Going Places with Lucy & Leo

Happy Birthday to me! It’s January 7th, the first of five sea days on our return trip, and I’m celebrating this birthday in high style. I started my day with a nice walk taking advantage of the calm seas. Four times around the main deck is about a mile, we must have gone around a dozen times at least. The afternoon was reserved for trivia games and a facial, what a treat, I really felt pampered. The day ended with a wonderful dinner at Manfreddy’s, the specialty Italian restaurant onboard. Couldn’t ask for more.

Surprising to me, I was not the only one celebrating a birthday. I was amazed when I received a hand written invitation for a birthday celebration at the main lounge. There were over sixty people also having birthdays on this cruise, including our Captain. The crew prepared a lovely birthday mimosa party including a special cake created for the occasion. The cake was an exact replica of the ship and big enough to feed everyone onboard. The cruise director organized a special party for all the birthday celebrants and we had a really good time, singing and toasting, and eating cake right along with the Captain. They really made it very special for all of us to celebrate our birthday on the high seas.

Days at sea are a lovely continuum of eating, playing trivia, blogging, spa time, watching for sea life, attending lectures, eating, working out at the gym, reading, eating, evenings of socializing with the other cruisers and maybe catching an onboard show, and did I mention eating. We met some lovely people which made our trip that much more enjoyable.

One of the many activities we enjoyed onboard were the varied lectures ranging from the history of the Hawaiian Islands, the war in the pacific, art, celestial navigation, answering the big question “are we alone in the universe”, you name it, there seemed to be a lecture for every topic. Leo attended every lecture on the Pacific islands, and WWII in the Pacific offered, but his interests are very diverse so he joined me in lectures related with outer space, the Aurora Borealis and art.

One such lecture centered on the Bayeux Tapestry. It was a very detailed explanation of the tapestry which I won’t go into detail in this post except as it relates to the Viking Cruise lines.

We had noticed that at all of the elevator landings on the ship there are paintings depicting Viking warriors and Viking ships and it seemed natural since this is a Norwegian cruise company. What made them unique is that all of the paintings were scenes taken right out of the Bayeux Tapestry. This famous Tapestry or rather embroidery famously chronicles the Norman conquest of England in 1066, an event that changed England’s history and took it in a totally new direction. But why does Viking cruise line use these French imageries in their ships? It turns out that the first Duke of Normandy was the Viking Rollo who was awarded the Dukedom by the king of France, along with his daughter in marriage, in exchange for peace and protection from other Viking raiders. So it’s all in the family tree and the Vikings claim their share to this history including Viking Cruise Line which received permission from the French government to display some of these scenes in their ships.

After five days of all kinds of fun and shenanigans at sea we finally arrived at our last port of call, Ensenada, Mexico before the end of our cruise in Los Angeles.

What is so special about Ensenada, for starters it is the birthplace of the Margarita which was invented during the American prohibition to attract wealthy Americans to Mexico. The rest as we say, is history. We did sample the local varieties and must say the more we tasted the better they got.

Ensenada is also Mexico’s largest wine producer, something we did not know and we were surprised to see so many vineyards around. The US really does not import much Mexican wine, which is a shame as they are quite good.

We also visited the “La Bufadora” which is one of the largest natural blowholes in the world, the sea is literally channeled into a natural rock tube or tunnel and then the water exits out on the rocky cliffs as a giant salt water geyser. Very interesting. More interesting was the gauntlet of Mexican hawkers lining the street on the way to the blowhole all trying to sell pretty much the same thing. It was fun at the same time.

After the margaritas, and getting soaked by the blowhole we made it back to the ship, to realize, it was Happy Hour for one last time! We celebrated the end of our cruise with a little bit of Johnnie Walker and immediately started planning for our next cruise.