Nothing is really happening today. First of all it's Sunday. Second we have to pack up everything in preparation for our move to the Viking Spirit which is docked not far from the Eiffel Tower. So we have breakfast and return to the room to pack. I take our bags down to the lobby and store them with the bell boy. We check out, identify our bags for the shuttle driver and load on to the bus at about 2PM to go to the boat. Totally uneventful.

Arriving at the boat dock on time, we board the boat and are taken to our cabin by Mieke, the cruise director, who makes the arrangements for all of the ground tours at the docks of call along the Seine. She is a really nice person with a dryish sense of humor. We wait for our bags to come to the cabin, but I have to go to the desk after a while to ask what has happened to them. About 15 minutes later they are delivered. We unpack and were surprised by the drawer space and closet which was more than ample. Our backs fit nicely under our beds so the cabin was not cluttered, albeit not overly large. The word adequate comes to mind.

We are on the second floor of cabins. The third floor, we were told offers the best view during the cruise which is why it is more expensive. I didn't go for it and was glad I didn't. Frankly, the scenery along the Seine for the most part is pretty boring except when you are approaching a city. Mostly just trees. The other thing is that you can sit in the front lounge, enjoy a drink and watch the world go by. Who is going to sit in their cabin. It gets a bit claustrophobic after a while.

Jet-lagged in the lounge.

Not much is scheduled for the rest of the day. A welcome drink in the lounge. A brief orientation talk and then dinner. We are joined by cruisers arriving directly from the airport who are jet lagged. We, on the other hand, are less lagged after our restful days in Paris... just kidding.

Meeka and several other crew members are dressed in Halloween costumes for our benefit since most of the cruisers are from the US and Canada. They want to make us feel at home. We want to feel like we are away from home. Doesn't matter though, they would have dressed anyway. There is a short presentation covering the logistics of leaving the boat, turning in our cabin keycards cards each time so they know who is off the boat so they don't leave us on shore as they cruise to the next stop. All pretty straightforward and simple to follow. Then we get a reading of the dinner menu for tonight. This is, it turns out, a nightly feature of the cruise. A dramatic menu reading and a opportunity for some humor.

Dinner was definitely a bit of a relief as we don't have to decide where to eat, what to eat. The food is a bit too dramatic with foam and this and that. Each dish has a long description, but when it arrives it seems small and disappointing. There is a choice of appetizer and main dish and we can order both if we want to taste them both. The servers tell us what she thinks looked best and she is right. She has a very, very dry sense of humor and we hit it off. Her name is Allesbad.

After dinner we have an after dinner drink in the lounge and return to our cabin to rest up for tommorrow's bus tour of Paris.

Paris... Day Two of the Cruise