The Magical Mystery Cruise to Somewhere is now in the Meddy, bound for Lisbon and then Portsmouth, UK. Should be in Lisbon on April 11th and then Portsmouth on April 15th. While nothing is confirmed, and won’t be for many days, we hope to disembark with many of the crew and fly home from London Heathrow.

Today we had no ship’s tour planned, so a fortuitous meeting and chat with the Doctor in the Atrium, scored us a tour of the Medical Centre. During the book inventory, we also scored a tour of the Owner’s Suite and it’s huge.

Navigation

We maintained WNW’ly courses at a speed of about 13 kts. On our port beam, we can see the CMV Columbus, which was astern of us in the Canal. She is bound for Malta and is maintaining a similar speed.

Weather

Fine and clear with a following wind of about 20 kts, which provided a light breeze over the decks.

Meals

For dinner this evening, we were joined by Restaurant Manager Himanshu.

Activities

Today’s activities included:

• 08:00 Spa opens
• 09:00 Temperature check
• 09:30 Baggo – Galley Giants v’s Engineering Eels
• 10:00 Medical Centre Tour
• 10:00 Lectures – recorded lectures in Cinema 1
• 10:00 Ted Talks – Life & Longevity talks in Cinema 2
• 10:30 Baggo – Explorer Extremes v’s Dingos
• 14:00 Afternoon Melodies – Classical Duo
• 14:00 Atrium Coffee Club
• 15:00 Afternoon Melodies – Classical Duo
• 15:30 Final Book inventory – included a tour of the Owner’s Suite
• 17:00 Zumba
• 17:45 Evening Serenades – guitarist Mark
• 18:00 Insanity Workout
• 21:00 Viking Vocalist Bethan – “With a Smile and a Song”
• 22:00 Music at Pool Deck with Viking Band

After breakfast and temperature check, we headed to the Atrium, where the Doctor stopped to chat with us, inviting us for a tour of her domain, the Medical Centre.

Medical Centre

Located on “A” Deck, it is accessed from the Fwd Lifts, with the Doctor and Nurses having consultation hours every morning and afternoon. However, they are on call 24/7 by dialing “999”, which is the UK emergency number. The Doctor is a very experienced trauma/emergency medical physician and is very personable, showing us the following rooms:

• Radiography – which contains a modern and high tech X-Ray machine, which is also portable.
• ICU – a single bed with all required equipment similar to major hospitals ashore. They have 2 ICU beds available.
• Pharmacy – containing a full range of medications
• Office and consultation room
• Ward – with 3 beds in a room that has positive pressure
• Stretcher and emergency bag, which is available 24/7

After lunch we reported for duty at the final Book Inventory, which included a tour of the Owner’s Suite Cabin # 7001 to inventory the many books. The suites have about a dozen books each, but the Owner’s cabin must have almost 100 books.

Owner’s Cabin (all photos courtesy of Viking Cruises)

The owners cabin is huge at over 1,400 square feet, with multiple separate rooms. Furthest fwd is the conference room.

With a huge outboard window, the conference room has lots of natural light and a tripod mounted telescope. On the inboard bulkhead is a Euro 24,000 B&O TV that must be about 65″. Along the fwd bulkhead is the Explorers’ fireplace that can also be closed off.

Aft of the Conference Room is the open plan Living Room & Dining Room, which opens outboard to the balcony, which is much smaller than those on the Explorer Suites.

Aft of the Living Room is the bedroom, which is really a Master Suite, comprising the bedroom, walk-in closet, bathroom and sauna.

The bedroom also has access to the balcony and also has an outboard sauna, where you can relax, while enjoying the ocean glide past through the window. It also has a massive walk-in closet and master bathroom.

In addition to the Master Suite Bathroom, it has 2 additional bathrooms, one by the main door and the other next to the conference room.

After dinner this evening, we headed to the Theatre for Bethan’s new show, which was developed and produced entirely aboard the Viking Sun. Excellent show, where she was joined by the Viking Band, Sammy, Josh and Tobias.