Day 11 - Viking Vela

I don’t know what to say, we are just very unfortunate on this trip. The seas were rocking and rolling from midnight and beyond (it’s 1:30 pm now) with 70 MPH winds. But this time, the cabin stewards had prepared the cabin with doorstops between the closet doors and all glass secured. No nightstands crashed into us or anything else.

We were in the choppy, windy, and rainy water all morning and then went into inner waterways for much smoother sailing. About 90 minutes in, the captain comes back on and says he’s turning around to go back to the North Sea because it’s too windy in the inner passage and we have to go under some bridges. He doesn’t feel confident he can get through the narrow bridge passages unscathed. Seriously, WTF????

I did snap some pics from our balcony while we were “inside” because there’s land on both sides. You can see how gray it is outside. That’s another statement on this cruise - gray weather.

It’s funny, if we hadn’t had all these issues and made it the Arctic Circle, we probably wouldn’t have seen the northern lights because it’s been too cloudy. A couple of our new buddies got off the boat in Alesund and flew to Tromso to try and see the lights. We almost followed them; we thought hard about it. We will see if it works out for them.

The ship will be showing the NFL games tonight: at 10:30 pm and 2:00 am. Sigh

On the plus side, I have a massage today to relieve all the stress of doing absolutely nothing since last Saturday, lol. Martha is in her usual spot, but does have a lecture planned for later this evening on Rubys and Sapphires.

Martha’s contribution: I went to the room after lunch to drop off some stuff and there was a big beautiful leather box on the bed. I thought, hmmm...what has Maggie been up to and do I need to check the credit card statement?

So I peeked in the box and there was a small, eloquently wrapped object. Again, I'm intrigued. What could it be?

I carefully unwrapped the package and it was our socks and underoos coming back from the laundry.

The rest of our clothes were neatly hung in the closet. That may be a bit of overkill, but laundry comes with our room so we are definitely taking advantage, lol.

We met an Aussie couple the other night and Lee is a beer man. I just saw him at the bar and he had the Norwegian Pilsner. I didn’t like it much, but I’ll have to give it another shot after Lee said to drink from the can. When the bartender pours it into a glass, Lee says it goes flat because the glasses aren’t fully clean. Well sh&@, why wouldn’t they be clean? Lee said they have traces of detergent in them which flattens the beer. I have no clue if it’s true, but I’ll try it in the can and see if I like it any better.

Chilling out waiting on room service since the buffet is a tribute to seafood tonight. I’m very chill after my excellent massage.