World Cruise Day 112/152 - Sea Day - thank goodness!

Cruise day: 112/152

Ports days: 51
Sea days: 61
Countries: 19
Continents: 5
Ports: 37

Whew!  After three days of 10+ hours of excursions, a sea day was a welcome change.  We did the usual - bridge, trivia, Arlona's art.  Here are the highlights.

Trivia - patterned after Who Wants To Be a Millionaire by Cruise Consultant, Hamed, it was a fun, albeit frustrating day as once again, we were adept at talking ourselves out of correct answers, helping us to narrowly miss out on points.

• Where are all the baseballs used in Major League Baseball manufactured?
• We had Costa Rica but talked ourselves into Mexico - it is Costa Rica
• Where will the 2028 Olympic games be held - a stop we have, or will visit on this cruise?
• Los Angeles (we guessed Barcelona)
• Duroc, Berkshire, and Mangalica are types of what farm animals?
• We had pig but talked ourselves into chicken - it is pig
• What is a one followed by 100 zeros called?
• Googol - I thought it was googolplex, and then misspelled it Googleplex - either way that's wrong as that as it a one followed by a googol of zeros
• An aside - it turns out one passenger playing complained as they answered "google" and that was not correct - they said it was a simple misspelling, however, by misspelling it as another valid word, that makes the answer wrong - they got upset and complained.  I'm sorry, but if you have to bitch because you lost at trivia one day, you seriously need to get a life!  It's only a game.  Move on!
• Nephelococcygia is the practice of what?
• The act of seeking and finding shapes in clouds

Before trivia, the Captain announced the following interesting tidbit.  Since sailing from Los Angeles, as of noon today, we have sailed 21,057 nautical miles (NM).  The Earth's circumference at the equator is 21,639NM, so, we are very close to sailing the equivalent distance as sailing around the entire world.  Of course, for those of us who started in Fort Lauderdale (who are regularly forgotten as Viking didn't treat the first 17 days like the World Cruise we were promised - an ongoing complaint), we can add another 4,000NM or so, so we're well over 25,000NM into this voyage.  Pretty cool.

Arlona completed her two-day art project today - a fishing boat returning from the catch.

In the inspiration photo, the man in front was walking along the shore.  Given our visit to the Sea of Galilee two days ago, Arlona opted to continue the water and have him represent Jesus walking on the water in the Sea of Galilee - a way to personalize the painting for this trip.

Tonight's sunset didn't disappoint.

We had a hitchhiker on deck #7 that seemed to enjoy the sunset as well

After dinner, we attended another mixology class.  Tonight, it was all about Old Fashioneds.  One of America's first cocktails, the Old Fashioned is a classic whiskey drink that has evolved over the years to also be mixed with brandy, rum, and other mixers or flavors.

We sampled three varieties - the classic Old Fashioned, the Viking Old Fashioned that adds muddled orange to the mix along with higher proof (101) bourbon, and a chocolate Old Fashioned that adds in creme de cacao as well as chocolate bitters.

The classic recipe is:

• 2oz bourbon (or whiskey, or whatever spirit you choose to use)
• 2-3 dashes bitters
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• splash of water or soda
• orange peel to garnish

Put sugar, bitters, and water (or soda) in a glass and stir to dissolve the sugar.  Add the bourbon, stir, add ice, stir to chill.  Twist orange peel over the glass and drop in.  Enjoy! If you don't want to use sugar and water, you can substitute simple syrup in its place.

Right after the class, mentalist, Marc Paul was performing in the Star Theater.  We have seen multiple mentalists before and had seen everything he did.  Some things were pretty easy to understand how he did them.  Others, while familiar, are still pretty impressive presentations and we enjoyed the show.

We are sailing from Haifa, Israel to Rhodes, Greece.

If you know geography, you'll note that Greece is way off to the west, and Rhodes appears to be directly south of Turkey.  There is a reason for that - Rhodes is directly south of Turkey.  In fact, all the islands immediately south of Turkey are controlled by Greece.  Weird, right?  Perhaps we'll learn why tomorrow.  We'll be in Rhodes all day tomorrow before we arrive in Ephesus (Kusadasi), Turkey on Saturday.