World Cruise Day 156/163 Scenic Scandinavia - Sea Day - Freeloaders, Baggo, Trivia, Laundry, Martinis

Cruise day: 156/163

Ports days: 84
Sea days: 72
Countries: 28
Continents: 5
Ports: 61

A sea day - the last sea day of this adventure.  We are here, floating around in the Baltic, traveling south-southwest the roughly 400 miles or so to Gdańsk, Poland.  Sea days can get old when you have a ton of them all at once, like at the beginning of this trip. On February 24, when we arrived in Mindelo, São Vicente, Cape Verde Islands after a nine-day Atlantic crossing, we had been on the ship for 63 days.  Of those, only 19 were spent in port and 44 days were at sea - more than 2:1 at sea.  Today is 93 days later, and we've spent 65 of those in port and 28 at sea - more than 2:1 in port.  If you look at the combined 14-day Viking Homelands and 10-day Scenic Scandinavia cruises, of the 24 days, 22 are port days and only two - one on each cruise - are sea days.  So we are savoring this last sea day, enjoying a loose schedule before we hit the last six ports before finally jetting home.

This morning, I looked out the window and spotted this freeloader, hitching a ride on our sliding glass door.  I expect that he will be a little confused when he figures out tomorrow that he's in Poland.

One of the bigger, and certainly more boisterous activities on the World Cruise was Baggo (Cornhole).  They played every sea day in an ongoing tournament of officers versus guests.  We could never play since we took Bridge lessons and that happened at the same time.  But we could hear it, and everyone involved had a lot of fun with it.  The officers were getting beaten so badly that one afternoon, we saw they had the Baggo boards set up and crew from every department were trying out - housekeeping, culinary, engineering, maintenance - you name it.  The officers were recruiting crew members to find better players!  It was a lot of fun to hear, and see - we could catch the end each day after our lesson.  

Today, Cruise Director Bruce had a Baggo competition so we could finally compete.  Arlona & I got on different teams so that meant one of us was guaranteed the win.  We played three rounds, all played differently.  Round one was traditional Baggo - each player on the team threw four bags and scored points for bags on the board or in the hole.  Round two was similar, except you drew playing cards based on your board/hole count and the card values became your points.  Round three was the most interesting.  Each player had to throw all four bags simultaneously - two from the right hand and two from the left.  Points were awarded for board/hole bags.  In the end, Arlona's team just edged my team out.  OK - they killed us with nearly a 500-240 win.  It was all good fun and helped make a sea day enjoyable.

We played trivia and once again found our spot just out of winning.  The sad part is that we talked ourselves out of two answers that would have given us a tie for top honors.  Our mistakes:

• What is the national bird of India?
• Peacock - we had no idea
• What nationality is Agatha Christie's protagonist, Hercule Poirot?
• Belgian - we guess French
• What is Fugu - a seaweed soup, Tofu dish, fish dish, rice paste, or plum wine & saki drink?
• Fish dish - we talked ourselves out of that - it is pufferfish and if prepared incorrectly, is poisonous
• The first LPs (long-playing vinyl records) were introduced in what decade, and what year +/- 1 year?
• We guessed the 1950s and 1953 - it was the 1940s and 1948
• What famous author wrote all the following phrases:
  One fell swoop, foul play, vanished into thin air, play fast & loose, with bated breath?
• William Shakespeare
• What was the first name of the designed Halston and Givenchy?
• Roy & Hubert
• This author with the first name Abraham went by a nickname and wrote The Lady of the Shroud and The Lair of the White Worm.  What was the author's name and their best-known novel published in 1897?
• Bram Stoker, Dracula

 As always, we had fun and met some new folks.

As we were eating lunch, another freeloader hopped a ride for a bit.  The photos are lousy as I just had my phone and was shooting through the glass from a distance.

Google Lens suggests this might be a western yellow wagtail

Nice of it to make this an official "poop deck"

We tossed in what will likely be our last load of laundry for the cruise.  We should have plenty of clean clothes to see us through this week and we can certainly wash everything easily at home. 

As we waited for dinner, we enjoyed my special martini, crafted by Milos at the Aquavit bar - Arlona on the rocks, me, straight up.  We're running low on the infused vanilla vodka, but we'll make it through the cruise. 

Tonight, we opted for a custom pizza for dinner, handled adeptly by the World Cafe pizza chefs.

It was awesome, like always, and it made for a nice dinner

This evening, we signed up for a martini tasting at Torshavn.  

Bartender Gede, with help from bar waiter, Aliaksandr, took us through making four different martinis

L-R: classic Dry Gin Martini, Cosmopolitan, French Martini, Chocolate Martini

We learned the ins and outs of shaking versus stirring, gin versus vodka, what dirty ice is, what makes a Gibson, and other cocktail trivia.  Even more interesting was that among the eight of us in the tasting, we met a couple from West Bloomfield, Michigan - not far from where I went to high school and where our daughter-in-law's parents live.  Even more interesting than that was the couple right behind us that live in The Village, Florida - where we live.  Funny how that works sometimes.

It is funny seeing the expressions of the new passengers when most of the crew calls us by name all the time.  We get that, "Who are these people?", look from time to time and we chuckle.  But when you've been on the ship longer than nearly every crew member, that's what happens.

We have a short day tomorrow in Gdańsk, Poland, arriving at noon with an onboard time at 6PM.  We plan to take the shuttle into town and I'll give Arlona the tour she missed last week when she was isolated with COVID. Gdańsk is the heart of the amber trade, so we'll be checking that out as well.

Oh yeah - we gain an hour tonight, back to UTC+2 - so silly.  We should have just stayed on this time the last two days.

World Cruise Day 150/163 Viking Homelands - Sea Day - Farewells are starting, and a reunion is looming

Cruise day: 150/163

Ports days: 79
Sea days: 71
Countries: 26
Continents: 5
Ports: 59

COVID Update

I spoke with Arlona this morning, and she sounded like...Arlona.  There's still a little cough now and then, but she really sounded like her normal self.  She is still scheduled to be sprung on the morning of May 24.  In the Captain's sea day noon report, he said that there are 26 COVID active cases on the ship, so the isolation is working and no new cases have popped up.  Five folks are scheduled to come out tomorrow, so that's good news as well. And I know of one good-looking one that is scheduled to get out the next day.

Let me also give a very heartfelt thank you to the scores of you - folks we know and many that we don't - that have expressed well-wishes and concern for Arlona's well-being.  It is very humbling to feel that outpouring of kind words, and from the bottom of our hearts, thank you. 💓

Quarantine art multi-day project

Arlona revealed her multi-day project today - a painting of the flags of all the countries we have visited or will visit on this trip.  She took some liberties with "country" as she included a couple territorial flags for places like Gibraltar and Madeira.  This is especially impressive when you realize that this is approximately only 7"x10".

From left to right and top to bottom:

• Row 1: USA, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Chile, Uruguay
• Row 2: Cape Verde, Madeira, Spain, Gibraltar, Italy. Malta
• Row 3: Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt
• Row 4: Israel, Turkey, Monaco, France, Portugal, United Kingdom
• Row 5: Norway, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Finland, Sweden

The flags are in the order we first visited each country on this trip.  We only have two more countries to go - Finland in the form of Åland, an autonomous territory under Finnish sovereignty, and Sweden.

She also painted a greeting card - another impressive job.

I attended trivia and paired up with a couple from Michigan.  We netted 15/20 - close, but 19/20 won it decisively.

1. David Robert Haywood Jones is better known as who? - We had no idea - it was David Bowie
2. What is the capital city of the Faroe Islands?  Hint - there is a place on the ship with the same name. - Torshavn
3. Where would you find the Sea of Tranquility? The moon - it's where Apollo 11 landed
4. Vandals painted what part of Michaelangelo's David red in protest in 1987? - We guessed face, but it was toenails
5. Who was originally slated to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz? - Shirley Temple
6. What do you call a group of crows? - Murder
7. Who discovered Jupiter's moons? - Galileo
8. What singer/songwriter was known as The Man in Black? - Johnny Cash
9. Where was Napoleon born? - We went with the obvious, France, but it was Corsica
10. What was the name of the monk who is credited with inventing champagne? - Dom Perignon
11. In what movie did Humphrey Bogart say, "We'll always have Paris."? - Casablanca
12. What country with a 90-man army claims the oldest armed forces formed in 1506? - Vatican City
13. In the movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's, what was the cat called? - We had no idea - and it was "cat"
14. What shoe term is the Italian word for "little dagger"? - Stiletto
15. What was the title of The Beatles' first released single? - Love Me Do - was my first thought but we talked ourselves into I Want to Hold Your Hand 
16. Hoover Dam is built on which river? - Colorado
17. Viking warriors that die in battle are believed to go where? - Valhalla
18. What children's book was written by James Bond author Ian Fleming and was turned into a 1960s musical movie?  Hint - it involved a car. - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
19. What word was developed from the Swahili word meaning "journey"? - Safari
20. What is the main mineral in bananas? - Potassium

He also brought a tiebreaker but it wasn't needed - how long is Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody? 5:55 - five minutes and fifty-five seconds.

On the way to lunch, I met up with a group of World Cruisers that were unloading some of the food and booze that they stashed during the cruise.  International chips and chocolate were circulated, and an adult beverage or two (or three) were consumed.

Front: Lynne, Donna, Lynn
Back: Larry, Dave, Jim, Cindy, Aleem, Garry
We took the photo before Rob & Deb joined us

Also briefly joining us was Uma, one of the stellar waitstaff supervisors

It will be hard in three days to say goodbye to the remaining folks that have shared this adventure with us as we stay for ten more days.

After a low-key remainder of the afternoon and a quiet dinner, I was able to enjoy a lovely sunset, knowing that Arlona was watching the same thing, just 600 feet or so ahead of me.

Tomorrow, we'll be in the Åland Islands in Mariehamn.