I haven’t written much about our ship.  It’s brand new.  It was christened and launched in March 2016 and it’s beautiful, with Scandinavian décor.  Does “heated bathroom floor” give you an idea of the level of luxury Viking provides?  There is a hot tub, an infinity pool, and another larger pool in the Winter Garden, which is a sunroom with a retractable roof.

The “regular” restaurant where we usually eat dinner is at least a three- or four-star restaurant.  No meal is less than three courses and all the food is superb and attractively presented.  The waiter always holds my chair for me and places my napkin in my lap when I’m seated.  The two additional restaurants have to be rated with four or five stars.  They serve five-course meals, including an unnumbered course to cleanse the palate before continuing.  The wines are perfectly paired to the food served.  The dining room provides a buffet for breakfast and lunch.  All of this food is included in the price of the cruise–another part of the luxury.

The staff is the closest I’ll ever come to having servants.  Ted and I are always “sir” and “madame” and the staff lives to serve.  I had a chance to talk with one of the staff members on a more personal level and I asked if Viking is a good company to work for.  (I was really asking if they are as happy as they appear to the passengers.)  The answer was that it’s a dream job with wonderful benefits and quicker benefits than other cruise lines.  There is also the opportunity to be promoted from within.  That makes me feel a little less guilty about taking off for a day of sightseeing with good wishes from the people who are staying behind to make our bed, clean our room, and prepare the food for our return.

Our ship is relatively small–only 900 passengers and eight decks, compared to larger cruise ships with 6,000-8,000 passengers and 15-18 decks.  Once we docked beside a huge ship that even had a climbing wall on its topmost deck.  Our ship has a miniature golf course on the topmost deck.  Being small, however, means we can dock in ports with smaller harbors, so Ålborg and Flåm are on our itinerary and do not include the big ship crowds.

We have a guest lecturer onboard nearly every afternoon to discuss a topic of interest along our route.  Some of the lecture topics include the economic effect of the North Sea oil fields on Norway, the problems of the European Union, the rise and fall of communism, etc.

We also have onboard entertainers, as well as some who are brought onboard for one or two evenings.  There are two entertainment venues with a show in each most evenings.  Ted and I have attended many of them and especially enjoyed the tributes to the Beatles and ABBA.  (Not cover bands, but really good renditions of the songs.)  One night the staff presented a hilarious play that combined the story styles of James Bond and Maxwell Smart.  At other times, we attended a Parisian cabaret night, an evening with the Rat Pack, and a combination comedian/rock ‘n’ roll singer, which sounds weird but was very entertaining.

One thing I find very amusing is that, in the public restrooms onboard, there are (recorded) birds singing!  I have no idea why I’d want to feel like I’m outdoors listening to birds sing while I do whatever.

Most of the time we are at sea, we can see land in the distance, but not always.  Still, the ride has been very smooth–until we left Stavanger today.  For whatever reason, the sea is rougher tonight.  At the end of the evening performance, we were all lurching against the walls on our way out of the theater.  Granted, nearly all of us drink wine with dinner every evening, but a glass of wine isn’t enough to make us stagger as we were doing.  We laughed and commented that, until this evening, we had hardly given a thought to being on a ship.

Our stateroom is on Deck 5.  With only eight decks, it’s easy for us to use the stairs instead of the elevator.  On each stairway landing, there is a sign like the one in the picture below so that you know if you should go to the left or to the right to reach your stateroom.  It makes me smile every time I see this sign because our stateroom number is 5009.  You’ve got to love cruising!