Traveling the high seas

 Well,  it has been many days since I have posted to our Atlantic crossing.  These have been sea days.  There will be 8 straight  days since we left St. Maarten.  Originally it would have been 6 days with a stop in the island of Madeira ( Funchal), Portugal another sea day and then to Cadiz, Spain.  However, apparently there is some mechanical issues and the captain announced that we would bypass Madeira and go straight, albeit slowly, to Cadiz.  Even with the extra day of sailing we will get into Cadiz at noon rather than 9:00.  Some of the days have been a bit bouncy but we are both weathering it nicely and we are back to smoother sailing again, slowly.

Viking has kept us busy with some interesting lecturers (Behind the scenes in Washington during the Clinton era by, Melinda Bates, who was the visitor liaison for the full 8 years.  Another lecturers who is giving us various tales about espionage during WWII and beyond.   We have had several spa days, eaten, done trivia challenge each day with a team of 6, eaten, did the Nordic challenge of hot and cold dunking,  eaten, played our daily card game of golf and eaten.  Oh, wait, we have walked the deck, eaten and played shuffle board.  And eaten.

We have spoken to many crew members - waters room stewards, spa personnel - they are from all over the world.   Two of note however.   1.  Olga from Crimea.  She answered all our questions...she feel Crimea is okay with being identified with Russia.  2.  Teti from Kharkiv...wanted nothing to do with Russia..  she was so young (mid 20s) and far from her family...she seemed so vulnerable..  my heart went out to her.... there are maybe 4 or 5 other Ukrainians on board working for viking so i know she has others to talk to..someone else on the ship spoke to another crew member from Russia but she did not want to admit she was Russian.   How sad this all is.

Well that about sums it up.  Looking forward to getting off the ship and exploring Cadiz and Valencia....

This is the "Winter Garden" where they serve tea at 4:00 every day.  Did I mention that we had eaten there for tea before  dinner?  Maybe in one of the previous  eating mentions it was implied.