20260321 Viking Vela Northern Lights and British Isles - Day 6/32

Viking Vela In Search of the Northern Lights and British Isles Explorer Cruise Day 6/32 – Bouncing North and Seeing The Light

As promised, the angry seas arrived last night, albeit about an hour late. Captain Olav said to expect the bouncing around 9:00, but we didn't start moving until around 10:00. And move, we did. Based on the Captain's sea day noon report today, we experienced 25 to 30-foot waves last night. Arlona's toothbrush fell off the bathroom counter, and her Yeti cup tipped over off the coffee table. We will survive.

The ship was rocking last night, but that didn't affect us. It smoothed considerably this morning, but there were still 15 to 20-foot swells all day long. We talked with Joan, the Restaurant Manager, who said that there have been a large number of calls for room service today, because there are many guests who simply can't walk to leave their room. A previous cruise director termed days like these "low and wide" days, because walking low to the ground with your feet out wide helps keep you stable.

Breakfast in the World Café was especially pleasant this morning because we ran into yet another crew member whom we have sailed with before.

Paloma's smile always makes everyone's day better

We went to John Maclean's lecture about Aurora photography before hitting the Atrium for Baggo, this time against the officers. These types of competition are always great fun, with a little good-natured trash-talking happening between rounds.

Arlona had a very good day, even though I didn't snap any photos. She was the highest scorer for the guest team. I had a solid, if not spectacular, day, but did score well each round.

The smug officers, knowing the eventual outcome

The officers were solid throughout, with Cruise Director Andre sealing the deal with a spectacular final round. Everyone had a great time, even if we got thoroughly stomped.

We stayed in the atrium for another scavenger hunt. This time, rather than having photos to use as clues for items to locate, we had a series of riddles that we had to solve to determine what we needed to photograph.

For example, "I flow and blend seamlessly into the horizon" meant we needed to photograph the infinity pool on deck 7 aft. "You would look like an ant if you were on this" meant we needed to photograph the Viking Vela model outside the travel consultant's office. We got nine of the 12 items, tying with all three other teams. Everyone gets a mimosa, so it was more about the fun than the prizes.

We came close on trivia once again, scoring 13/15, just missing the first-place four-way tie at 14/15. Our misses follow.

• What is the world's tallest living tree species?
• We flipped between redwood and sequoia - we chose sequoia, and of course, it was redwood - we've done this same thing before, so I hope we will now remember redwood
• If you were vacationing in Hell, and it froze over, what country would you be in?
• Being originally from Michigan, we said USA, as we were very familiar with Hell, Michigan, where it routinely freezes, but he was looking for Hell, Norway, and he even said that it was not Hell, Michigan, which is an unincorporated area in Michigan - he's obviously had that questioned before

The sea was just plain old angry all morning long

While in the World Café for lunch, we ran into Blessing, yet another crew member we have sailed with. He immediately recognized us and greeted us with his huge smile. He was a waiter when we met him. He is now a one-stripe officer and a head waiter. We think that it is great that Viking recognizes and promotes outstanding performers, giving them significant career growth opportunities.

We believe that part of what makes us particularly memorable is our cups. 

We have sailed all over the world with these cups. The crew always seems to notice them, especially in the morning, because we drink Coke Zero and not coffee. That makes us different, and different is memorable. 

The sky finally cleared a bit mid-afternoon, offering a welcome bit of sunshine, even over the still-angry Norwegian Sea. We are already at about 70° north, meaning that we are above the Arctic Circle, and will remain here for the next several days. We were supposed to have a scenic sail into Alta tomorrow morning, arriving at noon. The weather that we are trying to beat caused Olav to drive the Vela like he stole it, and we will get to Alta tonight sometime between 10:00 and midnight. We will avoid the scenic coastal entry for safety reasons, coming in more directly from the Norwegian Sea. We're hopeful that we'll still get the scenic sailing, perhaps on the way out of Alta in a couple of days.

We enjoyed pre-dinner drinks at the Explorer's Bar as we watched our entry into the fjords leading to Alta.

Quite the wind farm

I'm curious where they send the energy, since not much was around here

At dinner in the World Café, Captain Olav stopped by to tell us that now that we're out of the open ocean and into the fjords, things will be much smoother. He also said that while we were currently under thick overcast, as we approach Alta, there was a good chance that the skies would likely clear, at least for a while, and that the chance for seeing the Aurora tonight was good. He said that we should be alongside in Alta by 22:30 (10:30 pm). He is such a nice man, clearly doing something he loves.

We watched the snow start to accumulate on the back deck behind the World Café.

Arlona made a snowball, or more correctly, a slushball, and threw it at me

A trio from California, but originally from Viet Nam, went outside briefly, reveling in their first-ever snow sighting. It was fun to watch their joy.

We returned to the room to work on this blog and relax. Around 8:30, the phone rang. It was an automated call from the bridge saying that there was an Aurora sighting off the starboard side of the ship. Woo!  We donned our jackets and headed up to deck #9 forward to the darkest area of the ship. They had red filters over all the lights on the forward part of the deck to preserve night vision.

After a few minutes letting our eyes get accustomed to the dark, we started to be able to see the Aurora off the starboard side and off the bow of the ship. We just used our cell phone, because cell phones are particularly adept at capturing the Aurora without having to do much fiddling with settings. We were hand-holding our phones on a moving cruise ship, so we got an occasional star blur, but overall, I'm pretty happy with the images we got.

The first Aurora that Arlona has ever seen

Just a faint horizontal glow

The images are more vibrant than what we saw with just our eyes - that's because of the extra sensitivity of the cell phone's image sensor

Still, the Aurora was clearly visible

It was constantly changing and moving

If you look at the center of the Aurora, you can see very faint purple along with the green

The purple is more vibrant here

The lights of Alta are visible toward the horizon

So cool seeing the stars through the Aurora

The Aurora started disappearing

After about 30 minutes, it had faded to the point that we were ready to head back into the warmth of the Viking Vela and our stateroom

For Arlona, that's a bucket list item checked and double-checked: seeing the Aurora Borealis. This is just our first night of six in the Arctic, and the weather is looking potentially better tomorrow. We have an excursion at 8:45 pm tomorrow evening to go in search of the Northern Lights.

20260320 Viking Vela Northern Lights and British Isles - Day 5/32

Viking Vela In Search of the Northern Lights and British Isles Explorer Cruise Day 5/32 – Sailing the North and Norwegian Seas

The ship rocked us to sleep last night. Overnight, the weather calmed, and we awoke to calmer seas and clearer skies. We rolled out of bed after 8:00 and didn't make it up to the World Café until about 9:00 for breakfast. One thing we have noticed with this ship redesign with more passengers is that the World Café is noticeably more crowded. That is due, in part, to the fact that many of our Viking Ocean cruises have been at 50% - 75% capacity and we're sailing with 952/998, or 95% full. Whatever the reason, the World Café is jammed and extremely noisy.

We tried Viking's new biscuits and sausage gravy - it got two thumbs up from us

We got another pleasant surprise in the World Café today when we rounded a corner and ran smack into Elard, a head waiter from our 2021-2022 world cruise. It's getting to be like old home week here on the Vela.

This morning was packed with activities. We attended John Maclean's lecture on the mythology and science of the Aurora Borealis. John is a witty, Scottish astrophysicist, and his presentation was lighthearted and enjoyable.

Next up was a Viking scavenger hunt at 11:00. We've done one before and figured that with all our nights on Viking, we would make quick work of it. Well, that's what we thought.

Wow, these were obscure

We eventually found all but one, and also got all the bonus videos. Another team finished before us and scored all 14 points for the win. It was fun hunting for everything, and it is a great exercise for newer cruises to get familiar with the ship.

That led into trivia at 12:15. We paired up with nice couples from England and Rochester, New York. We tied for first with 12/15 correct answers. Our misses:

• How many musical notes are in an octave?
• We guessed 8 - "Oct", and Do-Re-Me... - nope, it's 12, 7 notes and 5 sharps/flats, 8 notes make a scale
• Which ancient culture invented toothpaste by grinding ox hooves?
• We guessed the Romans, but it was the Egyptians
• What is the most common bird in the world?
• We thought of birding and guessed crows (sparrows are actually more numerous), but the right answer was chickens - duh

That meant a tiebreaker - the closest team will win. How many stars are on Brazil's flag? We guessed 11. The other guesses were 5, 10, and 12.  The correct answer was 27. The funny thing was that if you added all four teams' answers together, our aggregate sum of 38 was closer than any of the individual answers. Ha! We still had a strong second-place finish.

We got salads for lunch in the World Café before looking around at the scenery.

The rugged Norwegian coast

We sailed very close to shore at points

As promised a couple of days ago, here's a look at our room. We are in room 5075, a Deluxe Veranda (DV2) room. We are on the starboard (right) side, just forward of the rear elevators.

That first door on the left is the bathroom door

A typical Viking Veranda / Deluxe Veranda bathroom with a heated fog-free mirror, drawer, and shelf storage on both sides of the sink

The generously-sized shower that real adults can use

The control for Viking's standard heated bathroom floor and the 110V shaver outlet

Just past the bathroom, the security safe cabinet, and three storage drawers - the first shelf usually has a coffee maker, but we asked for that to be removed

Around the corner, we see the closet with three shelves on the left side and a full-length space on the right - you can also see the side storage table that sits on both sides of the bed

Each table has a thin drawer, a shelf, a USB-C port, a USB-A port, a 110V outlet, and a 220V European outlet - room light and night foot light switches are mounted above each side table

The king bed (can be split into two twins) dominates the space - the larger room size on Vela allows for a love seat versus the side chairs on smaller Viking Ocean vessels

The work desk is on the left, as is the large, flat screen TV - the walls are magnetic, so we bring magnets to hold small items like hats

The desk lamp has one USB-C port and three USB-A ports available for charging devices

The desk holds the QuietVox listening devices used on most excursions - there is also a spare 220V European outlet and two 110V outlets available - those are my cords in the 110V outlets

The veranda is noticeably deeper and now supports two reclining chairs versus the non-reclining chairs on smaller Viking Ocean ships

We like the fact that the rooms are very familiar, but have some newer, nice touches.

Several birds that appeared to be the endangered black-legged kittiwakes were flying around as we sailed.

After letting lunch digest a bit, we went down to the gym. Arlona did 20 minutes on the rowing machine and then walked a mile on the deck. I worked the weight machines and did a short walk on the deck.

Looking ahead, we saw a teeny, tiny gap - we aren't heading there, are we?

Looking backward, it was obvious that we were turning in that direction

As we head north, we're seeing more snow in the mountains

We are indeed heading for that gap

There is perhaps one ship's width between us and the rocks

Extra eyes on the side navigation bridge

Shooting the gap

A troll-sized lighthouse

Buried cables

The scenery keeps getting prettier as we continue north.

We showered and headed up to the Explorer's Bar. As we sat there, as 5:00 pm approached, throngs of guests started piling in. We talked with another guest, and apparently, Captain Olav made an announcement while we were in the shower. It involved passing something he called the "hole-in-the-wall" or something like that.

Our reliable assistant, Google Gemini, filled in the details. Captain Olav was talking about Torghatten, a 115-foot-high stone formation with a natural tunnel cut through the stone.  According to legend, a troll named Hestmannen (The Horseman) was chasing a beautiful maiden named Lekamøya. Realizing he couldn't catch her, he fired an arrow at her in a fit of rage. The Troll-King of Sømna saw this and threw his hat into the arrow’s path to protect her. The arrow pierced the hat, creating the hole. Just then, the sun rose. As we all know, trolls turn to stone in sunlight—the hat became the mountain, and the arrow hole remained forever.

The tunnel is in the large, dark area in the center of the stone

Coming alongside, you can just see the light peeking through the center

A crappy zoomed-in cellphone capture of the tunnel

After passing Torghatten, we headed out into the open water to continue our journey north.

Our trip from Bergen so far - Captain Olav is cruising fast to get ahead of the incoming weather

We will dock early tomorrow evening in Alta, also visible near the top of the map. This will put us in port at least half a day early. We are expecting rougher seas starting around 8:00 tonight. Sounds like good sleeping to me.

We enjoyed a nice dinner in the World Café. Without a special meal, guests were spread out between The Restaurant, Manfredi's, Chef's Table, Room Service, and the World Café. That made for a nice, quiet, uncrowded dinner.

After dinner, we returned to the room and watched the port talk for Tromsø. We planned to watch tonight's movie under the stars on the pool deck, The 12th Man. We discovered that the movie is available on demand in our stateroom. We figured that we would be more comfortable in our stateroom than in pool chaises under the glass roof on the pool deck. Arlona ran up, grabbed some popcorn, and returned to the room. We sipped Moscato, ate popcorn, and enjoyed the movie in comfort.

Tomorrow is another sea day before we dock in Alta, Norway.