Oh what a day!

Day 22/138 2022/2023 Viking Neptune World Cruise, day 4/6 at sea…I’m at my limit of sea days now, so let’s see how I manage for 2 more days at sea!

Do you remember what you were doing 36 years ago? I’ll let you think about that for awhile before I let you in on what I was doing.

Last night we had dinner at the World Cafe which is on Deck 7, aft of the ship. We really enjoy sitting near the bar (I wonder why?) as it is not as busy and we met up with our friends Mike and Sharon, from Thorold, Ontario, Canada who also like to sit in the same spot. I didn’t feel like dressing up so I pulled on a sweater which Richard calls my ‘Gen Z’ sweater and while I was making moves like a hip hop singer, our favorite head waiter in the World Cafe joined me in my silliness.

The drink you see in the photo is a Virgin Bloody Mary, but for those Canadians who are reading they do have Clamato juice onboard the Neptune as we found out last evening, so the next drink I will have will be a Virgin Bloody Caesar! YEAH!

We met a couple last evening at dinner who were on their 2nd World Cruise with Viking and they were already booked for their 3rd World Cruise with Viking leaving in December 2023….and he is 89 years old! Imagine? I think it is fantastic! As they said last evening, its better than sitting at home and getting old! Being on the ship keeps them active, educated, well fed, and they get to see the World over and over again!

Breakfast this morning again was ‘Al fresco’ on the Aquavit Terrace on Deck 7 outside the World Cafe. The buffet has so many different kinds of food and the staff are so helpful if you want something you cannot see. I know there was no Gravalax out on the buffet when Sharon asked for some, and sure enough the staff were more than willing to go and find some for her.

If you notice closely we both have our ’Canada’ shirts on today. There is a reason for that which I’ll get to soon.

A delicious breakfast and no I did not eat all of it! I did not want scrambled eggs, so a soft boiled egg already prepared, comes on the eggs Benedict which I eat without the bread.

Normally I try and avoid the pastries on offer, but today this pistachio croissant spoke to me! There was a pistachio filling in the croissant too. I prefer the almond filled croissants, but I had to try it, just to confirm my suspicions.

The internet is really, really spotty today because we are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so it is amazing we even still have internet! My email has conked out again and I can only look at emails through the web version of Outlook. I’m not even trying to fix it at this point, since it seems to be a daily annoyance, so as long as I can monitor emails from the web version of Outlook, I’m fine.

We thought we would attend a 9:30am lecture in the Star Theatre this morning instead of just watching the lecture in our stateroom.

Phyllis Steckel has a Master’s degree in Geology who lives in Washington, Missouri. We learned about the 1946 and the 1960 Tsunami’s that hit the big Island of Hawaii and how from both of the Tsunami’s the residents learned that the area near the shoreline impacted by the tsunamis cannot be built on and therefore they turned the area into parks. Smart thinking! Some tsunami facts though which I found interesting is that a tsunami cannot be felt at sea; only on coastlines and that a tsunami travels 1000’s of miles at 400-500 mph! We stayed for some of the Q&A session, but the severe rocking and rolling of the ship today, was not working for me in the Star Theatre on Deck 2 (bow of the ship) so we left to get some fluids into us in the Living Room, which is more mid ship.

Speaking of the tsunamis, and the weather today. it is a very balmy 23C or 74F, but the issue for the Neptune are the very severe swells that we are experiencing! The swells today are 21 feet! It is almost dangerous to try to walk down the hallway of the ship, because of the severe side to side movement.

The Neptune is the ship indicated in light blue above, right below the pink ship which is a Carnival ship. We have 2 more days before we reach Oahu, Hawaii.

The Neptune would be located at the bottom of the yellow area on the right side of the photo above. Not a great place to be for calm waters! Richard is finding it hard to deal with the sea sickness and has taken some Dramamine, is wearing the sea sick patches, and the wrist bands too. I think it may be dinner in our cabin this evening from our 24 hour room service, to try and get his ’sea legs’ under him and we already know the chicken noodle soup from room service is amazing! If you order it, order more than 1 portion if you are really hungry, because portion sizes run a bit small for the serving in the bowl of soup.

The Viking Daily advertised that at 11am this morning in the Wintergarden on Deck 7 there would be Chair Yoga with John Mihajlo from the Nordic Spa, so I thought I would try that out. I’ve not made any of the early morning stretches on the pool deck at 8am, or the deck walks with the crew at 6:30am on Deck 2 Promenade deck, so why not try Chair Yoga. The 30 minutes session with nice relaxing zen music was very good. In fact I almost started to break out into a sweat as we worked our legs a little bit. I really liked the tapping after the session we did all over our body to wake up our lymph system. Apparently there will be more Chair Yoga on sea days so why not? If I am not busy, its a well spent 30 minutes. I really wanted to go to the gym this afternoon, but I do not think it is wise given the sea swells to be heading to a lower deck where I have to watch the wave swells from the exercise bike. Hopefully tomorrow the swells will abate and I can get to the gym for a good workout.

Team Trivia is very popular so I went early to the Explorer’s Lounge on Deck 7, to try and secure some seats for our team and while I did secure us some seats, I felt badly since I had to keep telling people who wanted to sit where I was sitting that we were having team trivia and I was saving seats for the rest of the team. We did a bit better today with 14/19 answers. Knowing where the 1967 World Exposition and the 1976 Olympics were held was quite easy for the Canadians on the team….Montreal is the answer of course! The winning team had 18 answers so we’re still striving to win Trivia one day!

There was no time for lunch today because we had a 1pm “Canada Lovers” meet up for fellow Canadians in the Wintergarden.

Now we finally know who the Canadians are on the ship! Since we’ve all introduced ourselves to each other, we hope to meet up once a month for another Team Canada event!

I had to run from the Canadian meet up to get a quick bite as the key for me to avoiding sea sickness is to make sure I don’t have an empty belly, and to stay hydrated. The pool grill had some French Fries which were hot and ready and would fill me up, so I had a few fries and went off I went to the very popular Art Class, in the Restaurant on Deck 2. Today we were doing ‘Doodle Art’. Our instructor Deb, said that she had stencils available that we could use to trace onto our book mark that we were making, but I decided to (no surprise!!!) do my own thing.

For my art project I looked back through some photos I had taken in the winter of 2021 when we spent our winter living in our 40 foot Newmar Dutchstar called Newman, in Fanny Bay, Vancouver Island. Living right in front of the Pacific Ocean for 5 months, with the oyster fishing boats docked right in front of our RV, definitely gave me a lot of access to sea life, so what would be my inspiration today?

The starfish on the rocky, mussel and oyster shell beach was to be my muse.

And my Doodle Art bookmark inspired by my photo from Feb 2021. We will laminate the bookmarks tomorrow at art class.

I sat with Linda, and her husband Lyle and my fellow Canadian, Sharon today at art class; who if you’ve been reading you know are my compatriots from our winning Viking Neptune Snowperson Contest with our entry: CANUKUS! Lyle and me were finished our bookmarks first at our table, so we jokingly called ourselves ‘OverAchievers’!

The ’overachievers’!

Lyle is an engineer/architect. Can you tell from his bookmark?!

The Doodle Art bookmarks completed by the 6 people in our art class today.

So do you remember exactly what you were doing 36 years ago on this day, at this time? I certainly do! Happy 36th birthday to my son Joshua Luke McBride, who lives in Victoria, B.C.! I hope you had a fantastic Birthday and that 2023 will be the best year yet for you and your partner Alicia!

I was watching the Bridge Cam on our stateroom tv and I could see that the sunset was almost straight ahead of us, so I stepped out onto our balcony to get a photo with my Fuji XT-4.

Those seas are not calm and we’ve got the balcony door open to try and get some air into the cabin, but the sliding door is sliding and banging onto the frame, with the rocking of the ship. Its almost time to order room service and see what movies are on Viking TV that we might want to peruse. We’ve not watched a single movie since we boarded in Ft. Lauderdale, so I think its time for a relaxing night ‘in’ so Richard can try to get the sea sickness under control.

And as we said in yoga class today….NAMASTE…..