Day 22 - Thursday July 4, 2024 - Transition day to Viking Cruise

By Ellen Outten

 

Today is a day of transition.  Wayne hired a car at the hotel yesterday for our transportation to the Viking ship, the  Neptune.  

We were picked up a few minutes before our 9:30 scheduled time.  I'm writing this in the car on the way to the ship.  

It's a 28 mile drive that will take 1 hour and 5 minutes, if we're lucky.  It's 9:57 right now and we still have 32 minutes left, again if we don't run into worse traffic.

I'm looking forward to getting on the ship and even though we won't be able to get into our stateroom until 2 pm, I'm heading for the laundry immediately upon boarding.  I've packed my carry on with all my dirty clothes.  It will be the same clothes for another  30 days but they'll be clean.  I'm sure I can find our room steward to open the room and let me drop off the clean clothes.

My next stop will be to Spa services to get a haircut.  I found a salon in London for a pedicure as the ship doesn't have this service.  But I put off the haircut until I am on board.

The rest of the day will relaxation.  No need to get to know the ship. Every Viking ocean ship is identical.  We are even in the same stateroom as last week.  

This trip is 28 days and we'll go to some of the same ports as last trip.  But there will be many new ports for me.... Dublin, Liverpool, Gdansk Poland, Berlin Germany, Copenhagen Denmark as well as several Norway ports we didn't get to, so hopefully we'll see some more beautiful fjords.  .  We end our trip in Stockholm Sweden on August 1.  

All missions were accomplished by 1 pm.  Laundry done, no one but myself was doing laundry at 11 am!  Haircut appointment is set for tomorrow afternoon when I come back from my morning excursion.

The suitcases are unpacked and stowed under the bed.  We're "home" for the next 28 days.  

I've sat out on the balcony and took in the ship traffic up and down the River Thames.  The sun felt so good after 3 days of overcast skies in London.

We had lunch in the World Cafe while my laundry was drying and chatted with several couples.  Hopefully we'll find some that we get along with and hang out occasionally.

The port talk this evening was good.  Originally we were to dock in Greenwich but due to high winds, we joined our ship at the London Tilbury international cruise terminal.  We would have been able to just tender/walk ashore in Greenwich, but tomorrow my walking tour will leave an hour earlier to make up for the travel time back to Greenwich.  So it's off the ship at 7:10 am, and the best part of this is we'll be taking a boat ride to Grenwich and NOT am interminable bus ride.

For now, dinner is over and it's time to relax.

Happy 4th of July from the Viking Neptune. No fireworks, but we did get a carved watermelon.





Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 5, 2024 at 5:21 AM

    Busy times & good thing you can follow the schedule. Quite an adventure you are on-may your safe, fun travels continue

    ReplyDelete

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