Today we are cruising through the Gulf of Mexico (yes, Donald, MEXICO) heading for Cozumel tomorrow morning. During the night we’ll be pretty close to Cuba. “Where exactly does this cruise go?”, some have asked. Here’s the original cruise map:

However, it’s not totally accurate. Instead of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico we will be stopping where the “X” is on the map – Acajutla, El Salvador. After Acajutla it’s non-stop (five sea days) to Los Angeles. We’ll be in Colon, Panama on Christmas day (does Santa come here?). On Boxing Day (or St Stephen’s Day or Wren’s Day) we’ll be on the Panama Canal. On New Year’s Eve we’ll be chugging northward on the Pacific towards Los Angeles.

I didn’t get a chance when we boarded to get a good picture of the Sky. So below is a picture. All Viking Ocean ships are identical in design and hold roughly 980 passengers. So this ship is the same in almost every regard as the ship we took from Bergen, Norway to London and to the ship we took from Vancouver through Alaska to Tokyo, Japan. We are in stateroom 5099 toward the rear on the starboard side. You can learn all about the Sky here if you’re interested.

Here are today’s random pictures from around the ship. Two pools – the main pool and the infinity pool at the stern. You can see my shadow in two of the pictures.

Dinner was in the Restaurant, the main dining room. We shared a table and met some nice people. Elaine had some vegetarian thing. I had roast duck.

After dinner it was drinks in the Explorer’s Lounge.

I am reading this book from the ship’s library.

We had breakfast at the hotel and then drove just down the road to turn the car in at Enterprise. (The car rental was free because of all the Enterprise points I have accumulated on our car rentals in Ireland!) We walked back to our hotel (fifteen minute walk max) to kill time at the hotel until our limo pickup at 12:15 PM to transport us to the cruise terminal and our ship.

The limo was on-time. We were to Port Everglades in fifteen minutes. Viking took our luggage and we had a seat inside the terminal to await boarding (which was slightly delayed because of a Coast Guard ship inspection). We were aboard and in our stateroom by 1:00 PM. The luggage arrived shortly thereafter. We had a quick lunch in the World Cafe and then proceeded to get unpacked.

At 5:00 PM we were at the Living Room bar for cocktails and chit chat. We sat at the bar. The woman to our left, travelling solo, was from Tucson and loves Dingle in Ireland. The couple to our right are on their first sea cruise and quite a cruise it will be – they are onboard for 120 days of the Viking World Cruise. After Los Angeles they will be off to Hawaii, French Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia, Java, Singapore, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, the Seychelles, a bunch of stops in Africa, Spain, France, and ending in London. Yikes.

Dinner was quiet in the World Cafe. After dinner drinks were in the Explorer Lounge where we met more interesting people. And then it was off to bed. No pictures today.

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Saturday Morning

It’s Saturday morning as I post this. Smooth sailing last night and a good night’s sleep. Breakfast was grand. Here’s a potpourri of pictures from around the ship this morning. The first group is from our (messy) stateroom including two from the balcony looking forward and back.

Then random shots from my morning walkabout after breakfast. Elaine’s in there in one of them.

Today is a sea day in the Gulf of Mexico, so probably not a lot more pictures for tomorrow’s blog.

We’ve been coming here for a long time, We used to come down for a week or two in the winter back when we lived in frigid snowy Boston. I was doing it before I met Elaine. We loved going to the old Gulfstream when it was a beautiful race track. Now it’s a casino with a race track outside. It lost all its character. Anyway, there’s not a lot new to see in the area, so we just relax. In the morning we took a walk on the beach. The grounds of the hotel are massive, and few people were up and about yet. It was windy and red flag warnings were posted all along Fort Lauderdale’s beaches – no swimming! There are dangerous rip tides and currents all about, I guess. And there were purple flags out as well – Portuguese man-of-wars, jelly fish and sting rays out and about. Made the pool look like a better idea. We stayed out of all water (except the shower).

Reminder
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews may show just thumbnails of the pictures. By the way, the pictures look much better on a tablet or a computer than they do on your phone. Just saying.

After our walk, we retrieved our car (2025 Mazda CX-30) from the valet and took a ride. We drove all the way the coast road from the hotel through Fort Lauderdale, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Pompano Beach, Hillsborough Beach, and Boca Raton. Then we turned around and backtracked down, stopping in our old stomping grounds at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. A visit to the Village Pump is mandatory here. It’s a Boston bar through and through. In the old days we almost always ran into someone we knew when we were here. Not so much anymore – lots of those people have died. We had drinks (beer for Elaine, Cape Codder for me) and lunch. Elaine had a patty melt, I had six delicious Blue Point oysters (from Connecticut) and a Cuban sandwich.

Back to the hotel and I napped. Elaine read on the balcony. At cocktail hour we headed to the bar for one pina colada each (with massive rum floaters) followed by Coronas. (Eat your heart out, Tim.) No dinner required after our big lunch.

Tomorrow we turn the car in just down the road from the hotel. We can walk back to the hotel on the beach. We have have a car picking us up at the hotel to transport us to Port Everglades to board the Viking Sky. More on that tomorrow.

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It’s tomorrow morning now. A couple of pictures: one from our balcony at night before we went to bed and two from our balcony early this morning.

Be back later from the ship.

Off again. Today we flew to Fort Lauderdale. 12:55 PM flight on Jet Blue in their new Mint class. Lie flat seats, plenty of leg room, and more than decent food. We left on time and arrived 30 minutes early at 6:30 PM. The food service is interesting: four small plates of which you can select three. I chose Radicchio Salad with Apples & Prosciutto and Rigatoni in Parmesan Cheese Sauce. Yes, I chose just two! And then there was vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce for dessert.

Our hotel, the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort, is not far from the airport and I thought I knew the way. I didn’t. After getting lost, I resorted to Google Maps and we were quickly at the hotel. Nice room on the ocean on the 14th floor. We quickly found the (nearly empty) beach bar where we enjoyed some ice-cold Coronas and some food (a trio of dips with an added queso blanco and a medley of sea food including fish, shrimp, and calamari. Then it was quickly off to bed.

It’s Thursday morning as I write this. We’ll have a quiet day in Fort Lauderdale. We board the ship on Friday. Here are a few pictures from our balcony taken at 6:30 AM. See you again tomorrow.