World Cruise Day 9/152 - a new day, a new year, and laundry

Cruise day: 9/152
Ports days: 3
Sea days: 6
Countries: 3
Continents: 1
Ports: 3

Happy New Year from somewhere between Panama City, Panama, and Puntarenas, Costa Rica.  We rang in the new year last night with the rest of the passengers and crew.  Viking dressed up the pool deck, retracted the roof, and had a party.  Bubbly was flowing freely, the music was playing, and they rang in the new year at midnight eastern time.  Good thing because somewhere in the middle of the night, the ship's time flipped back one hour to central time.  This will be the norm as we venture west, at least until we pass the international dateline.

This morning, Viking had a lovely brunch set up starting at 8 AM with all kinds of specialty foods and food stations set up.

We opted for a low-key kind of day today.  We attended our next bridge lesson at 10 AM and then met up with our trivia team at 12:30 pm.  

Right before we got started, the captain came on with his daily update.  The great news was that we had exactly zero new COVID cases and the people that have been isolated or quarantined are starting to come out of it.  The health protocols are working and unlike every other cruise ship on the ocean right now, we have successfully stopped any spread.  

Part of the improvements are these UV-C air filters in every elevator.

We were back on our triva game and in a terrific collaborative effort from the team, won again today.  Any idea who earned $22 million dollars in just 91 seconds, was thrown in jail not long after and a short time after that, declared bankruptcy?  Luckily, we knew it was Mike Tyson.  The only questions we missed were:

What country was the first to allow women to vote?  New Zealand

Who was Time magazine's person of the year in 1952?  Queen Elizabeth II

Folks that have done cruises like this advised us to not let laundry pile up.  Since we're on day nine, we decided to toss what we have in the hamper into the wash.

On the guest room floors, Viking has thoughtfully placed launderettes on each floor midship.  Each one contains four stacked dryers and washers.  In addition, so Viking can control the type of soap that is used, Viking provides automatic soap injectors that feed the soap directly into the machines.  

All this is free to use.  It is a nice touch. The only thing to bring are dryer sheets to prevent static.  Unfortunately, this wasn't the only laundry experience today.

We watched an interesting lecture on aviation on our TV. They are recording all the lectures, so if you miss something, you can watch it later at your leisure.

Arlona, ever since eating lunch, felt a little off.  It seemed something that she ate for lunch didn't sit well.  She wound up falling asleep this afternoon and woke up in time to go down for a drink before dinner.  We wound up meeting up with other folks from The Villages and had a drink - more specifically, Arlona had a 7-Up Zero, and then we headed to Manfredi's Italian Restaraunt for dinner.  Right after the appetizer, Arlona excused herself, saying she didn't feel right - queasy stomach - and was heading to the room.  Unfortunately, she didn't make it.  When she got to the elevator, she felt the need to sit down, and then got sick.  Staff walked her to the room.  I got up to the room shortly after and that lead to another round of laundry.

Arlona went to bed early, feeling better after getting sick and then sipping 7-UP.  

Tomorrow, we will hit our next port, Puntarenas, Costa Rica.  We've been in eastern Costa Rica before, but have never been to the western side.  We're looking forward to a tour tomorrow. We're hoping to be able to go ashore tomorrow, but we'll see.