Day 4 our real first day at sea! Dad got to go on a “Behind the Scenes Tour” of the ship and listened to the General Manager over the ship tell multiple hilarious stories of things he has encountered over the past 15 years of being in charge of the comings and goings of all personnel and managing of all the shore excursions in which we partake. One of his stories was when they went to Greenland and they had made arrangements for a group to play native musical instruments and dance. Only to find initially that no one showed up to do the performance and then when they finally were able to get someone, it was a single person pounding on some rocks. Another instance came in California where a seal had gotten on board and they couldn’t get it off. He figured out that it liked salmon and was able to get the seal off the ship by leading him to the ocean by feeding him the salmon they had for the guests…only the seal wouldn’t leave now that it was receiving free food. In the end they fed the seal 85 pounds of salmon that was supposed to be for the guests. We saw and heard about the high level of commitment and standards that Viking holds everyone to. We heard about their servant leadership. Where once a month the leaders make and serve dinner to the crew that report to them.
During the rest of the day, I went to several presentations. The first about what we’d see as we cruised across the Southern Atlantic…Whales, Dolphins, & Birds…and where to look for them. Another was about a number of different Ocean cruises and what you’d see on them, from the Mediterranean, to the South Pacific, to Asia, and finally the Antarctic. And then a talk about the history of our space program and getting to the moon. All very enjoyable and enlightening.
Day 5 – Our second day at sea. A slow day for us. I went on a tour of the bridge and saw how they steered and managed and controlled the ship…very fascinating. I was told this was a masked booby. I’ll leave Michael to correctly identify this bird.
We had dinner at Manfredi’s, an Italian restaurant on the ship. We made reservations for a table of, where the other 4 were assigned by the Viking staff. We met Andre and his wife Maisse, from Quebec and Pat & Tom. Mom had an incredibly tender and delicious beef tenderloin. After the meal, they surprised us with a beautiful red encased cheesecake for our anniversary!
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