Our Viking Journey - Part 2

Last week when I wrote of our recent vacation cruise, I wrote mainly of what we experienced when we were off of the ship exploring the various ports of call visited by the Viking Neptune.  Today, I would like to talk about what the experience was like aboard the ship itself.  Please know that this blog, in addition to me reviewing books and movies, blowing off steam about the Pittsburgh Pirates, and highlighting celebrity obituaries, it also serves as a personal journal and historical recored for me.  So, if hearing about and seeing photos of someone else's vacation bores you, please feel free to ignore it.  No offense taken.

As many of you know, I had previously experienced a Viking river cruise back in 2018.  The experience was a wonderful one, so I had no doubt that a Viking ocean cruise would be equally as wonderful, and I was not let down.  Relative to other cruise lines, the Viking liners are small with a capacity for 900 passengers, and they carry a crew of approximately 450 people, crew to passenger ratio the assures excellent service throughout the journey.  Viking liners are also limited to adults only, so no kids makes for a quieter cruise experience.

The service, as I said, was impeccable.  We would leave the room for breakfast, and return an hour later to see the room completely made up.  Same at dinner time when you would return to see that the nightly turn down service had taken place.  The room itself, including the bathroom, was quite roomy.  Never once felt like we were shoehorned into it, and every room had a balcony.  

The food was excellent.  Two fancy-shmancy restaurants for special dinners, another sit-down restaurant (called, appropriately, The Restaurant) available, and a "World Cafe", which was a cafeteria-type place open all day (and trust me "cafeteria" is way to pedestrian a word to describe the food offerings there), and room service available 24/7, of which we availed ourselves for a couple of breakfasts and one dinner when we had a seasick day during the cruise.  

The common areas of the ship were amazing. 

• A 'living room" which was  multi-story atrium that had a bar, comfortable sitting areas to meet and converse, and a baby grand piano, and a rotating group of musicians, that provided classical style musical background featuring everything from Bach and Beethoven to Lennon and McCartney to the Everly Brothers.
• A pool area on the top deck with a retractable glass roof.
• A spa that included a heated jetted pool, a steam room, and a snow room.  Yes, I said snow.  We availed ourselves of the spa services and each got an 80 minute massage one day. They weren't inexpensive, but, trust me, they were worth every penny.
• Entertainment like you wouldn't believe.  On separate evenings we saw four very talented young singers, two guys, two ladies, "The Viking Vocalists", backed by an amazing four piece band, do a Motown show, an ABBA show, and a Beatles show.
• Enrichment Lectures.  We attended one about V-E Day, and two of series given by a woman who served as Head of the White House Visitors Office during all eight years of the Clinton Administration.  
• We participated in three separate Name That Tune Trivia Contests, and finished second each time (drat!).
• A separate late night cocktail lounge with musical stylings by two other young singers, a guy and a lady, who were also amazing.

However, perhaps the most interesting and perhaps the best part of traveling like this are the people that you meet from all over the world.  

We ran into three separate people from Louisiana who, once we told them we were from Pittsburgh, each told us that they either grew up with, went to the same school as, or was a high school classmate of TERRY BRADSHAW! When I asked the one lady if Terry took her to their Senior Prom, she said no, he did not, and I said, well you ought to say that he did, because at this point, who's going to fact check her on it.

Members of the crew were literally from all over the world.   Europe, Asia, Africa.  It was fascinating to talk with them and hear their stories, and EVERYONE has a story.

On our very first night of the cruise, I see a gent sitting in the "Living Room" wearing a Rutgers quarter zip.  I will pare all the details, but that sparked a conversation that led to a friendship between Linda and I and Patti and Barry Rowe from Massachusetts. We would meet up with them just about every evening to review our days, share dinner, and (especially) have a drink or two or three, while just truly enjoying each other's company.  In the two weeks since we all returned home, we have remained in touch, and we have tentative plans to meet up with them in Massachusetts when the Steelers play the Patriots in Foxboro in September.  Fingers crossed.

I will leave you now with some photos taken aboard the Neptune.

The Sproules and the Rowes

Our stateroom

The Living Room Atrium

The Explorers Lounge

Top deck, front of the ship

Great Spot!

Kickin' back!

We had our share of these over thirteen days!

The Pool Deck with both closed and open roof.

Too cold to keep the roof open

The Lounge Singers

The ABBA Show

The pool area in the Spa

Linda made it into the Snow Room at the Spa!

Dance Party Night

Not allowed to post the video I took of Patti and Linda dancing

Did I mention the food?

Gelato with EVERY meal

 at the World Cafe

The Beatles Show.

I will close with this picture that a fellow passenger took of us one day in the Explorers Lounge.  Might be our favorite picture of the two of us from the entire trip.

I will also close by saying that this was probably not our last adventure aboard a Viking vessel.

Our Viking Journey - Part One

As I indicated in previous post, Linda and I returned recently from a wonderful vacation cruise aboard the Viking Cruise ocean liner Neptune.  We left Pittsburgh on May 6 and flew to Montreal where we boarded the Neptune,  and over the next 13 days, we explored Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax, Boston, and New York City.  We did all of this while traveling on this beautiful ship, all the while being treated to excellent service, eating wonderful food, and being entertained nightly.  It was the trip of a lifetime, and a vacation experience that we will never forget.

Now I have often said in this very space, that overloading other people with details and photos of YOUR vacation, is a lot like recounting your latest round of golf or telling everyone how your fantasy baseball team is doing.  There is only so much that other people want to hear.  So, I will try - repeat TRY - to just scratch the surface with a few stories and some photo highlights.  If you want to hear more, just ask, or, if you REALLY want to know more, come on over and we will happily sit you in front of our computer and show you the hundreds of photos and videos from the trip that we have stored there.

So, here goes....

This is a piece of public art in downtown Montreal.  We don't know what its is called, but those of us the tour bus called it "The Goalie".

It was quite cold and very windy when we got off of the bus to explore Quebec City, so I bought myself a toque hat to commemorate the visit.  How very Canadian of me!

A block later, we went into another store, where I found a toque that I liked better, so now I have two of them,  Hey, you can't take it with you, right?

Because of weather and bad seas, the Captain had to cancel our port stop in the city of Gaspe, but that gave us an extra day at sea and an extra day in Halifax. We much enjoyed our stop in Halifax, where we stopped at a local brewery, enjoyed a flight of beers, and had some wonderful conversations with some local folks.  Sadly, while in Nova Scotia, we did not run into Sidney Crosby 😥

Then it was on to Boston, where I was able to get some pictures of some famous Bostonians, or at least pictures of statues of famous Bostonians.

JFK at the Massachusetts State House

Unfortunately for us, the Paul Revere stature 

is undergoing some refurbishment

Bobby Orr outside of the TD Garden

This was taken one day before the Celtics 

were eliminated by the Knicks

And of course, while in Boston, we had to stop where everybody knew our name.

Here's a crazy memory.  The guide on our tour bus in Boston, "Uncle Steve". used the word "cockamamie".  I told him that I hadn't heard that word used in forty years, but it's a great word, and I resolved then to use it more often!

The trip ended in New York City where we took a "Manhattan Highlights" tour.  Now this is not a tour that I would highly recommend.  Your bus drives through Manhattan and the guide says something like "On your right is Rockefeller Center Plaza." If you're sitting on the left side of the bus, you miss it, and even if you're on the right side, the bus drives right past it and if you blink, you miss it.  It is also difficult to appreciate the grandeur of the Empire State Building while sitting on  a moving bus at ground level.  One thing that the tour did though was make a thirty minute stop at the World Trade Center 9/11 Memorial.  That was a moving experience and well worth putting up with any of the other shortcomings of the tour.

I am going to stop here with this particular travelogue.  I will be doing an additional post in the days ahead that will showcase some of what we experienced aboard the Neptune.  That will include some of the features of the ship itself, the entertainment that we experienced, and, most importantly, some of the people that we met.  Meeting different people, I have found, is the most fun part of a journey like this.  Everybody has a story to tell. In that post, I will especially highlight a couple from Massachusetts, Patti and Barry, that we met on our first night on board with whom we shared a cocktail or three just about every night on board.

Stay tuned for Part Two.

Whither The Grandstander?

The most recent Grandstander post was made fourteen days ago, May 5, and since that time, the following events have taken place.

• We have a new Pope, Leo XIV, and he's an American and was christened the same as The Grandstander: Robert Francis.
• The Pirates fired Derek Shelton.
• The Steelers traded George Pickens to the Cowboys.
• Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson (and a few others that no one cares about) got amnesty from Major League Baseball.
• A Broadway luminary, Charles Strouse, has died.
• The Pirates continue to lose games at both astounding and stultifying paces.
• Aaron Rodgers remains unsigned.

I know that all many maybe a few of you out there have been wondering "why in Hell isn't The Grandstander giving us his opinions on these weighty matters?  WHAT GIVES?"

Let me give you a hint:

On My 6, Linda and I embarked upon a thirteen day cruise of Canada and the Eastern Seaboard, Montreal to New York City, aboard the Viking Neptune.  It was a thirteen day journey where we made wonderful memories and made new friends. while seeing some wonderful places in North America.  

I will share some details and photos of that great adventure in later posts.

I will also be adding my $.02 on some of the items listed in the bullets above,

I'm back!

Kickin' back!

Sunset

Somewhere on the St. Lawrence Seaway