At sea en route to Cartagena, Spain … As anticipated we spent a good deal of today sleeping, getting caught up and finding our way around the ship. Eating some good chow - bacon cheeseburger and fries for lunch, steak Diane etc. for supper, and we are starting to get over jet lag.
By modern cruise ship standards Jupiter is a small ship, only 930 pax and a crew of maybe 400+. The big ones are hauling 5000+ pax and more decks too. So finding my way around hasn’t taken forever.
A lot of what is nice about Viking ships is what normal cruise ship stuff is not here. There is no gallery selling mass-produced oils, no mob of professional photographers, no casino, no dress-up nights and very little nickel-and-diming of the pax. Nearly everything we want is included, although the entertainment is perhaps a bit thin.
Every time we cruise the eastern, Mediterranean coast of Spain I marvel at how dense the ocean traffic is here. Dozens of large ferries you could almost mistake for cruise ships, actual cruise ships, tankers and container ships. It is rare that there isn’t another ship within view. Considering it is many miles between ports along this coast, the traffic is essentially heavy by ocean standards.
We’ve sailed across both the Atlantic and Pacific multiple times in each direction and it is rare to see more than one other ship per crossing. By contrast, at supper tonight - which lasted maybe 80 minutes - we must have seen at least a dozen ships.
