But good crew.

Somehow the Vision of the Sea seems older than her 14 years. She is worn altho extremely clean. There are threadbare spots in some of the carpets; faint stains on some of the furniture.

The crew is fun and fantastic; many of whom are due to change out in the next couple of weeks. The ship was on the Baltic Sea alternating with the Norwegian Coast runs. There are a large number of Scandinavian staff in order to have all of the needed languages for passengers covered. Now that the ship is moving to the Caribbean many will see the end of their contract as they are replaced by workers from Central and South America.

Some of the staff are quite interesting – like the young Norwegian on the cruise director’s staff who is still performing major drills and ceremonies several times a year with his old military unit (Norwegian equivalent of the Old Guard for US folks). If you look up Norwegian Military Tattoo you should be able to find various entries on YouTube.

There are plenty of craft classes, lectures and dance classes of various sorts. This balances out the fact that the Windjammer has the worst design I have ever seen with extremely limited seating and worse diner flow. The fitness center is jammed with equipment which may explain the lack of offerred classes. On the other hand, with the average age of cruisers on this leg being taken into consideration it may not be an issue.

Moved to a new dining table this evening, it was a fun and entertaining group ranging from Shana up to one woman’s extremely active mother at 91.

Tomorrow is Gijon.