World Cruise day 2/152 - Ho ho ho

Cruise day: 2/152
Port days: 1
Ports: 1
Countries: 1
Sea days: 1

What does Santa do after delivering toys all over the world?  It appears he takes a Viking cruise!

Santa greeted us as we had breakfast on the back of the ship this morning.  He was making his way around the ship, spreading Christmas cheer.  And cheer was needed as there was bad news reported.

Let's review our boarding process for a moment.  We needed to present a negative COVID test taken no more than two days before boarding.  Then, we received a nasal swab test immediately before boarding.  Once onboard, we had to immediately provide a saliva sample for what we lovingly refer to as the daily spit-test.

As I mentioned yesterday, we departed late.  As it turns out, it was later than I realized as we didn't sail until 12:32 AM on 12/25 - over 6.5 hours late.  The captain announced this morning that the cause of that delay was the removal of five passengers that tested positive for COVID as well as four people deemed to be close contacts.  Wow.  For all these people, their cruise was over before it began.

We are not sure they were all world cruisers.  There are two options for folks embarking from Port Everglades.  There are somewhere between 300 and 400 folks that are going on the full world cruise.  There is also a large contingent of cruisers that are only doing the segment from Ft. Lauderdale to Los Angeles.  All told, at the moment, there are 743 passengers aboard. We know the segment cruises will get off, but we don't know how many world cruises are boarding in Los Angeles.

We don't know who had to get off due to COVID.  We did see an email from one world cruiser that passed her nasal swab test in the terminal but then failed the spit-test on board.  She and her husband are quarantined in Ft. Lauderdale and uncertain what will happen next.  We all feel terrible for them  It also makes us nervous as every single passenger has to do the morning spit-test every day.  Who knows how long everyone will last before everyone tests positive.  All we can do is hope.

Our cabin number is 4029.  That means we're on deck 4 on the starboard (right) side of the ship.  In a future post, I'll share details of the room.  All rooms on Viking are balcony rooms so that's a bonus.

We attended a mahjong session this morning to see if it is something we'd like to learn.  It is fairly complicated and nothing like the mahjong solitaire game that many are familiar with.  We'll continue to explore that and see what we think.  We might also give bridge a try.

A little after noon, we checked out the first team trivia of the cruise - all Christmas-themed.  Our team finished with 15/16 correct and tied for first.  The only question we missed - what item, normally associated with Halloween, is also a traditional German decoration found on Christmas trees?  The answer?  Spider and web.  In fact, that is the inspiration for tinsel.  It made us mad that we missed it as after hearing the answer, we remembered that we have a spider and it came with a scroll telling that story.  Doh!  Then, we lost in a tiebreaker - what year did Coca-Cola start using Santa Claus in their advertising?  The right answer was 1931 and our guess of 1914 wasn't close enough.  Doh again!

After lunch, we checked out more of the Christmas decorations, included the awesome  gingerbread village pictured above.

We spent time on our balcony reading on our Kindles.  While having a balcony is nice, I have to say that the chairs Viking provides are not what you'd call "comfortable". We met friends for drinks and then headed to dinner in the World Cafe.  Tonight, they featured beef wellington, crab cakes, and more.  In addition, they had a terrific chocolate dessert theme with tons of different chocolate treats.  In fact, that had chocolate moose - not mousse - moose!  Here's a photo!

The cruise comes with internet.  That's a good thing.  Unfortuantely, the internet pretty much sucks.  In fact, typing these blogs and loading photos is pretty painful. But fear not, I'll soldier through so I can document this trip, whatever it turns out to be.

After dinner - we returned to 4029 and took in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation - a fine way to wrap up a lovely Christmas.

Tomorrow, we're in Cozumel and will be touring the ruins at San Gervasio.