And here we are - Monday #2. The ship continues to travel eastwards and, by the morning of day 11, we were passing Rat Islands!

At 12pm, we crossed the International Date Line and switch from UTC+14 to UTC-10. The Viking Orion celebrated Monday #2 by showing Groundhog Day on the big screen in the pool area. All passengers were issued certificates to confirm that we had crossed the IDL, which was a lovely gesture.

How do we keep track of which day it is? The Viking Daily helps. This is delivered in the evening for the next day. It is also available within the Viking Voyager app which is useful but also frustrating because it doesn’t have all of the information that the printed version has (like hours for dining) and doesn’t allow you to set reminders for talks, etc.

Note the two issues for May 8th!

In the morning, we went to an interesting lecture given by Professor Gary Evans: “The Alaska Purchase - Reckless Nationalism or Brilliant Foresight?”. The talk focussed on how the 1867 acquisition of Alaska from Russia reflected the US expanionist national policy. A really interesting lecture and an engaging speaker.

After the lecture, we had day 6 of 7 of progressive trivia. As expected, we’ve dropped off the top 3 leaderboard and, with only 2 days left, I suspect we can’t get back up there. We had another poor day - only 8 points - but it was interesting that the host (Assistant Cruise Director Carl) started the “how many have you scored” at 4 instead of the usual 8, perhaps reflecting that he realised these were harder questions. Still, one team managed to score 11.

(It is only a game!!!)

During the afternoon, the resident pianist Filip and the guest pianist Carl teamed up to play some music composed for four hands. This was a scheduled but impromptu concert played in the ship’s Atrium.

The first pieces were composed by Brahms:

They then played some Grieg. Apologies for the sound quality/level - it was a public space with drinks being served & collected up.

This was a very popular event. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Atrium so full across decks 1, 2 & 3.

For dinner, we went to the World Cafe for an Italian themed menu.