Around the Ship

Bridge Tour: This is Captain Otto Pilot. He lives on the bridge.

The Red Sea, April 15 — Yesterday I filled you in on food, wine and laundry. Which led one of you to ask if I’d ever had a galley or laundry tour. No to laundry. But I did have a bridge tour and a galley tour a while back.

The Bridge

The ‘Arthur Miller’ shot.

Some of the signal flags...

And country flags — we fly their flag whenever we anchor or dock in that country... alongside the Norwegian flag, of course.

In every port, we are boarded by immigration officers — including those looking for bribes or special privilege. In India, that privilege was bringing their entire families onto the ship for a tour. It happened to be Easter Sunday. Now, children are not allowed on board any Viking ships. But Indian Immigration’s children had to be allowed on — or we would not get our immigration clearance. Once on board, the children immediately spotted and devoured the Easter candy decorations around the ship.

This is all very burdensome for Igor, our purser, whose job it is to get all 1,300 of us (839 passengers + 460 crew) on and off the ship legally in every country. Fortunately, he will be the purser on my next cruise. Judging by our cruise director’s glee when making that announcement, this means that Brazilian immigration must be a pain — Igor is Brazilian!

A far more pleasant visiting delegation comes on board in each port to do the nautical equivalent of handing the captain ‘the keys to the city.’ At this Plaque Exchange Ceremony the Harbor Master plus a few port officials give us a plaque and we give them a Viking Sun plaque. Except it doesn’t always work out that way.

Otto, whom you met at the top of this post, was given to the ship in lieu of a more traditional plaque in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We pulled in on New Year’s Day and maybe the port committee had forgotten we were coming? Because they presented the captain with Otto, glued to a piece of cardboard. He is now the ship mascot.

The Galley

Chef Eric oversees all the food on board and gives very interesting cooking demonstrations in the theatre (photo below). He came onboard a couple months ago and is very well-liked. For one thing, he reduced the amount of salt in the food preparation. I like him because he is French, he has great eyes, and he makes sure the cooking classes always start with champagne — at 10 a.m. Like I said, he’s French. I’ve got a class tomorrow: Moroccan!

Part of the main galley serving the passengers — it is vast. There is another galley on a very low deck for the crew ‘mess.’ We got a flyer about that yesterday, showing the 12 mess staff, called ‘the ladies and gentlemen serving the ladies and gentlemen serving the ladies and gentlemen upstairs.’

Waiters ride down to pick up the food from the galley then ride back up to the Restaurant to serve it.

Not in the galley, but in the Wintergarden... the deck 7 ‘living room.’ This machine makes the best coffee on the ship, and the beverage manager, Walter, who is Italian, is very proud of it. He should be: it cost $50,000.

Star Theatre... Besides being our lecture hall, most nights it is the concert hall. I go about once a week, since I haven’t been crazy about a lot of the performers. This young pianist named Naomi Something was excellent. They usually use the overhead camera for pianists, and in her case it was interesting to see her unusual finger technique.