Sunday, November 25, 2018- At Sea, South of Cuba

Sunday, November 25, 2018- At Sea, South of Cuba

Today, we are sailing between the south shoreline of Cuba and the Cayman Islands.  The waters have turned to the characteristically blue Caribbean water.  This has been a notable change, as there was much more of a green color in the Strait of Florida.  We haven’t seen any of the notorious Red Tide that had plagued Florida for much of the summer and fall.   We had our first breakfast in the Restaurant.  Ben found they had a good chicken congee and shu-mai dumplings available on the breakfast menu, and both were good.  They did not serve the shu-mai with soy sauce, but we didn’t bother to ask for them to bring any because they were gone in a flash.  Janet had eggs benedict, which was perfectly prepared. The Viking version had regular ham, rather than Canadian bacon, which was to Janet’s liking.  The bacon on Viking is also nice and crisp, like Janet prefers. You can also order salmon or New York steak at breakfast as well.  Service was fine.  Our waitress took our order on an iPhone.  They’ve got an App for that! We attended the morning lecture by former Diplomat Rob Warne titled “Cuba- A Struggling Neighbor”.  Although his Powerpoint slides were a bit stale, his presentation was very good, and he spoke with considerable authority regarding Cuba’s transition to Communism, and the social and economic challenges it has had to face.   It was bright, sunny and 93 degrees as we took a few laps around the Promenade deck.  This ship is certainly much less crowded than our past Princess and Norwegian cruises.  There are a couple of people with walkers, numerous with walking sticks, but most passengers seem to be above average in fitness.  The demographic of these Viking Ocean travelers seems to skew towards the recently retired and intellectual.  We are probably near the middle of that demographic, but towards the lower half of the age range.  I would guess the median age to be about 67.  Viking Ocean does not allow any passengers under 18. I doubt there are any passengers on this ship under 55.   We booked a Guaranty Veranda stateroom with the Viking mailed promotion.  We ended being assigned a Deluxe Veranda, which differs from a basic Veranda by virtue that the mini bar is restocked daily with snacks and sodas, and a pair of binoculars is included. The binoculars are like the cheap give-aways we used to be able to get from Drug Reps years ago before the Feds cracked down on gifts to physicians.  They might be suitable for opera glasses, but my Pentax compact binoculars are vastly superior.   The stateroom itself is comparable in size to the Princess standard balconies.  There is a redistribution in the space that eliminates the small hallway between the bathroom and closet on the Princess balcony rooms.  This puts the closet adjacent to the bed, and expands the bathroom to the point where you can actually have two adults in the bathroom (Crowded, but possible).  The shower has glass doors and measures a full 34” square, and there is plenty of room around the toilet.

  On the other hand, there is much less actual shelf and drawer storage space than on Princess.  There is only a single shallow drawer in each night stand with a small open shelf below.  The closet has 5’ of hanging space.  At the end of the closet, facing the hall, are an open shelf above the coffee service, safe, and 3 real drawers below.  The desk (22” x 54”) is quite usable, but doesn’t have any drawers.  The top does pivot up to reveal a storage tray below and make-up mirror, but it’s inconvenient if you keep your laptop on the desk top.  My iPad Pro is light and small enough that I can still access the tray without too much trouble, but you don’t want to be storing anything in there you will need frequently. There are two drawers in the bathroom, suitable for keeping all our toiletries, and there is an ungrounded 120v US styled shaver outlet at counter level on the left end of the counter. We still needed our non-polarized 2 way outlet splitter so that we could plug in our Sonicare toothbrush chargers, but there was no need to bring a night light or extension cord.  This stateroom is equipped with floor lighting controlled by a separate switch next to each night stand, so you can make midnight trips to the toilet with optimized lighting.  

There are two 120v grounded US styled and two grounded 220v EU styled outlets at the desk.  One of the EU outlets is occupied by the desk lamp, but there was no need for us to bring any extension cords or splitters for the desk area.  There is a single 120V grounded US styled and 220v grounded EU styled outlets, and two USB ports including one 2A above each night stand, so it is easy to charge both our iPhones and Apple Watches on the night stands with only our lightning cables and wireless watch charging pucks. 

We learned on this cruise that anything with a surge protector built in is a prohibited item on cruise ships. This is because of differences in the way voltage is assigned to pins in outlets can cause surge protectors wired for land use to fail. Fortunately, the extension cords and splitters we have usually packed, don’t have surge protectors, and the way this ship is wired, none were required other than if you wanted to plug more than one Sonicare toothbrush charger in the bathroom. We also learned that heating pads and extension cords are also generally prohibited, but my extension cords and splitters were not intercepted by security, nor bothered by our room stewards.  We did still end up needing 3 additional USB chargers to complete our electrical needs beyond the 4 built in USB charge ports in the night stands. Our bed and bedding are very nice.  The mattress is 72” x 82”, which is probably a king size, and the mattress is just a bit more firm than our Beautyrest Black hybrid mattress at home and the mattresses on Princess.  The pillows are huge, and just the right amount of loft and compressibility for support and comfort.   The narrowest points are through the entry door and between the end of the mattress and wall. Both measure 24”. The door itself measures 26”, but the jamb and hinging narrow the true opening.   The desk and sitting area include a desk chair, two comfy upholstered sitting chairs and a small coffee table.  The balcony is about the same size as a standard Princess balcony, and noticeably larger than a deluxe Norwegian balcony. It has two comfortable outdoor chairs and a table large enough for breakfast for two, but the chairs are not recliners like on Princess. Our balcony has a nice unobstructed view down to the waterline, which will be nice for our Panama Canal passage. We teamed up with a couple originally from Wisconsin who had migrated to North Carolina, and an Aussie couple for noon team trivia.  The first question happened to be “What country is the only one to have six stars on its flag?”  Well, that happens to be Australia.  We ended up with 9/15.  3 teams tied with 10/15 and had a tie breaker question of “How many times does the word Blood appear in Shakespeare’s McBeth?”  They were all way off with figures all under 13, while the answer is 42.  The stakes for Viking Trivia is not very high.  The prize is a round of Mimosas to the winning team.  The most oddball question, which we missed, was “What Jack Nicholson movie has a literal Chinese title of Mr. Cat Poo?  The answer is “As Good As It Gets”.  Hard to see how they managed to come up with that translation. We had classic bacon cheese burgers at the poolside grill for lunch.  They also have onion rings available, but they take longer to get, and the fries are pretty darn good.   Our next enrichment lecture was a photography seminar, which was well done.  It introduced the 1/3 rule, and the basics of composition and lighting.  There will be a series of these talks in addition to hands on seminars later in the cruise.  We may just end up better photographers by the end of this trip. Dinner was at Manfredi’s Italian specialty restaurant.  This was our first specialty dining experience with Viking Ocean, and it surpassed the experience at Sabatini’s on Princess.  The menus were all in Italian, so you had to rely on Google translate (thank goodness for free wifi) and the waiters.  The selection was quite good.  We ended up ordering swordfish and chicken parmesan, along with a number of appetizers and side dishes.  The food was excellent, far surpassing the quality and taste of our last Sabatini’s, although Princess still does a slightly better job on presentation.  Both our dishes were drowned in heaps of arugula leaves.  It was nice to have wine and cappuccino included as well.  The Star Theater presented the Viking Solo Vocalists, a quartet consisting of two males and two females, all from London.  They were very good with singing on par with vocalists on Princess, but without the chorus and dancers that Princess has.  The stage makes good use of their giant LED backdrops and state of the art lighting and fog effects. The show as called Legends, and featured songs of Las Vegas Legends including Elvis, Tom Jone, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Celine Dion, Tina Turner, Elton John and Barry Manilow.  We took a few moonlight laps around the Promenade to get Janet’s rings closed before retiring to our stateroom for the night.  We watched the enrichment lecture on Ernest Hemingway in Cuba, taped from earlier in the day. Tomorrow we arrive in Cienfuego, Cuba. We will be using tenders to go ashore and will be doing the included 3 hour walking tour of Cienfuego.  Hopefully, we will be able to procure some authentic Montecristo #2 cigars to take home.