A Slow Day Today: All We Did Was Board the Viking Sky and Settle in

Tomorrow is when our cruise really begins.

Janet and Staffan drove us to the waiting ship late morning, stopping to show us their 1-bedroom condo in downtown Stockholm which they use only as needed for business in Stockholm, and for their daughter Anna, when she visits from her home in Amsterdam. We were sorry to miss Anna on this trip.

A short drive to the dock, and Staffan took this farewell picture of us with Janet.

Boarding the ship was easy, since we were between waves of guests arriving by plane. We are so grateful to be boarding the ship with zero jetlag, thanks to our wonderful five days in Norrtalje. Thank you, Janet and Staffan, for your kindness. It feels as if you dropped everything and just served us!

Checking in took maybe 5-10 minutes and then we went to lunch in the World Cafe on Deck 7. By the time we finished eating, our stateroom was ready, and our bags were waiting for us. After an hour of unpacking (all by Rita, while I pretended to do important stuff on my laptop…) we were settled in and relaxed. We got our shipboard app (“Viking Voyager”) working, connected to the ship’s WiFi, and organized our shore excursion tickets. Then it was a leisurely dinner back at the World Cafe, where we (mostly Rita) made friends, and a couple familiar crew members, including Hotel Manager Makesh, came by our table to greet us. Still to encounter for us: Captain Markus, Cruise Director Bruce, and favorite wait staff Leo & Tabeth, who are all on board. Here’s one new friend: Jan from Oregon who is here with husband Monte. They own a 3,000-acre sheep ranch in Oregon!

As always, the food was terrific, and so was the service. For example, I had a plate full of snow crab legs sliced in half, and I was struggling to remove the meat with my dinner fork, when the restaurant manager showed up with a tiny fork that I should have picked up myself — from the other side of the ship! I also had some sushi, which was also delicious. It seems my plan for eating modestly was forgotten!

Rita had pork chops, which were fabulous. (She gave me a taste…)

We enjoyed several glasses of wine (free at lunch and dinner on Viking), plus a couple corn muffins which were as good as we remembered them. It’s fun to be on such a familiar ship — one we lived on for four months this year. It feels like coming home!

That’s all for this evening. It’s great to be caught up on my blogging! By the way, there were several mistakes in my Sunday blog, which I wrote after Staffan had gone to bed. This afternoon he proofread it and sent me corrections. If you re-read it online, you will see the corrected version.

I almost forgot to mention that I got one of my listings under contract today. My business day starts at 2 p.m. (7 a.m. in Denver), and I was able to negotiate a bidding war with four buyers, ending up getting $20,000 over full price for my seller. None of the agents I spoke with would have known I was in Sweden, not Denver, if I hadn’t told them. I also secured a price reduction on another listing and revised this Thursday’s Denver Post ad to promote it. (I’ll upload it by Tuesday’s noon Denver deadline.) A good day on my “working vacation.”

It is so easy working remotely. Cell phone calls, text messages and emails are just like at home, and the MLS and contract software, etc., are all as accessible. And writing my weekly real estate ad is just as easy. The stateroom TV has BBC and MSNBC (and Fox News…) and I can watch 9News and our favorite network programs which are archived on YouTube. We watched the main speeches from the Democratic National Convention last week in Norrtalje Tuesday morning through Friday morning on Staffan and Janet’s smart TV using YouTube. What a small world it is now, and we’re making the most of it, aren’t we?