SantaFe1

I think many who travel with Viking are long past thinking of cruises as vacations, although they may have a budget. Once retired, we just travel, hopefully not at peak times. Do we have a budget, sure, but in retirement, we have determined what is most important to us. It is traveling. We have 8 VO cruises under our belts, with three more and a river trip coming up. Viking must be doing something right.

I’d like to,”like” this three times. Yes! We are coming to the end of our big travel years, and Viking just fits us so well.

I hate to admit this, but I do the same thing. After a WC and 7 other VO cruises, and usually in the same room. My husband now just automatically says “turn right” when the door opens.

Yes, yes, yes. I am directionally challenged. I am going to stop talking on this topic…

Just for fun, here is the “official” explanation.

Well, I think like the couple of people who missed their March 2 birthdays on our WC crossing west to east, the ship will decide what it will do and do it. Maybe they will label reservations May 2 #1 and May 2 #2, lol.

Yes, as soon as you cross the line you go back to the previous day. So going West across the line you would get two May 2 and going East you would get no May 2.

There are certainly a lot of cruise ships, but we’ve done Alaska multiple times and there is still a lot of the world to see.

We had chef Joseph and he was great.

Yes. I realized after I wrote this that you would be going East. We were on he 2019 WC on the way to Australia etc. so you will get the groundhog day effect. But I think all the WCs go east. I would love to do your cruise, but we did Alaska last year, and wouldn’t want to repeat that.

Jim and Andy might have other memories, but I remember we crossed the IDL on March 2. It just disappeared, and at a certain hour it became March 3. They had a special birthday party for the few who had missed their special day. And I remember the Captain talking about how he loved the IDL, because if he had a bad day he could skip over it, or coming back, if a good, one he could live it again. Groundhog Day style. It is a bit disconcerting.

Amen to that!

Kountess, you have a lovely blog! Since we are doing BIE in May, in reverse order from what you did, I took the liberty of reading all those posts. Very informative. And just seeing what you were wearing in Scotland has me re-thinking what kind of cold weather clothes I need to take!

Here you go: Orkney’s Stone Age going to Skara Brae, $159 Bergen farm, $179 Dublin farm, $199 Caernarfon Castle, $129 …all per person

We do BIE in May, so I have seen all the prices and booked our excursions already. There are a handful of optional excursions under $100pp. I would say most are in the $100-200 pp range. There are several between $200-300 and a handful over $300. I know that is general, and maybe not helpful, but if you have questions about the price of specific excursions list them and I will give you the prices. If you stay more than one day, you only get one included excursion overall, not one per day.

And cheaper! Especially if you have an elite account with them.

We had a resident astronomer on board our 2019 WC on the Sun and everybody loved him. Even the captain went to his evening under the stars presentation. When on the Orion in Alaska, we had an astronomer do the show in the planetarium. But it was just so-so.

Yup, just a window. You can see how I missed it. We will be on Neptune in May, and if I remember I’ll take a picture.

Orion does have the Asian station. But I must have walked by it five times before I even noticed it because we had only been on Star, Sea, Sky, and Sun.

Only Orion, I believe. They didn’t prove to be popular and people seemed to want the extra space in the Explorers Lounge. So they were discontinued. We went to one program on Orion, and that was enough.

And, as a hilarious aside, that one excursion I didn’t get immediately in DV I did eventually get, and it was one of the worst excursions I have ever been on. LOL. It all works out eventually!

I think the cabin level is important in this. We always book PV and have never had trouble getting what we want. The first time we cruised Viking, we booked DV and had a few troubles. But, I still book the first one or two excursions that are most important to us first, even in PV.

Love risotto. Don’t like polenta much. But still a much better menu. And my husband and I usually split an Osso bucco. I don’t really eat meat. But the old Osso bucco, I always wanted a few bite of. And I used to order a side of asparagus, and the. Risotto, and cut the asparagus, and mix it into the risotto, with a couple of tablespoons of white wine. But as I have said before, I am a risotto lover. .

And I should say, in regard to cutting back, on our first VO cruise in 2017, they had a trio, not a duo playing.

Goodness, I hope not! My favorite was a guitarist we picked up in Spain on our WC, I believe his name was Valentino, who would play classical guitar if you asked him. (BTW my husband is from RI).