Ship Shenanigans - as far as Saudi Arabia anyway!
In between our stops in Muscat and Salalah, we have enjoyed some wonderful and interesting activities on the ship.
With his love of the sea, Geoff could not have chosen a more appropriate cruise line to sail with. The Viking Mars is a beautiful Norwegian ship with a timeless design using a lot of pale woods native to Norway. It’s a very streamlined design with a lot of nature-inspired elements and all the common spaces are very peaceful and calming. There is plenty of detail in the design, rug patterns bear stylised architectural drawings of ancient Viking ships and heavy, braided cotton macramé window coverings resemble the rigging on sails (and hide the view of the lifeboats!)
There are sculptures and other decorative items such as oversized coin replicas and reproductions of metal helmets, swords and symbolic figurines. Under the gorgeous staircase in the atrium is a multi-coloured lichen garden which was inspired by the wild lichen and slate-grey boulders found in Norway’s Finse mountain plateau, it looks more like a tapestry and is laid out like a Norwegian knitting pattern using lichen, moss, birch, bark, stones and slate. Overlooking this staircase is a screen-as-artwork (slightly fancier than my purple art on my Frame TV at home!). A giant LCD screen, it usually displays and rotates classic nature scenes by British photographer Alastair Miller but given our location, is currently featuring Middle Eastern artworks.
There is a small Viking Heritage Museum which features the life and culture of the legendary seafarers with replicas of ancient Viking clothing, jewellery, coins, daily implements and weaponry and a timeline of the Viking era. The Wintergarden tearoom, home of the delicious afternoon teas, was designed entirely around a stylised Yggdrasil, a Nordic Tree of Life, made of pigmented white ash. Central to Nordic mythology the Tree of Life is where the gods travelled to hold their daily court. Its branches extended far into the heavens. Legend has it that Odin, Father of the Gods, who was a relentless seeker of knowledge and wisdom, was willing to sacrifice almost anything for this pursuit. He once hanged himself for nine nights from the Tree of Life to gain knowledge of the runes. The runes are written letters that were used by the Norse and other Germanic peoples before the adoption of the Latin alphabet in the later Middle Ages. They are symbols of some of the most powerful forces in the cosmos. His two ravens are visible in the right corner of this Yggdrasil. Open-work partitions depict the story of Odin’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who flew all over the world gathering information. They would return to him and whisper their findings in his ears. The Vikings venerated the raven and used the bird’s image on armour, helmets, wood carvings, jewellery and longships. Even the tiles on the swimming pools tie in with the Nordic design element, resembling Norwegian knitting patterns.
Each stair landing has a reproduction of the 11th Century iconic work of medieval art, the Bayeux Tapestry, which documents William the Conqueror’s invasion of England from Normandy and the death of the Anglo-Saxon King Harold in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. William was a descendant of the Viking Chieftain Rollo and changed history when he arrived in his fleet of ships which were built in traditional Viking clinker style, common in Normandy which has been settled by Norsemen – the Vikings!
The cushions in the Star Theatre feature famous faces of Scandinavian stars with their signatures embroidered on the reverse, such as Ingmar Bergman, Greta Garbo, Liv Ullman, Ingrid Bergman and the Norwegian figure skater, Sonja Henie.
The Explorer’s Lounge which is on two levels on Decks 7 & 8 has an illuminated constellation at the entry which is a symbolic welcome, and the glass staircase leads to the upper deck which is a treasure trove of navigational design elements with memorabilia dedicated to the early Norwegian and Viking seafarers and with a beautiful seafaring library to match.
Everyday there is a choice of a number of guest lectures by the two resident historians on the boat. Many focussing on the cities and countries we are visiting so we are well versed in what we are going to see and the history and dates around it all. Geoff is very keen on these as he’s a bit of a history buff, and I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing what is in store for us at each stop. One of the historians hails from Liverpool (where my Mum hailed from) and gave a lovely “In the Town where I was born….” presentation which I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from. It was amazing to see his film clip of the Beatles performing in The Cavern in 1962 as that was also the year my eldest sister Denise and I visited with our Great Uncle, who had a friend who worked there and gave us a tour of it. (I won’t mention the autographed photograph he ripped off the wall, together with a chunk of The Cavern’s plaster and gifted us, which we subsequently lost – how much would that have fetched at auction these days I wonder!!!).
There is a daily Trivia Quiz which we have enjoyed, groups of up to 6 allowed, so we have joined up with fellow guests to test our general knowledge. We’ve settled into a nice rhythm with Kathy and Mark and we’ve had some good and some bad days. There are a few very formidable teams who are taking it all very seriously, not us though we just have a good laugh and enjoy ourselves. We also had a couple of fun music quiz nights which we acquitted ourselves quite well at.
Geoff has been perfecting his Bridge skills, we have had some lovely evening swims accompanied by a cocktail, especially as most of the guests are getting ready for dinner at this time and we have the pool area to ourselves. We’ve also found a lovely little private spot on Deck 8 to watch the sunset with our G&T’s. There is normally a show of sorts, some of which we have seen and we particularly enjoyed an English magician, Marc Oberon, whom we had a lovely chat to afterwards and who has showed Geoff and I a few tricks to perform with our grandchildren! A few late nights and moves on the dancefloor – not many of the guests seem to be that keen on dancing so quite often it’s just us up there!
Needless to say the food has been outstanding – we are being reasonably disciplined when we approach the buffet and have had some lovely dinners in the speciality restaurants, The Chef’s Table and Manfredi’s, as well. Fortunately, there is a never-full and very well kitted out gym so we have been able to do some exercise, and I can use my favourite piece of equipment, the rowing machine (after all, I have a blog named after rowing so I have got to do it justice!) we’ve also vowed to not take the lifts and always walk up the stairs. I guess to date, my only complaint is the bloody awful, but much-needed, haircut I had in the salon. Still, my hair grows fast so it’s no big deal in the scheme of things!
Thursday 11 May – a bit of a milestone, at 1400 hours we turned into the Red Sea and are now cruising along with Yemen on one side, and Somalia on the other – we can see land on both sides it’s that narrow! We took our cocktails up to Deck 8 and sat and watched the sunset – and had a chat with one of the security guards patrolling the deck. He works for a British marine security company and works on the Red Sea route. He was one of the midnight arrivals on Tuesday night and will disembark tomorrow when he gets taken off by a 50 foot power launch and gets taken straight to another ship. He has no base in the Middle East, he just goes from ship to ship escorting them through and then goes home for a break every few months. He told us that there was a recent incident on 27 April where a mega yacht was attacked, gunfire ensued and the guards secured the yacht but one of the pirates was killed and one was injured. So it seems there is still plenty of pirate activity going on around here.
Friday 12 May – 12 noon and we watched the guards disembark onto the power launch and motor back to their Mother Ship to sail to their next assignment after safely escorting us through the dangerous part of the Red Sea, we have also noticed that our ship has now slowed down from 20+knots to 14+ knots now that any risk of attack has been averted.
A Galley Tour for us this afternoon which was very interesting. There are two speciality restaurants, The Chef’s Table which offers a 5-course degustation dinner with matching wines and different menu daily, and Manfredi’s Italian Restaurant, which we had to book prior to our embarkation and both of which we have also managed to snag another couple of reservations at since we have been on board. There is also a restaurant imaginatively named The Restaurant, fine dining with no reservation required, and the World Restaurant which is a huge buffet with 4 different stations – fish, appetisers, main courses and desserts and occasionally an extra barbecue area outside on the Aquavit deck. No shortage of food then, and all of this is prepared in the Galley along with all the Room Service requests. It was unbelievably calm in there given the amount of exquisite fare that is being prepared, no one shouting or swearing or throwing anything around!
There is a Team of 8 who work shifts over 24 hours preparing all the salads, a lot of the preparation for the evening meals is done between midday and 4pm, there is a chef who only makes the home-made ice-cream with flavours changing daily, a chef for desserts (my favourite part of the tour!), a different home-made pasta made each day for Manfredi’s, a bakery section with delicious breads and pastries being baked daily, and many other speciality sections . We walked through the room service galley, the washing up area, the cold pantry where all the salads and prepared food is stored. Bookings for the Chef’s Table and Manfredi’s are on a screen so they know how many to cater for, most of the provisions are kept on Deck a as there is a limited amount of storage space in the Galley. 3 ½ tonnes of food were picked up in Salalah! And wait for this – all leftovers are fed to the fish when the ship is in International Waters, 12 kilometres out to sea. Those fish are bloody well fed!!!!!!
So there we have it, life on board so far….. certainly no complaints from us, we’re having a ball!
We arrive in Jeddah tomorrow morning so hopefully an interesting blog ahead!
