharon our trivia pals and new friends from Thorold, Ontario.
Merry Christmas from the Viking Neptune (still drinking ginger ale, but at least I’m feeling more human tonight!)
And it would not be Christmas without my ruby red slippers!
So unfortunately my first Christmas at sea gave me a much deeper understanding of sea sickness. Hopefully I will find my sea legs soon and the seas will be a bit smoother for us….or will they?
Merry Christmas everyone!
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