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.