After three months with the family in Perth WA, how comes it that Roy and I are indulging in such an extravagantly long cruise?

Well, my Chief Planner of Travel & Leisure found a ship that could take us from Australia to South Africa – the Viking Sun would be docking in Fremantle port during the 28-night Sydney-to-Durban leg of her Miami-to-London world tour.

No problem for us to board in Fremantle, said cruise consultant Faye Pirrie from the Viking desk in London – but there’d be no discount for missing the first half of the cruise: we’d have to pay the full whack. That would have been silly, so we flew from Perth to join the ship in Sydney.

Qantus brought us comfortably into Sydney in a little over four hours, and a 20-minute taxi ride got us to to White Bay Cruise Terminal around 8pm.

Twenty-eight nights at sea did sound long. Our two longest cruises so far, both on HAL’s Noordam, had each been two weeks in duration: Auckland to Sydney in February 2017; and a South Pacific cruise round trip out of Sydney, in March 2018.

For seasoned cruisers, however, it seems that a month at sea is pah! – nothing! We were soon to discover that about 450 of our 900-odd fellow passengers – mainly American, but with a good smattering of other nationalities – were “world cruisers”, doing the entire 127-night cruise. What is more, a good number of them have been cruising extensively like this for years.

Why Choose Viking?

Viking made its five-star name in luxuriously cruising the rivers of Europe and elsewhere, and it launched its brand-new ocean fleet only a few years ago.

Classified by Cruise Critic as “small ships” – each carries just 930 passengers – the Viking Sun and her five identical sister ships are described as “state of the art” and “engineered at a scale that allows direct access into most ports”. Every stateroom has its own verandah.

Viking did its homework to find exactly what people like us really want in a cruise. Here’s what first appealed to us:

#1 No children are allowed – you have to be at least 18 years old.

#2 No casinos, nor space wasted on tacky photo galleries.

#3 A magnificent Nordic spa that’s open to all at no additional cost.

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  Other highlights include:

• Plenty of drawer-space in our well-designed Penthouse Verandah Suite. (This got ten out of ten from Roy, who unpacked in great haste so as to hog most of it).
• Beautifully clean, light-filled Scandinavian interiors throughout the ship.

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• Free wifi everywhere.
• Lots of dining options, including fine dining every night in The Restaurant, with an ever-changing choice of dishes from foie gras and fresh lobster to Thai red curry and herb-crusted loin of kangaroo.

  

  

• 8am classes in yoga, Pilates, tai chi, qi gong, meditation and more, led by instructors who actually know what they’re doing.

  

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• Peace and quiet. Birdsong plays in the restrooms, gentle classics play in the background. (Except for the Captain’s noonday message, you seldom hear the PA system.)
• A well-equipped gym with sweeping ocean views – one day, from my treadmill, I watched literally hundreds of dolphins surfing the ship’s wake.
• Two outstanding Filipino singers who sing with the ship’s band, performing most nights at Torshavn nightclub.
• A free mini-bar that’s restocked every day.
• 24-hour room service at no extra cost – not that I’ve tried it yet, but it could come in handy.

Sail-away from Sydney

Oysters, green champagne and Guinness ruled at the St Patrick’s Day-themed sail-away from a miserably rainy Sydney.

Having sailed away from Sydney previously (on the Noordam last year), I was a bit late to this St Patrick’s Day party because I’d snuck off to the spa. There, in glorious solitude, I indulged in the big, hot, bubbly mineral pool, the small and even hotter spa pool, the “snow grotto” and the heated stone recliners, the sauna and the icy-cold plunge pool. Bliss!