Day 27/138 2022/2023 Viking Neptune World Cruise. Day 1 of 6 sea days.
Unfortunately I was up way too early this morning. There are times when the ship makes a weird noise and we are not sure what the noise is, but this morning it woke me up at 6am!
Sunrise was not ’til 6:48am, so I decided to finish yesterday’s blog…but you already know that if you read yesterdays blog!
While I finished up the blog, Richard was watching for the sunrise.
Richard’s IPhone 11 shot of the sunrise.
My Fuji XT-4. The colour is definitely crisper on my photo, and the waves are sharper too.
We had swells of 2.5 metres or 8 feet this morning. A little bit of rocking and rolling, but really not that bad.
I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning, with trying to finish up the blog before I went to my osteopathic appointment at the Nordic Spa with Pedro.
Pedro is definitely a gifted practitioner with the ability to use electrical muscle stimulation, acupuncture and osteopathic treatments all in the same session. I am so glad he is onboard for 6 weeks and I have booked to see him again.
I found Richard relaxing up on Deck 7 by the main pool after my osteo treatment, but I didn’t want to stay there for long. I find the area, which is not air conditioned, too warm, stifling and humid, without enough air circulation for me. We headed over to the back of the ship where I was able to eat my bran muffin I had picked up for breakfast, enjoying the sea breezes on the Aquavit terrace. Richard was enjoying the terrace so much that he decided to go and get his bathing suit and get my Kindle for me to read.
Richard was really enjoying the hot tub today on the Aquavit Terrace. While it was nice out, the temperature was only 75F and it was not really hot enough for me to want to go swimming.
We enjoyed a relatively people free time at the back of the ship for about an hour before we started to see some very interesting preparations going on, on the Aquavit Terrace by a number of Viking’s chefs.
It looks like there is going to be some sort of taco station for lunch today. I wonder what it will be?
Mahi Mahi! Fresh from the market in Honolulu yesterday. The Mahi Mahi is between 7-8 kilos which our new Chef Willy Moon says is the best size for eating. Any bigger than 7-8 kilos and the flavour of the fish will suffer. Chef Willy says they also picked up a blue fin tuna for poke bowls tomorrow at lunch, as well as fresh oysters and mussels. Hawaii’s markets must be heaven for the Neptune’s chefs!
All ’dressed up’ and no place to go!
s The fish taco station and me posing with Chef Willy. One of the mahi mahi was a male fish and the other one is female. Apparently you can tell by the shape of the top of the head. One of the chef’s as he was positioning the fish on ice said “Its too late to be amorous!” He cracked me up as he said it. The chefs had actually picked up 4 mahi mahi yesterday in Honolulu and the staff had already cleaned and cut up 2 of the mahi mahi for grilling, to add to the tacos for lunch. The grill was already heating up when I was posing for my photo. I think I might like to try one of these for lunch, but first we had to go to Team Trivia.
Our Team was close again today with 13/20 points, with the first place team at 16 points. We’ll just have to keep trying.
Richard had the fish tacos for lunch and thoroughly enjoyed them. I forgot to take a photo of them, but they had pineapple salsa, cabbage, onions, sauce, cilantro, and peppers to go on the tacos along with fresh limes to add an extra kick. My stomach was not co-operating by lunch time, so I passed on the tacos, but I did try a piece of the mahi mahi and it was delicious!
After lunch it was time for art class and I had new supplies to try out! I was excited to see what we would be making since our project will take 2 days to finish. Art class goes by so fast, I wonder where the hour goes? People are now arriving 30 minutes before class to sign up for the next class and to try to complete some of their work they did not finish in a previous class. It really is a wonderful way to spend some time being creative.
Our art class project for today and tomorrow is called “Crossing the Line Pop-Up Card.” I have heard about the ”Crossing the Line” ceremony that will take place when we cross the Equator, but I wasn’t sure what making today’s pop up card was all about. We had to tape our card so that we could quickly paint the inside of the water colour paper. Sky on the top and waves on the bottom. Usually, we only paint the raised side of the water colour paper. This was different today! Then we were given a small folded section on which we were only to paint waves on one of the 4 sides. After we completed everything we were told to get a stencil and draw a character on the slice of water colour paper that we had been given. I chose to draw on my slice of paper, rather than choose a mermaid, octopus, or fish to trace.
May I present to you “King Neptune” from the ship, the Viking Neptune! I thought drawing Neptune was more appropriate given the name of our ship, than putting a mermaid or an octopus on my card. I wasn’t able to finish King Neptune in art class, so while Richard rested in our cabin this afternoon, I finished up painting King Neptune in preparation for tomorrow’s class. I know we will be flipping the card over and doing something related to the equator on the other side tomorrow and always the ‘eager beaver’ I’m trying to stay ahead of the curve and keep up with the teacher, to get the most out of the class.
My finished underwater creature piece that I was able to complete in our cabin this afternoon with some of my own new water colour paints and fine coloured markers. We will be having a mural made of our pieces, so it will be interesting to see what everyone else has done as we put all of these pieces together for our exhibition before Auckland. I realize that I do not have any white paint so I need to pick some up in Auckland. I also found out that art teacher Deb has a paper cutter, so I will bring her some of my larger water colour paper, to cut into smaller pieces. The art supply store in Honolulu only had large format water colour paper and I prefer to work on smaller, more manageable pieces, as I’m learning.
And while I am doing watercolour classes, Richard has finished his first book of the year so we picked up a new book for Richard to read today in the Living Room on Deck 2. There are a lot of hard cover books all over the Viking Neptune that are available to read which are curated by Viking. We found books in the Explorer’s Lounge on 8, the Living Room on 1, Wintergarden on 7 and at the book exchange on 1 in the Living Room. Richard left his Magellan book for someone else to borrow and we picked up this brand new book for his reading enjoyment.
Let’s hope this is really only a novel and we do not have any nefarious guests onboard the Neptune!
Viking definitely thinks of everything to make guests comfortable. Having a great selection of books definitely appeals to quite a few people on board, as I see tons of people reading in all different spots on the ship, and as I finish today‘s blog, that is exactly what I am going to do, until I fall asleep…my Kindle is calling me!
I really enjoyed seeing the chefs prepare for the lunch buffet of seafood tacos today. I guess we were in the right place at the right time, but I can’t say the same thing for the two mahi mahi who had no time to be amorous today! Chef Willy hails from Belgium and has promised us a very special breakfast tomorrow of Belgium waffles, so we have to make an effort to get up and go for breakfast tomorrow, followed by strenuous deck walking and at some point….the gym!
The internet is really struggling tonight so I do not have any GIFs in tonight’s blog. Hopefully things will improve tomorrow, but we really are in the middle of no where, so who knows?
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