I apologize for the delay in getting this posted. Yesterday evening the interweb was so bad that I couldn’t get these few photos uploaded. I blame Cuba.

Before I describe the day it occurs to me that a brief introduction to the ship might help you understand our day. Our cabin is on deck 4, port side, slightly to the rear of midships. Venues referenced today include: The gym, Deck 1 forward; The Theatre, Deck 2 forward; The Explorer’s Lounge, Deck 7 forward; The Living Room, Deck 1 midship; The Restaurant (sit-down dining) Deck 2 aft; The World Cafe (cafeteria) Deck 7 aft. So as we move thru our day keep track of where we are and where we move to get from one place to another.

We woke up late – I tried to get fancy with the alarm. Tomorrow we’ll go back to ”tried and true” (boring). We threw in a load of laundry and headed down to the gym. The morning walk was a bit abbreviated as we needed to get back to the room to receive our room service breakfast.

Then it was a quick shower and off to the Theatre for the first lecture of the day: a review of pre-Columbian Civilizations by our resident historian, Dr. Michael Fuller. He’s a retired anthropology prof who specializes in north American Clovis and Mayan culture. It was an interesting review of Mayan, Aztec, and Incan civilizations with references to important sites from each culture.

After the lecture we stopped by the Living Room Bar for a mocha and a Pain a Chocolot (for me) and an Arnold Palmer (for Cheryl) before heading to our next event. It felt a bit like being in college as we stopped by the Student Union for a drink and a chat between classes.

The Living Room was quite noisy as a crowd had gathered for the opening round of the Baggo tournament. For those of us south of the 49th parallel, we recognize the game as Corn-hole.

Then it was back to the Theatre for the next presentation. Mr. Robin Petch is a cetacean biologist with extensive experience in conservation and preservation of Whales, dolphins, and porpoises. He reviewed members or these species that we may be able to see during our voyage, and talked about his work and processes for finding and documenting animals in the wild.

Lunch followed. We’ve never had lunch in the sit-down Restaurant so we thought we’d give that a try. We tried it. it’s been tried. We’ll have to see if we want to try it again.

At 2:00 we met Robin Petch up in the Explorer’s Lounge where he talked for a bit about the process of spotting animals and then we sat around trying our the skills. Actually other people tried out the skills. We chatted with a nice couple who recently retired to Branson from North Central Illinois – not far from the town where my father grew up.

We cut our time there short in order to head back to the Theatre for a lecture on The Color Red.

That was followed with the Port Talk for Cozumel (also in the Theatre, but we took the opportunity to duck back to our stateroom between. A Viking Port Talk is a combination overview of the location’s cultural/political/economic history and status, along with a sales pitch for the various excursions on offer.

Following the Port Talk we had time to kill, so we returned to our stateroom only to find that our attendants Super and Ken were in the process their evening turndown service. So we grabbed sweaters and went looking for someplace quiet to spend a few minutes reading. We ended up in the pool area (Deck 7 midship) where we were accosted by a member of the bar staff handing our frozen cocktails.

For those wanting a few more images of the ship (I should say “Forget it. If you want to know book a cruise” but I’ll be nice.) Here are a couple of shots.

We didn’t have a lot of time for dinner so we returned to the World Cafe (Looks like we’re becoming cafeteria people). Tonight was seafood specialties night (even more than usual).

And…it was back to the theatre for Kyle Acierno’s “Brief History of the Moon & Lunar Legends.” He is a “space geek” who will be giving a number of lectures on topics of space exploration, political and economic trends in the future of space travel, next steps, and such. His topics will be out of this world!

Since we haven’t run enough stairs yet we followed that lecture with a session of trivia in the explorer’s lounge. We scored 10 out of 21 points which wouldn’t be worth mentioning except that the winners only got 13 points. So we didn’t feel too bad.

Finally, it was back to the theatre for the Captain’s Welcome. We were introduced to the senior officers, and entertained by various members of the on-board talent.

And at last it was time for bed. Whew!

Can’t wait for a port day tomorrow so we can get some rest.

Till then, R