Sunday, January 8, 2023 - Los Angeles - Part 2

 Post #2 – Sunday, January 8, 2023 

The naming ceremony. Not a lot to say, but quite a few photos. As promised, the ceremony began right around 5:00 p.m. We were in a suite at the front of the ship and were able to view the ceremony with almost a perfect view. We felt very lucky to be included in this small gathering and thank our hosts. 

Lots of Viking employees lined the rail at the bow of the ship. A small stage was set up and a couple of rows of chairs for the VIPs which included, Torstein Hagen, Karine Hagen, Viking Orion Godmother Sessel, A couple of excellent musicians, and Nicole Stott, former NASA Astronaut, also Aquanaut and now author and Viking Neptune Godmother. 

Torstein made his remarks, acknowledging the Viking Staff at the LA Headquarters for Viking that had been brought to the dock for the ceremony and a celebratory dinner. They were in the Cruise Terminal, but there was an open walkway on the third floor of the terminal where they all gathered and could watch the ceremony. 

Sessel made some remarks. Sessel is also a godmother of a Viking ship and is an acclaimed vocalist. At one point, the national anthem for Norway and for the US were sung by Sessel. She has an absolutely lovely voice. 

Nicole made some remarks naming the Viking Neptune, she accepted the Viking Ax from the bearer and smashed the ribbon with the ax, triggering the bottle of aquavit to fall and strike the hull. The ship had been named. 

When we got back to our room, each guest had been provided a copy of Nicole’s book “Back to Earth”. A special and moving evening.

 

Sunday, January 8, 2023 Los Angeles

 

Sunday, January 8, 2023 

Los Angeles 

We arrived in Los Angeles in the early morning hours with Starboard side (our side) against the dock. There are pros and cons to this. Con is we are looking at the Cruise Terminal and it is just a building. This one is about 3 or 4 stories tall and not particularly attractive. The pro is we are able to check out where the gangway is and kind of get a lay of the land. We also get to watch the provisioning process as a lot of it is going on right beneath our cabin. It is fascinating to watch the workers organize the pallets, and then watch the equipment load it on board. And there are pallet after pallet of provisions. And they just keep coming. 

We have been enjoying Sandemans Port as a nightcap since we’ve been on board, and we were pleased to see a pallet with several cases of Sandemans. We should be good until Hawaii.

Pallet after pallet of provisions for the Viking Neptune.

The yellow piece of equipment is actually a fork lift. Instead of it lifting things high overhead, it's arm extended inside the ship.

Once on board, everything had to be removed from the pallets and transferred to stainless steel pallets or shelving or refrigerated storage aboard Viking. Then ALL wooden pallets were removed from the ship.

 

Last night (Saturday) we received a notice that due to pending inclement weather, the decision had been made to cancel our stop in Santa Barbara. A bit disappointing, but Santa Barbara is a Tender Port and trying to tender ashore in bad weather did not sound like fun. And in pouring down rain, the excursion would not have been all that exciting. 

We had also received a notice from Viking that the naming ceremony for the Neptune would be occurring on Sunday afternoon/evening in LA and that we were invited to attend (via large screens throughout the ship). We were very pleased with this as for some naming ceremonies in the past, the passengers had been relegated to a venue on the dock and were not allowed on the ship. 

Our excursion was for 8:15 a.m. and would be a 4-hour drive around (“Postcards from LA”). Before we could get started on the excursion, we first had to clear customs in the Cruise Terminal. There were also about 300 guests departing the ship this morning for flights home. A different 300 will be arriving throughout the day to board for the remainder of the World Cruise. Customs moved along swiftly, and we had one of the nicer CBP officers that we have ever encountered.

 

We were settled on our bus and ready to pull away when a couple of people popped up and said, “we’re supposed to be on a different tour”. A quick spin around the parking lot, and off they went to find the right bus. 

This is a standard tour in LA, particularly for cruise ship passengers. Since it usually runs on weekdays, there is a lot of time built in for traffic. This is Sunday! There is minimal traffic. So, we just kept scooting from one site to the next, occasionally going round the block or pausing for photos from inside the bus. “Jon” was our guide. He had us laughing within a couple of minutes. Born and raised in LA, Jon had lot of anecdotes and facts and made all of it fun. We toured downtown LA including Olvera Street and City Hall as well as “Angel’s Flight”. Then off to Hollywood. Along the Walk of Fame we stopped for the only time we would be allowed off the bus. There are now 4,700 “Stars”. Usually, tourists get about 15 minutes. We had an hour due to how quickly we were moving with no traffic. Jon knew of a spot to take selfies with the “Hollywood” sign in the background and led us to that spot, then we were on our own for a while. We found a coffee shop and enjoyed a cup of coffee, with two couples from Australia before heading back to the bus.

Walt Disney Theatre. Amazing building! and beautiful.

Angel's Flight railroad. It only goes about a block but continues to be used to this day. It costs a whole buck to ride.

Art Deco buildings in downtown Lost Angeles.

Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Conditions apply. It costs the "star" $50,000 as a maintenance fee. They must show up for the installation.

Donald Trumps' star has had to be replaced 7 times because when he was president, somebody kept taking a sledge hammer to it.

An interesting mural in the shopping center adjacent to the Dolby Theatre.

The infamous Hollywood sign.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre

On we went along Sunset Strip with various famous restaurants and clubs. Then through Beverly Hills and adjacent communities with some very high-end rents. It really is a very lovely old, well-manicured neighborhood. Because we had so much time, Jon and the bus driver agreed to extend the tour a bit and took us to Santa Monica and Venice Beach before heading back towards the ship.

Marilyn Monroe's cottage. The comment was it was a lot more attractive when Marilyn had it.

Nakatomi Plaza. From "Die Hard"

Santa Monica Pier

A great excursion. Although we both grew up in Southern California, neither of us had ever done this kind of touristy thing. We really enjoyed it. 

We have met a couple that happen to have one of the suites at the front of the ship. We were invited to join them to watch the naming ceremony. I’ll cover that in a separate post.

Cabo San Lucas, Thursday, January 5, 2023

 

Thursday, January 5, 2023 

Cabo San Lucas 

We pulled into the bay this morning around 9:00 a.m. Once at anchor, staff started launching lifeboats. That sounds ominous, actually a very positive thing. Many cruise lines hire local tenders in ports where they must anchor and not be moored to a dock. Viking has opted to use their own lifeboats as tenders and utilize their own highly trained staff for operating these tenders. They do a tremendous job! 

What seems like it should be a fairly simple operation, there are some complications. The tender is impacted by the swells and bobs up and down next to the ship while passengers’ step from the ship to the tender. But the tender is moving up and down by at least a couple of feet. The staff assist the passengers by talking them through the process. (i.e. “get ready”, “don’t step now”, “Big step NOW”) and also holding on to the passenger while they follow instructions. Keep in mind that many of these passengers have major mobility challenges. Staff takes it in stride and know exactly how to assist. And always with a smile.

Inside the Tender. Without utilizing every seat available, there were probably 60 or so people in the Tender 

 Our tour was to start at 1:00 for a 2-hour whale watching excursion. We made it precisely on time and were led to a large catamaran. We found seats towards the front and settled in. Part of the excursion was an open bar. We each enjoyed a beverage, although we could have requested more throughout the journey, one was enough. About 1:30 we pulled away from the dock and headed out of the harbor and towards the iconic view of The Arch. It was an absolutely beautiful day. Bright and sunny with air temperature around 75 F.

After a few minutes hanging around the arch allowing for a photo op, we headed on out around Land’s End and into the Pacific in search of Whales. It didn’t take long, and we were following a humpback as it “blew”, surfaced and disappeared for a few minutes, just to do it all over again. One of those surfaces was right next to our boat. WOW! After a while, we saw the whale’s flukes (tail) and down it went. It was doing a deep dive. We knew it would be a while before it came back up, but continued on the same heading. Then we saw a couple more whales off to the left. One was breaching. So cool! Then there were 3 whales. The guide believed the one we had initially been following, had joined with the other 2. In many of the photos, we were far enough away that I’ve had to crop down the photos to show the whale so they are pretty grainy. But we’ve got our memories. Our time was up, so we headed back towards Cabo. Another photo op of The Arch, this time from the Pacific side.

Spouts from a couple of whales.

2 Humpback Whales

Fluke

 

Breach

From a friend on the boat with us. A much better photographer. 

In the background you can see a new golf course going in on the cliffside.

All in all, a great afternoon.

Sea Days

 

Wednesday, January 4, 2023 

We are just completing 4 continuous days “at sea”. What happens on sea days? For us, we are up at our usual time somewhere around 5:30 a.m. Sometimes we fix a cup of coffee in the room, sometimes we go up to the World Café where they have a nifty coffee machine that you can access 24/7. You have many choices of just how you want your coffee or tea. If we do go up to the World Café, we typically opt for a latte. 

Then we do our morning stretches on the floor of the cabin. There isn’t a lot of room, but enough to get the job done. We try to get a walk around the walking track on deck 2 where one lap is equal to ¼ mile. We are trying to increase our number of laps, but it is often dependent on how much roll we are picking up from the seas. 

For the last several days, we have had absolutely beautiful sailing weather. The seas have been calm with mostly clear skies. The seas were often almost glassy. 

One evening, we dined at the Chef’s Table. It was the “Mexican” menu. 3 out of the 5 courses were underwhelming. The kitchen here does a great job with Asian spices frequently with a fair amount of heat. The Mexican dishes seem to be bland. The mole with short rib was very good and the dessert exceptional. Some of the best chocolate we’ve ever had.

 

 

We said goodbye to our Christmas decorations, and placed a new decoration on our door. Since we’ll be visiting Hawaii and then Polynesia during January, the tropical flowers seemed appropriate.

We also watched a beautiful sunrise this morning from pitch dark to the sun rising out of the sea. We were just off the shore of Manzanillo, Mexico and were close enough to see the mountains. 

Then we finished out the day with a beautiful moonrise. I think we are just one day away from a full moon.

 

Tomorrow we are due into Cabo San Lucas and are looking forward to hopefully seeing some whales.