20240920 Friday, September 20, 2024- At Sea

20240920 Friday, September 20, 2024- At Sea

Without setting an alarm this morning, we ended up sleeping in until 9am.  There wasn’t much on our to do list today aside from trivia at 12:15pm.  So we had time to do Duolingo lessons and a relaxed breakfast.  The ship has been cruising 25-30 miles south of the Aleutian Islands so the islands have been visible to our starboard.  These look like volcanic islands in the distance.  

Janet had received a fancy Viking Birthday cake on her birthday while we were dining in Manfredi’s.  We were too full to even think about eating it, so it went into the refrigerator in our stateroom.  We had planned on saving it for later in the week when we would have some sea days.  However, we were puzzled to find it missing from our refrigerator 2 days ago.  We asked a head waitress in the dining room about getting a replacement after explaining about its mysterious disappearance.  This apparently triggered an investigation.  Yesterday, our room steward, who we very rarely catch a glimpse of, saw me step into the room while he was down the hall.  He came to our room and rang the door bell to explain the mystery of the missing birthday cake.  He said he smelled something awry in the room and tracked it to our refrigerator while he was cleaning.  It turned out that the fruit on top had gone moldy, and the mold spread across the chocolate gelatin coating giving it a furry and disgusting appearance.  So he had actually done us a solid by dealing with the biological experiment we were growing in our fridge.  The head waitress had arranged to have a replacement cake delivered at our convenience, so we requested it to be delivered on a sea day, and today was the first.  This replacement cake arrived after our breakfast.  

Not only did we get a replacement cake, but also a Happy Birthday card from Viking and a bottle of sparkling wine.  Now knowing these are highly perishable, we had about half of it for lunch.  It was actually a chocolate mousse coated with chocolate gelatin on a crunchy chocolate granola cookie base.  

Our Trivia team gathered at noon and we managed another win today.  We won by a smaller margin but did collect a round of Mimosas.  

We did follow that with a trip to the buffet for something to offset the pure sugar and chocolate from the cake. Then it was time for a lecture on sled dogs and a nap in our room.  

Tonight we had late dinner reservations at the Chef’s Table, which changes its menu every 3 days or so.  So there was time to hit the fitness center and thermal spa before dinner.  We started watching a movie in the stateroom but there were no subtitles, and the TV volume was not loud enough to hear the dialog.  We’ll have to suggest Viking and other cruise ships equip their staterooms with TV’s that have external headphone jacks so that we can hook up blue tooth transmitters and headphones in the future.

The Chef’s table diner theme was Lotus, which featured Asian fusion starting with a potato cake from Goa India.  

This was very attractive in appearance and very savory and tasty.  The first course was a Singapore soft shell crab.  

Ben had tried one at the buffet a couple days ago and didn’t particularly care for it, and this was the same.  While it was breaded and deep fried, the legs tasted very much like the onion rings at the poolside grill, but the main body portion tastes a bit too fishy for us.  This is because soft shell crab are not cleaned so you get the flavor of the liver, crab butter and gills, which overpower the subtle crab meat.  We remain fans of fresh Dungeness crab.  

The granite was a red lotus ice flavored with lychee and guava, which was refreshing.  

The main course was delicious and perfectly prepared Thai lamb chops.  We have never had Thai lamb chops before, and these were tender, moist and delicious with no gamey flavor at all.  They were probably the best thing we’ve eaten on the ship to date.  

Dessert was a Yuza cheese cake with macha flavored whip and crisps.  The culinary staff seem to be enthralled by Yuza, which is an asian citrus that tastes somewhere between a lemon and lime.  It was worthy of consideration for addition to Cheesecake Factory’s offerings.

Our dinner finished up in time for us to sneak in for the last part of the violin instrumentalists performance with the Viking Orion Band.  We had seen this performer, Doug Cameron before on our transpacific Grand Princess cruise last September, cruising between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  He plays a wide spectrum of pop, country, fiddle, jazz and even rock on his blue violin and in the bit where he introduces his family, he does play video of his son’s on stage with him, and his eldest is now in college.  He did get a standing ovation from the theater crowd tonight.  

Tomorrow we arrive at Dutch Harbor, which will our last Alaskan port of call before we hit a stretch of sea days heading into Japan.  The Silversea Silver Nova will also call on Dutch Harbor. Between the two ships, we will double the population of Dutch Harbor for the day.