Since we had already done our shopping yesterday, and since we saw the main sights last time we were here, we decided to stay on board the ship and enjoy the quiet while most everyone else was on a bus or otherwise out and about. We’ve done this on previous cruises and sometimes those are some of our favourite days.

Had brekkie with Aussie friends Heather and Doug, who read yesterday’s blog and were shocked to find that of the literally thousands of tuk-tuks in this city, they’d hired the exact same one for a day tour that we used to get back to the ship (!)

Lunch was back up at Mamsen’s, where Rob got his beloved success cake and I brought over a burger from the Pool Grill with a side of some very tasty spicy Chinese noodle salad. After lunch, we headed down to the dock to check out the local souvenir stands set up right by the ship.

It was mostly a bunch of mass-produced tourist schlock, but you never know unless you look, right?
Back on the ship, we engaged in some hard-core napping. Legit, I slept so hard that I woke up not knowing what day it was. All I knew was I needed coffee. Went up to the World Café to commandeer my usual spot next to the latte machine and found that it was turned off. So was the one on the other side of the ship. They were doing some kind of repairs and the power was shut off to that circuit.

I managed to avoid killing anybody and made it back to the room. Room service is included 24/7, so I had them bring me a pot of coffee. It showed up in about five minutes. They brought two cups. HAHAHA. They don’t know me at all. If there ‘s a second person involved here, we’ll need another pot.

Speaking of knowing people, one thing that Viking does consistently across all the cruises we’ve done with them (and it’s also true on some other cruise lines) is that the people you interact with call you by name when they see you. This is one level of impressive for the room stewards, who have a limited number of cabins they take care of. But it’s ship-wide. The restaurant manager, Antonio, will stand at the bottom of the gangway as people are getting off the ship and greet all 900 passengers by name. On DAY TWO. I’m pretty convinced that he’s not human.

You might’ve noticed that in the pic of the souvenir stands, there’s a lot of extra stuff going on behind the stands. That’s because in Colombo, the cruise terminal is right in the middle of the shipping port. Not adjacent to, or across the bay from, but right in the middle of everything.

It’s actually really interesting to see how the whole operation works, up close and personal, whilst hanging out in the infinity pool. Giant cranes act like super-sized versions of a coin-operated claw game, picking up shipping containers instead of plushies…. (or porno DVDs and sex toys, if you’re in that one restaurant in Vulcan, Alberta, like what the hell??) HAHA, I had completely forgotten about that place until now. Lemme see if I can find that picture.

To its credit, Vulcan does have streetlights shaped like the USS Enterprise and a fabric shop called “Make it Sew”, which almost redeems them. Anyway, after some much-needed coffee, we headed down to Manfredi’s, where of course I had that awesome steak, but they had a grilled seafood plate that also sounded good, so I skipped the appys and had the grilled seafood entree for my appy instead. It’s all included in the price of the cruise, so why not?

A small piece of white fish, a butterflied shrimp, scallop, squid steak, and a big octopus tentacle. I was a bit worried about the octopus, actually, as I’ve only ever had it raw. On a previous cruise, they had octopus carpaccio one day and I’m always getting sushi with octopus on it, but that was my only experience. Here was a giant piece of tentacle, grilled.

And where has that been all my life? It tastes like a giant king crab leg. Buttery, tender, and absolutely delicious. I could’ve just had a plate of that. Anyway, it was delish, as was the steak, then the meal was topped off with an affogato (a ‘float’ made with gelato and espresso). About halfway through dinner, we set sail again and we got a nice view of the dockworks as we left.

Funny story: our table server was a lovely young woman named Grace, who had a very thick Nigerian accent. Took me a minute to decipher that the night’s special was Arctic Char, since she pronounced it “otti-cha”. That reminds me of a thing that happened back in my early days at UPS. There was a Nigerian grocery store on my delivery route and the owner had the same accent. This was before anything was computerized, so when he wanted to ship a package, he had to call UPS on the phone, tell them where it was going, then I’d show up the next day with the address label and I’d slap the label on the box and take the package with me.

One day, I brought back a package he’d shipped out several days before. The delivery driver had written “no such street” and it bounced back due to incorrect address. The shop owner was incredulous, saying that he ships to that customer all the time. The name of the street on the label was “Annapama”. He went to the back office of the store and got his Rolodex. He read me the address and what he said was what was on the label. Weird. I asked to see his Rolodex card and had to stifle a laugh when I saw that the street name was actually “Arnold Palmer”. I corrected the label and sent it back out.

OK, back to the ship. The entertainment for the night was Tom Wright, a comedy magician. “Comedy magician” means it can either be wildly entertaining or cringe-worthy. He was fine, but I’d seen other magicians do a lot of the tricks he did. They were still impressive, though. I mean, I knew right from the start of the trick that the $20 that Julie from the audience had written her name on would eventually show up inside of an orange that he had to cut into, but I still have no idea how he did it.

The last trick, though, was one I’d never seen: a long setup involving audience members created a situation where he’d end up needing a drawing of a giraffe on his large art pad (it was a mind-reading trick). His drawing was of an animal that looked more like a sheep. So he drew some spots on it and then waved his hand at the drawing and the animal’s head rose up on the page, extending its neck, which also had spots. OK, that’s cute. The “page” on the art pad is probably a flexible screen of some kind and he’s got it set to animate the drawing. Easy enough…. but then he ripped the page off the art pad and gave it to the lady in the audience who wanted the giraffe. Wait, WHAT? It was actually paper? Then how… mind blown.

Topped off the evening getting a bit of work done, answering a few emails, and then hitting the sack. It’s a sea day tomorrow, so yay!

I love getting up to the World Café early, with the sun coming up over the water and nobody else in the room. The music, though… can’t deal with that first thing in the morning. So I put in my ear buds and rocked out to the soundtrack from Katamari Damacy.

Now, I’ve just split the readership into two groups: the first group are those who have played the game now have the music stuck in their heads, and they’re rocking along with me. The other group is people who are going “I have no idea what this is.”

OK, for those in the latter group: Katamari Damacy was a video game on the PlayStation 2 that is one of the weirdest, wildest, funniest things to ever come out on that platform. Here’s the setup:

The King of all Cosmos, who is this giant being with a head that looks like a rolled-up rug on its side and wearing a robe and incredibly tight purple leotard pants opens the game by telling you, his son, that the King has accidentally destroyed all the stars in the galaxy while on a drunken bender. No, really. (You are the tiny lime green character at the bottom of the next pic)

So your task as the player is to roll a ‘katamari’ - a sticky ball - around, picking up items with it. The more you pick up, the bigger the ball gets, and the bigger the items you can pick up. If the ball is big enough when time runs out, then dear old dad the King (who is unbelievably flamboyantly gay, but apparently unaware) will hurl the ball of trash into the sky to make a replacement star. Oh, and for some reason, he barfs rainbow bridges that you cross to present your ball to trash to him.

Yeah. Bizarre-o. But man that soundtrack was a banger! Listening to “Lonely Rolling Star” with its ultra-happy beat and cheery chorus while rolling your katamari around a schoolyard, rolling over children who scream and kick their little feet as they stick to the ball…. that was something. Who needed drugs? We had Katamari Damacy! (Look up “Lonely Rolling Star” by 8-Bit Big Band on YouTube)

Aaaaaaany way, they had an Indian Breakfast up at the World Café and I tried a spoonful of most everything…. but just a spoonful, since Rob wanted to go to the main restaurant for brekkie and I didn’t want to pig out too much before then.

Most of what I tried was tasty, but for my tastes, more suited for dinner rather than breakfast.
When the main restaurant opened up, I met up with Rob and had second breakfast. Extra nourishment is a good thing, especially if you have eleventy-one things to do that day. I don’t, of course, but I couldn’t resist dropping the reference.
If you know, you know.

By the way, the ocean is an absolutely incredible shade of cobalt blue in this part of the world, and when the ship aerates it by cutting through the waves, it’s teal. Gorgeous!

Decided to try out team trivia today. Was shocked to see well over 100 people participating! Our team got 11/15 right. The winning team got 13.

Lunch in the main restaurant involved chilled watermelon soup, which was good, but doesn’t come anywhere near Rob’s watermelon gazpacho. Those of you who’ve had it, you know what I’m talking about. We went upstairs to the World Café for dessert to try out the flambé station and we both got the bananas.

They said they were bananas, but I know a plantain when I have one and these brought back fond memories of Tex-Mex restaurants and Mexican cocinas from my Houston days. If I hadn’t already been stuffed, I’d have gotten more. Besides, it’s been raining all day and the boat was gently trying to rock me to sleep. I think a nap is in order.

We went to the LGBTQ+ meetup because one of the fellas was having a birthday. Twenty-seven people showed up and we had a nice champagne toast to the birthday boy.

OK, that was nice. Now off to Chef’s Table again for round two of the Great Britain menu. Go back and read the previous post if you want to see the food. The only thing different was the sparkling tea they served wasn’t the hibiscus one from before but a new chai flavour they brought out because we’d already had the other one and OMG. I told the server that I could just fill the bathtub with this and get a straw and I’d be a happy guy. It was sooooooooooooo good! I need to find a source for this in Canada. Or I could just go to Copenhagen and pick some up. It’s my favourite city and it has my favourite roller coaster. And at nearly 1000 different coasters I’ve been on, that’s saying something!

After dinner, we went to hear the Viking Vocalists do a concert of show tunes from London’s West End and Broadway. Honestly, it was probably the best show we’ve seen on a Viking cruise. Good selection of tunes and good vocals. We really enjoyed it.

It was a great way to end a great day. Tomorrow brings new adventures at a place neither of us have been before…

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