We went on a Viking river cruise from New Orleans to Memphis.
We were on the ship
Viking Mississippi, shown below first in a Viking photo, then one from our trip. In the
latter our cabin, 300, is the entire left (starbord) half of the windows on the
third level. This was one of the fanciest cabins on the ship, called
Explorer Suites, which we developed a taste for in our first river cruise in
2022. The third photo shows part of the interior of a explorer suite, which
was even more luxurious than the suite we had in 2022. Debby's comment
when she first saw the suite was, "This is bigger than my first apartment".
Perhaps not literally true, but it expresses the idea.
Here are some more pictures inside and outside our suite. You can see by comparing with the photo above, which is from the Viking Web site, that we have a bit less furniture. This is because our suite was handicap accessible, which means it had less furniture and the shower was walk-in with a drain in the floor at the entrance. The sixth photo below shows that. Although not evident in this picture, in the wall to the left of the tub is a functional TV screen, shown in the next picture, which was always on, nicely providing night-light illumination. In the fifth photo the rectangular thing in front of the window contains a giant TV screen that rises automatically out of the box and retreats back into it to avoid blocking the view.
After viewing our exceptionally luxurious suite perhas I should say a bit about the ship in general. These vessels carry twice as many passengers (maximun 386) as the European Viking river vessels (maximum 190). In practice this means that one does not get to know as many people as well, and some of the operations, particularly the restaurant, tended to be disorganized and under-staffed. This may partly be because this was one of the first cruises on this route and perhaps they had not worked the kinks out as well as they would eventually, but I think at least some of it is because there are so many more passengers and because of how the ship is organized. We definitely prefered the more intimate European experiences. Let me give a specific example of the difference. In the European cruises when we went to the restaurant for a meal we would often sit by ourselves at a table for six. In a little while another couple would come by and say, "Is it OK if we sit here?" "Of course" and we would introduce ourselves. The table would fill and we would meet new people. On the VM, however, one time we arrived for a meal and all the tables for two were filled. (In Europe the tables are for six or more but not in the US). As an experiment we tried sitting at an empty table for six, figuring we would meet people. Even after the whole restaurant filled up, however, no one sat with us, although we tried to get the servers to seat people with us. It was excruciatingly embarrassing.
Now about the excursions. We signed up for every swamp tour they offered -- two on pontoon boats and one on an air boat. They were a lot of fun. First a picture of a gigantic structure (I'm not sure what the technical name for it is) separating the waters connected to the river from the Gulf of Mexico
The air boat was really cool. Unlike the pontoon boats that pretty much followed channels the air boats would skim over logs and stumps and could go pretty much anywhere. As for the animals, we saw racoons, feral hogs, an osprey, and lots and lots of alligators. Somewhat to our surprise we never saw a nutria, but I'm sure they were around.
These are water hyacinths, an invasive species from South America that causes a lot of problems in the US because they have no natural predators,
The other air boat, just like the one we were on.
The next two photos are of a plantation manor in Louisiana. We were not allowed to touch anything inside the house because of the importance of these historical artifacts. We were told in lengthy, venerating detail about the luxury in which the slave masters lived -- but nothing about the slaves themselves except a casual mention that it took 400 slaves to work the plantation. They did not say how many men, women and children died in hopeless captivity, or how many women were bred like domestic farm animals. I asked where the slaves lived and was told that the slave quarters were torn down years ago. As far as I am concerned this house, and others like it, should be torn down, plowed into the earth, and the entire contents burned. Yes, this house represents a legacy -- a legacy of absulute evil and unimaginable cruelty.
Enough of this distressing topic. Another excursion took us to a large, old house in Vicksburg which was built by a wealthy Jewish family named Baer. It is now being used as a bed-and-breakfast, and the Web site linked here has a nice video tour of the house. The house has an interesting history. It was built in the early 19th century by a Jewish family who emigrated to America from Germany because of persecution there. They started selling suppplies, progressing from hand carts to buildings and eventually were the owners of a big dry goods store on the river. During that time there was a robust Jewish community of several hundred in Vicksburg that seems to have been accepted both socially and politically, as there were some Jews elected to local office. This family was devoutly Jewish, but in my opinion possibly not completely traditionally so. I base this on the etching of a menorah in glass over the front door (briefly visible in the video tour and shown below in a screen grab from the video) that is somewhat romantically expressive. Very artistic and attractive, but not exactly a traditional menorah. I mention this because of the carving shown in the last two photos below that occurs over interior doors. The current owner thinks that it is supposed to be an angel with the wings to the side, I personally consider this unlikely. It seems clear to me that it represents a scroll. The "smoking gun" here, in my view, is that there are little dots on both sides showing the ends of the dowels on which the scroll is rolled. Also one may interpret the curve at the top to be the cloth covering of the scroll. Scrolls play a big part of Jewish tradition. The Torah is the compilation of the first five books of the Jewish bible, which are also the first five books of the Christian Old Testament. It is the central and most important document of Judaism and has been used by Jews through the ages. The Torah is traditionally presented as scrolls in the synagogue and readings are done from these scrolls. In fact Jesus, who was a Jewish rabbi, read Isaiah from a scroll (Luke 4:17-21). So I think it is quite reasonable for a carving in a devout Jewish home to denote scrolls. I also think that the Menorah etched in glass over the front door shows that someone there was willing to do independent artistic interpretations of Jewish symbols, since the etching does not look anything like traditional depictions of menorahs. So it seems to me quite possible that these carvings were locally produced to symbolize an important part of their Jewish heritage.
There are currently very few Jews left in Vicksburg. This led me to do a bit of research about how a thriving community of hundreds of Jews in Vicksburg disappeared. I was thinking maybe it was something awful -- being in the deep South perhaps made that came to my mind, what with slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and so on. But as far as I can tell it was more a matter of economic pressure. In the early 19th century the Jews that came primarily from Germany were culturally disposed to found retail establishments, like the very successful dry goods store (this was not a simple store front but a big building) that funded this house. But in the 20th century the spread of national retail chains gradually put most of them out of business, and over a period of decades the Jews in VIcksburg gradually migrated to larger urban areas. Nothing sinister here.
I'm not going to show pictures from all our excursions, but a couple more were pretty interesting, both in Memphis. First is a roadhouse called Hernando's Hide-A-Way. This place had a stage set up in the main room on which were performing a mix of kids and adults. Even though virtually everything in Memphis is about Elvis, nonetheless there was a little girl belting out "Nine to Five". You can see her in the first photo dressed in red. I asked the hostess (or maybe owner) what they thought of Dolly in Memphis and she pulled out a life-sized cardboard cutout of Dolly. Apparentlly they like both her music and her good works, particularly the books for children. We also were treated to toasted sandwiches containing peanut butter, bacon, and bananas - obviously an Elvis thing. They were amazingly good.
Finally, in Memphis we stayed at an old, famous hotel called the Peabody. This hotel has a tradition of ducks in the lobby fountain, and every day at 11 AM they have a ritual parade of the ducks from the elevator to their little pool.
Let's close out with some pictures from the boat:
