Voyage of the Vikings Cruise - Cruise Day 35 - At Sea

Today is the worst day of the cruise – the last day.  Everything is winding down and we are faced with packing and getting everything ready to go.  We were up by 8:00 and after a quick breakfast in the Neptune Lounge, Val started packing and I updated the blog.  When our room attendants showed up to clean our room, Val went out on the balcony and I decided to do some walking.  I did three laps (1 mile) and then headed back to the room to start my own packing.

Packing to leave is the worst thing of the cruise; not only do you have to pack everything you brought with you; you have to pack all the additional things you’ve bought along the way.  After much shuffling and struggling, we finally got it all in.  It was time for lunch so we headed up to the Lido for lunch.  

Val decided not to go to trivia today so we had some time to kill and went down to the photo gallery to see who won the photo contest.  LT, who went with us on our tour in Isafjordur, Iceland won first prize in landscape for his waterfall picture; congratulations LT!  Val won runner up in the wildlife competition with her picture of the four-horned Manx Loaghtan sheep on the Isle of Man.  Congratulations to Val, it was a great picture and she deserved to win.

Val won runner up in the wildlife category.

LT won first place in the landscape category.

Next we went to the third round of the slot tournament where Val was in third place and I was in fourth place at the start of the day, but when we arrived we found that I had been bumped off the board and Val was down to the sixth and last spot.  We waited around for a while and then Val got bumped so neither one of us was on the board any longer.  We decided to give it another try, but we both fell far short so we didn’t qualify for the finals.  John, one of the people we play trivia with at the MIX in the evenings was still on the board so we stayed around and watched him compete in the finals, and he won!  It was his first try at a slot tournament and he now has $500 to show for it; congratulations John!

John gets paid after winning the slot tournament.

 

It was back to the room before dinner as things were winding down pretty quickly on our cruise.  After getting ready for dinner, we headed to the MIX for our final round of trivia before going to dinner.  Today was Mary Beth’s birthday so we joined our table together along with Richard’s and Glen’s and we all ate together.  It was a great meal and afterward Mary Beth was serenaded by the dinner stewards with the Indonesian birthday song.  It was a really fun evening with our new friends.   Here is a video of Mary Beth's birthday serenade.  The steward in the white jacket shaking hands with her at the end is our TJ, our great dining room steward.

Happy Birthday Mary Beth

We really enjoyed talking to Ken, Mary Beth, Richard and Glen every night and they really made our dinners fun.  After saying goodbye to our dinning stewards, TJ and Bonny, we were off to the casino for our final night.  We both lost, but for the first time on a cruise I didn’t lose all of my money and actually brought some home with me.

After the casino is was back to the room for our final packing and then bed as we had to get up early tomorrow.  We have to put our large luggage out in the hall tonight, which we’ll pick in the terminal tomorrow after it goes through customs. Tomorrow when we wake up we’ll be in Boston and our cruise will be over.