Voyage of the Vikings Redux - Embarkation Day

 Cruise Day 1

Saturday, July 22, 2023

We slept in this morning, but not too late as were up and around by 9:00 AM.  A friend of Val’s recommended we eat breakfast at a place called The Friendly Toast and it turned out it was quite close to our hotel.  It looked like a few other people had the same idea as there was a long line of people and the wait was over an hour.  That was too long for us, so we walked down the street to a place called The Flour Bakery + Café.  I had wanted to check it out yesterday as I saw some very tasty looking pastries in their window, but we hadn’t had time, so, as luck would have it, we ended up there today.

It was also very popular and there was a short line to order, but it moved quickly and we were soon sitting outside in the balmy morning weather enjoying a pretty unhealthy, but delicious breakfast.  Val had a piece of banana bread, and I had a large (too large) cinnamon roll and they both hit the spot.

Speaking of the balmy morning today, I forgot to mention that we had thunderstorms and heavy rain last night.  It started around nine and lasted until just past midnight.  It was somewhat entertaining as we could see flashes of lightning outside our window and crashes of thunder, but the rain came down so heavy the streets started to flood.  There was a baseball game going on at Fenway Park and I guess it really disrupted things and they had to cancel the game.  We were glad we were safely in our hotel room.

We spent the rest of the morning relaxing in our room waiting for the time we could leave.  Val started reading some posts from our Cruise Critic Voyage of the Viking Roll Call group and people were reporting that they had gone to the cruise terminal and were able to check in.  They weren’t boarding yet, but at least they were processing people.  Val and I wondered whether we should go now, but decided to be cautious and wait.  Later, Val read that they had started boarding at noon which was way earlier than expected so we decided to just go.

Our bags were already packed so all we had to do was check out and get a taxi to the cruise port.  A taxi arrived just as we walked out the door so we were on our way just a little past noon.  It was only about a twenty minute drive to the cruise port and interestingly, our driver was from Ghana.  When we told him we had been to Ghana just last year, he got all excited and we spent the rest of our ride talking about life in Ghana, what a coincidence, and it made for an enjoyable ride for us.

There was little traffic at the cruise port and although there was a short line waiting to get in, it moved quickly, and we were soon inside the terminal.  There was a pretty long line through security, but it moved pretty fast also, and we quickly had our boarding passes and were boarding the ship.

We ended up being in our cabin a little after 1:00 PM so it all worked out very well.  Much to our surprise when we walked into our room, our two pieces of shipped luggage were there waiting for us; that was a first.  As we started unpacking our two room stewards came by and introduced themselves.  They are Mus and Annus and both were very friendly and seemed very nice.

We got everything put away and decided to explore the ship.  This ship is quite a bit bigger than we are used to as it holds almost 2000 passengers.  The ship we took to Africa had a capacity of only 1400 and there was just over 1000 on board, so quite a change.  The size ship we took to Africa was the type we almost always sail on, so this ship seemed huge.  It was also laid out a little differently, so we were a bit disoriented.

After exploring a bit, we went to our muster (lifeboat) station and did the mandatory check-in and returned to our cabin.  Val’s checked bag had arrived, so she finished putting her things away while I worked on unpacking my carry-ons.  My checked bag arrived shortly after that, and by three we were all unpacked and settled in.  We had a few things to take care of, but we mostly just relaxed wishing it was time for dinner as we were very hungry.   

As we always do, we booked a Neptune Suite that is a bigger cabin and comes with some perks including the Neptune Lounge (just for suite guests) where food and beverages are available, and most importantly, there is a concierge there that takes care of any problems you have. They can book excursions or dinner reservations at a specialty restaurant, or just about anything you need done.  This is the real reason we book a Neptune Suite; more space is nice, but having the concierge available makes shipboard life so much easier.  We did go down to the Neptune Lounge to get some snacks and meet the concierge Alexa who seems very nice.  We had to eat lightly though as we didn’t want to dull our appetites for dinner.

I decided to update the blog and then relaxed until it was time to get ready for dinner.  We prefer the fixed late seating (8:00 PM) in the main dining room as we enjoy getting to know our dining stewards during the course of the cruise.  Our waiters are Supri who is from Indonesia and Al who is from the Philippines.  They are both very nice and we had a good dinner.

We were looking forward to visiting the casino after dinner but realized it wouldn’t be open as we weren’t sailing away from Boston until 11:00 PM so we returned to our cabin and relaxed for a while.  At 10:45 we heard the ship’s horn blow and realized we were sailing away early.  Val and I went out on our balcony to watch us sail out of Boston Harbor and then called it a night and went to bed.  All things considered; it had been a very good embarkation day.  Tomorrow we will be in Bar Harbor, Maine, but won’t be arriving until 10:00 AM.

Voyage of the Vikings Redux - Boston

Home to Boston

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

When we have to fly across country for a cruise, it is always my least favorite day of a trip, and today was no exception.  Today we flew from San Luis Obispo to Boston with one stop in Dallas.  Our flight out of SLO left at 6:00 AM so we were up at 3:00 AM, much too early for us.  Despite going to bed early, neither of us got more than a couple hours of sleep so we weren’t feeling very chipper.  Val’s friend Marsha picked us up and drove us to the airport and despite the early hour, Marsha was her usual happy, upbeat self, a real contrast to the way Val and I felt.

It takes a little over a half hour to get to the SLO airport from our home, so we arrived in plenty of time for our flight.  We were quickly checked in and through security and after a short wait, it was time to board.  The last few times Val and I have flown we have opted for first class seats, and it makes flying so much easier.

The flight to Dallas was uneventful and we landed on time, which was good as we only had an hour to catch our flight to Boston.  Our flight left from a different terminal than the one we landed at, so we had to take the sky train to get to the other terminal, but it was quick and easy.  Shortly after we got to our departure gate, it was time to board, and we were on our way to Boston.  We did get served lunch on our flight and it wasn’t very good, but it was better than nothing.

As the sun rose, we flew over the fog shrouded valleys of San Luis Obispo.

We actually got into Boston earlier than expected and we were quickly off the plane (another benefit of first class, first on and first off) and on to baggage claim where, much to our great surprise, our bags were one of the first ones off.  From there it was off to the cab line where we got a cab and headed to our hotel.  Unfortunately, it was around 6:00 PM in Boston and rush hour traffic combined with ongoing construction, made for a very slow drive to our hotel.

We are staying at the Fairmont Copely Plaza Hotel, and it was very nice, but all we could think about was getting checked in and getting some sleep as we were very tired.  We got to our room and settled in and wondered about dinner; neither of us were very hungry, so we decided to just walk to a nearby store and buy a snack as we knew we would be hungry later.

After reading and relaxing a bit, we were both in bed by 9:00 and asleep not long after that, it had been a looong day!

 

Boston Day 1

Thursday, July 20, 2023

We slept very well and very soundly last night and didn’t get up until around 9:30 so we ended up missing breakfast, but it sure felt good to get a good night’s sleep.

We didn’t have anything planned for the day, but the weather was beautiful so we decided to walk to the nearby Charles River where they have a park and walkway that runs along the river.  As the name suggests, the hotel is right on Copely Square where the historic Trinity Church is and there are quite a few other historical spots in the area as well as many restaurants.  It was a pleasant walk to the river with the weather being pleasantly warm.  We walked along the river for a bit, but we were hungry, so we decided to walk back and find somewhere to have lunch.  There were many choices in the area and we finally decided on Café Landwer, a Mediterranean restaurant.  Lunch was OK, but not great and we were a little disappointed, but it was good enough and while we probably wouldn’t go back, we didn’t regret our choice.

It was a beautiful day for a walk along the Charles River.

By the time we finished lunch it was mid-afternoon, and we decided to return to our hotel room and relax a bit.  Tomorrow, we have tickets for the Old Town Hop-on / Hop-off bus so we spent some time looking at the bus route map to see what we wanted to do.  As part of the hotel package that Ingrid, our travel agent, booked for us, we had $100 in hotel credit, so we decided to have dinner in the hotel restaurant and use that up.

We had made reservations that morning and it was a good thing we did, as the restaurant was quite busy.  The food was good, but heavily salted which spoiled it somewhat, but maybe that’s a New England thing, I don’t know.  All in all, it was still a good dinner, especially since we weren’t paying for it.

After dinner we did a short walk around Copley Square and the Trinity Church and then called it a night.  It had been a good first day in Boston.

Trinity Church

The old and the new.

Boston Day 2

Friday, July 21, 2023

We woke up this morning to some bad news.  As I lay in bed and checked my e-mail, I saw we had gotten an update about our cruise from Holland America.  It said that the Coast Guard had scheduled a full ship inspection tomorrow morning (embarkation day), and our embarkation would be delayed by several hours, instead of being in the first group boarding at 11:00 AM, we were now in the third group boarding at 2:30 PM, a big change. 

In reading some of the online responses from people on our Cruise Critic Roll Call forum, they were saying that this had happened last year and it turned into a big mess as everyone came early and had to wait in a long line outside in the heat.  The Boston cruise terminal is quite small and doesn’t have enough space for a lot of people inside.  It’s disappointing as this is bound to make for a stressful and compressed embarkation day, but there’s nothing we can do about it except go with the flow. 

Besides having the $100 general hotel credit, we also get an $80 day breakfast credit.  We didn’t use it yesterday because we slept so late, but we decided to use it today and went down to breakfast a little after nine.  Breakfast was good, but considering the high prices here, it didn’t really live up to our expectations; thank goodness we had the $80 credit to pay for it.  Before starting our day in Boston, I checked about getting a late check-out time for tomorrow and they extended the checkout time to 1:00 PM for us so we can hang around the room instead of waiting in the lobby until it’s time to go.

Today we had tickets for the Boston Old Town Trolley, a hop-on / hop-off bus so after breakfast we made our way to one of the stops that was just across from our hotel on Copely Square.  It was pretty full when we arrived but we did find seats and we were on our way.  The good weather we had yesterday was gone and the skies were gray and the temperature was cooler, so we had to adjust our expectations a bit, but we won't let it spoil our day.

We had done this same thing on our last visit to Boston, so we had already explored some of the stops, but this time we wanted to do a Harbor Tour, so we stayed on the bus until we got to the stop nearest the boat tour location.  We arrived around 11:00 AM and got tickets for the 11:30 tour.  There was a long line of people waiting to get on the boat, but it moved quickly, and the boat didn’t seem too crowded as everyone spread out.

It was only an hour tour of the harbor, but pretty interesting.  We had great views of Boston as we sailed around the waterfront and then out to the harbor entrance where there was a series of islands.  From there we looped back to the inner harbor where we saw more of the Boston waterfront including where Old Ironsides was docked.

 

Fort Independence at the harbor entrance.

Old Ironsides

An old lighthouse ship.

 

 

Back where we started.

After the cruise we were getting a little hungry and decided to have a light lunch at a nearby outdoor café.  After our lunch we walked over to the Faneuil Hall Marketplace which is a historic building where many of the meetings before the Revolutionary War took place that now hosts many small shops inside.  The surrounding area is filled with shops, entertainment and of course many places to get food.  It was a very lively area filled with people.

After walking around for a while, we decided to get back to the bus pickup spot and head back towards the hotel.  It was mid-afternoon and we were ready to do a little rest and relaxation before dinner.  It took over an hour to get back to the hotel, but it was an interesting drive and we saw many places that sparked memories of our last visit.

Fairmont Copely Plaza

 

 

 

 

We relaxed in our room for a while and then started to feel hungry.  We didn’t want to go back to the hotel restaurant, so we walked around the area and nothing seemed to interest us, and ended up just getting a hamburger and then returned to the room.

We’re still trying to catch up with our sleep, so we ended up going to bed early again and I was asleep before ten.  Tomorrow is embarkation day, but because of the delayed boarding time, we will have time to kill in the morning.

We didn't take many pictures while we were in Boston and Val just used her cell phone and I used a pocket camera, so here are links to our visit in 2016; Boston Day 1 and Boston Day 2 .

Voyage of the Vikings Redux - Ready to Go

Monday, July 17, 2023

One of our favorite cruises was the Voyage of the Vikings Cruise back in 2016.  We always thought we’d like to do it again, but there was always something new that we wanted to do first.  That changed this February when we received an offer from Holland America for the 2023 Voyage of the Vikings Cruise at a very good price.  We didn’t have anything planned for this summer, so we decided to go ahead and book it.  It won’t be exactly the same itinerary as 2016 as there will be some new ports replacing some of the ports we visited in 2016.

The cruise is 35 days long, which seems short compared to what we have been doing, but it is exactly what we are looking for this summer.  The reason it is called the Voyage of the Vikings is because it follows the route the Vikings took when the sailed west to find new lands to conquer and settle.  We go up the East coast of Canada then visit Greenland, Iceland, and Scotland before visiting the Netherlands where we turn around and do the same route back adding Ireland on the way.  You can see the route on the cruise map below.

This cruise is heavy on ports so there won’t be so many days at sea to relax, and many of the ports are tendering ports which always adds a little stress.  We have most of our port days planned although, since we signed up late, many of the ship's tours and privately organized tours were already full.  We are still on a waitlist for several of the ship excursions, but we have managed to find something to do in most places. 

The cruise is a round trip out of Boston and the last time we took this cruise we arrived a couple of days early and really enjoyed our time exploring Boston, so we are doing that again.  We have shipped our main luggage again and our other bags are packed except for the last-minute items so we are ready to go.  Today is Monday and we are flying out of San Luis Obispo on Wednesday morning at 6:00 AM.  That early hour means we will have to be up at 3:00 AM, which we are not looking forward to.  Val and I will both be glad to get it over with and be in our hotel rooms in Boston on Wednesday night.  Once again Val’s friend Marsha is picking us up at 4:00 AM so thanks to her for doing that.  It takes a true friend to get up that early.

As is always the case now, when you read this the cruise will be over and we will be home.  Hopefully it won’t take me as long to get this published as it did the Grand Africa Cruise blog.