Greetings from aboard the S.S. Viking Sea

January 8, 2018 As we write this we are located in Frederiksted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands on the third day of our 11 day cruise through the West Indies. We booked this cruise last summer and then in the fall watched the coverage of Hurricane Maria with our itinerary in front of us checking off each island on the itinerary as it was reported to be destroyed by the hurricane. We received periodic emails from Viking Ocean Cruises assuring us that our itinerary was still good to go. Two weeks before the cruise Viking announced that our first port of call after leaving San Juan, Puerto Rico had been changed to Frederiksted in the U.S. Virgin Islands from our port of call in the British Virgin Islands. Flying into San Juan on Saturday, we observed from our plane a significant number of houses with blue tarps covering damaged roofs. The driver of our bus from the airport reported that almost 50% of the country was still without power. He also told us his was one of the "blue roof" houses. He had been told power and water repairs would be done by April but seemed unsure that that was going to occur. The Viking representative on the bus indicated that repairs were slow because of both a lack of contractors and materials. On our Sunday tour our guide pointed out the main power station that provided power for San Juan and reported that it had come on line just 3 weeks ago. He gave no indication of where power came from before then. Our tour was in the old town of San Juan and suffered less damage then other parts of the city because of the type of construction used during the building of this area. All of the Puerto Ricans we encountered thanked us vociferously for still choosing to come to their country for our vacation. In Frederiksted, Lynda stayed on board our ship while Tim did a walk about. There was little to see in this village. Tim saw palm trees that had been damaged. He walked through a veterans park that had small obelisks for each branch of the military serving as memorials for those who lost their lives in service to our country. Several of the memorials had lost marble panels. In one of the shops Tim visited, the shopkeeper told him that she was still without power but crews were working in her neighborhood so she hoped to have power soon. She did say that 90% of the island did have power and that overall the island had recovered from the storm much quicker then they had originally been told. That's enough serious news. Let's get on to the fun stuff. Saturday was long travel day for us. Our flight out of Detroit left at 6:00 a.m. so we chose to stay at a hotel near the airport Friday night. We left our hotel Saturday morning at 4:00 in below zero temperatures. After a short layover in Atlanta where it was 18 degrees, we arrived in San Juan at 2:15 with temperatures in the mid 80's. By the time we collected our baggage and bused to our ship it was 4:00. We spent the rest of the day unpacking and exploring the Viking Sea. Some of you may remember that we sailed this same ship last January on our cruise from Rome to Barcelona. Sunday morning we took a two hour walking tour of the old town area of San Juan. We saw an interesting mix of architectural styles from fortresses that were built 400 years ago to a church whose facade looked strikingly like the facade of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, to a beautiful art deco building from the 1920s which was the first skyscraper built in San Juan. One of the highlights of the tour was visiting the Cathedral of San Juan, the 2nd oldest Christian church in the western hemisphere. It also is the resting place for the explorer, Ponce de Leon. This cathedral was not as massive as those we have visited in Europe but it was equal to these cathedrals in its beauty. We were there during mass and were surprised by the informality of the service. The singing of hymns was accompanied by several musicians playing mandolins. It had the feel of what we would in the states call a contemporary service. Our guide explained that this music was actually played only during the celebration of Christmas. As mentioned on a facebook posting, the Festival of the Three Kings, Epiphany back home, is as important a celebration as Christmas day, with gifts exchanged on both days. In the gift shops we visited we saw more small statues of the Three Kings than we did Manger Scenes. One of the statues actually showed the Three Kings playing bongo drums!

Sunday night we dined in one of the specialty restaurants, the Chefs Table. The menu is a five course fixed meal with a different wine pairing for each course. We had dined in this restaurant on our last cruise and had not been particularly impressed but decided to give it another try. We were glad we did. Our sumptuous meal included tomato and watermelon gazpacho, grilled scallops with beet root and passion fruit, prosciutto and cantaloupe granita as a palate cleanser, veal tenderloin with pumpkin sauce and red onion marmalade, and a strawberry and basil delight: Grand Marnier bavarian cream accompanied by basil jelly and strawberry sauce. It was a delightful meal. After dinner we arrived at the theater in time for the Captain's welcoming party. The Captain introduced the senior staff and then we all joined in a champagne toast. After the toast we were presented with a sample of the entertainment that would be appearing in the theater during the cruise. We had been impressed with the entertainment on our Viking cruise a year ago and from what we saw last night it should be equally as good on this cruise. Today's (Monday) port of call, Frederiksted has already been covered earlier in this blog posting. Thanks for reading. More later.