World Cruise Day 38/152 - Sea Day - Fooood...and football

Cruise day: 38/152
Ports days: 12
Sea days: 26
Countries: 4
Continents: 1
Ports: 8

Day 38 was an overcast, gray, mid-60s kind of day.

In yesterday's blog, I lamented the fact that Viking couldn't get the equator crossing certificate correct.  Yes, it's a small and generally insignificant thing, but still, details matter.  Anyway, about two minutes after I published the blog last night - *buzz* - our doorbell buzzed.  There stood Mohammed, our excellent cabin steward, holding a replacement certificate.  A quick examination showed that finally, the date was corrected to January 27, 2022.  Woo!  Further examination showed that they had also printed our names on the certificate: "Gary & Arlona Kolb".  Astute readers should realize why this was an issue - my name is "Garry", not "Gary".  Still, I applauded the effort, but a third swing and a miss.  Oh well.

Today, this showed up on our bed:

We finally have an equator crossing certificate with the correct date and correct names!  Yea!  I will certainly give the team credit for the effort.  They do aim to please.  Part of the issue seems to come down to communication.  Here's a case in point.

Our next stop is Chile.  I described the fiasco that was the process of applying for a Chilean Mobility Passport.  Held in the Star Theater, it was everything you would think would happen as Viking officers tried to lead tech-averse senior citizens through opening websites and filling in Spanish-language forms on their mobile devices.  While we can come up with several process suggestions for Viking that would have helped, to be fair, Viking was caught a little by this as it was a result of our last-minute itinerary change to salvage this cruise.  Anyway, lots of people were frustrated and struggled to get the process completed.  On our end, one of our mobility passports came back approved without issue.  The other did not.  First, it was a matter of mistyped vaccine dates that generated the rejection.  After that was corrected, it was rejected again as the wrong vaccine photo was attached.  After giving it a third try...hmm...perhaps I was a little too hard on Viking for the equator crossing certificate...we finally got our second approved pass.  Yea!  All good to go, or so we thought.

Today, we both got an additional email from Chile with a different approval certificate.  Ok, we're approved and that's good.  We have them stored on our mobile devices, so that's good.  But, we have paper documents supplied by Viking that we need to carry.  And, in our experience, sometimes, when going through government inspection/approval processes, it is much easier to have it on paper.  Knowing that, I went down to the public PCs on deck #1 to print out our certificates.  Two other cruisers were there doing the same thing.  The printer was being its usual problematic self, and the other guests were frustrated.  I had figured out that one of them tried to print an oversized document and the printer was asking for larger paper in the bypass tray, but they had already asked the desk for help.  The helpful Viking crew member came over and got the printer printing.  When she saw that we were printing our Chile documents, she told everyone there that they were going to take care of printing everyone's documents and they would be delivered to our rooms.  Gosh, that would have been a terrific piece of information to communicate to everyone to prevent guests from taking that task upon themselves.  Curing these little communication issues would go a long way to soothing the ire of the more excitable passengers.  The reason I point these things out is that I know Viking is listening, and, as a responsible partner, Viking is working on improving wherever they have shortcomings.  The fact that Viking is taking on the responsibility of printing 500+ mobility passes is incredible.  If they let us know that, it would have made it perfect.

On to better things...

No bridge today as our instructor was under the weather.  We took the opportunity to meet our regular partners from class and play a little social bridge.  I don't know that we bid every hand correctly, but we all were learning, and playing out the hands was also a learning experience.

We once again hit our sweet spot at trivia, one correct answer short of being in the points.  And...we talked ourselves out of it! What battle took place Sunday, June 18, 1815?  We said Waterloo and changed it to The Alamo.  It was Waterloo.  Dang.  What did Bartolomeo Cristofori invent?  The piano.  What mountain overlooks Cape Town, South Africa? Table Mountain.

Arlona hit the art scene again today with acrylics and techniques with a knife to add texture. Inspiration up top - original art below.

She's working on embracing abstraction - not a native skill for her.  It's fun to see her stretch.

In a previous blog, a reader asked for a photo of Chef Thomas.  Lucky for us, he was out and about as is his usual, examining the World Cafe to be sure it is up to standards.

He is quite affable and down-to-earth and really takes pride in the fare he and his incredible team prepare to increase our circumferences.  Today, the World Cafe featured a brunch from 8:30 AM - 1:30 PM.  I didn't get photos of everything as there was just too much.  But, there were some incredible bread selections and bread artistry that shouldn't be missed.

Eggs, waffles, hash browns, multiple varieties of fish, poultry, beef, pork, sushi - there was so much selection, I couldn't possibly list it all.  Of course, the desserts were awesome as well.

Suffice it to say that we enjoyed breakfast and lunch in the World Cafe.

Overall, we are enjoying ourselves.  Arlona has been struggling a little with the ship's movement, and that's not like her.  She's been battling a slightly upset stomach.  One thing to note with Viking Ocean ships is that even in modestly moving seas, you feel it.  These are much smaller ships than the huge ships you find on other lines like Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and such.  Larger ships are smoother, smaller ones, not so much.  Don't get me wrong, we're not rockin' and rollin' all over the place, but there is pretty much constant movement of some kind.  It doesn't phase me in the least, and generally, Arlona has never been bothered.  But, with extended time at sea - we're currently five days into a six-day stretch - there's never a break from the movement.  We have a couple more extended stretches coming up before we get to the Mediterranean.  Once there, we'll be good as other than one four-day stretch, I don't think we'll have more than at most two or three sea days in a row until the end of our cruise.

Arlona was feeling restless after not feeling great for a couple of days and went for a two-mile walk.  I stayed in the room reading.  More on that tomorrow.

If you're a football fan, then you know that today features both the AFC and NFC championship games to determine who plays in the Superbowl.  Viking is showing both games on the big screen by the pool on deck #7 as well as streaming the games on the stateroom TVs.  We caught the first half of the AFC game in the room and then went up to the World Cafe for chow.

Dinner tonight was a rare event - unthemed.  They had the usual fare - sushi, steaks, a variety of fish, crab legs, and so on.  The main event tonight was a huge pineapple roasted ham that looked delicious.  But what caught our eye was spaghetti carbonara.  

They had the pasta pre-cooked and waiting.  When you ordered, they dropped a serving into a strainer in the hot water for a minute or so to heat it without cooking it further.  Then, they strained it and dropped it into a hot pan.  They can't do the traditional method of using raw eggs in the sauce for food safety reasons.  They had a thick, clingy sauce at the ready and spooned it over the pasta.  Then they sprinkled in a little parsley for color and the pancetta until you said "stop".  Stir, toss, flip until everything was perfectly coated, and then spiraled it out onto the plate.  Parmesean until you stop them and parsley for color and you're good to go.  It was delicious.  The pasta was coated without being soupy.  It was warm, tasty, and a perfect meal for us today.

Back in the room for the end of the AFC game, we relaxed and reset for tomorrow's final sea day before Chile.  Given that we are two time zones east of US eastern time, and the NFC kickoff isn't until 8:30 PM EST (10:30 here), I doubt I'll make the entire NFC game.  Bengals & ???  I'm pulling for Stafford and the Rams - he did his time in Detroit and deserves it.