They sure know how to throw a party!

While not billed as a "party" per se, every day at 4:00pm without fail Regent puts on its Afternoon Tea.  Held in the Horizon Lounge (which by the way is my most favorite of all the lounges on board because it offers access to my most favorite of all the outdoor areas on board!) the staff set up the tables with lovely cups and then come around serving little pots of tea in your choice of flavors.  There are always finger sandwiches available as well.  In addition, each day is themed (flambe, chocolate, crepes)and they have stations serving the themed items in the center of the dance floor.  "Crepe day" for example, found Restaurant Manager/Crepe "Master" Franck Galczy preparing fresh crepes to your specifications (bananas, strawberries, chocolate, cinnamon, to name a few).

The Seven Seas Society Cocktail Party IS billed as such and is held for past guests. In truth, the majority of guests on board are repeat passengers so this particular party is open to almost the entire ship. Of course, there is a separate party for Gold, Platinum and Titanium cruisers (those who have spent 75 - 400+ nights on a Regent ship) but from what I've heard even that party was rather crowded. Smart people know, when you find something good -- stick with it! In any event, we are only Silver level so we partied with the plebes. And though it was held in the Constellation Theater which doesn't really lend itself to "party" conversation, they did put out a nice spread and offered dancing to the orchestra up on the stage.  Assuming, of course, that you actually have a willing dance partner which I don't.  But since he has other fine qualities I let that one slide!

Ice Sculpture Logo

Assortment of finger foods

 

Chilled Caviar with toppings

Another party was held the night we spent in Cartagena, Colombia, when the staff transformed the pool deck into an elegant al fresco barbecue.  It took them over three hours to set up all the tables and chairs with linens and chair covers; create an elaborate buffet display; weave giant palm fronds and hang international flags.  Joined by new friends Kathy and Phyl, we had a wonderful dinner and then were entertained by some local musicians and dancers. It was a magical night and I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...I only wish I had a better camera!

Pool Deck Preparations

One side of buffet

Mike, Me, Kathy, Phyl

Very cool watermelon/eggplant(?) carving

Mojitos anyone?

Mary, Mary, we found your little lamb

Local Folkloric Dancers

You say tomato....I say tomahto...

It is interesting being on board and reading blogs or other postings that my shipmates have written describing things of which I am familiar, yet having a completely different experience.

For example, one couple said that dining room service had improved and become more attentive.  That certainly hasn't been the case for us at all. In fact, the "service" aspect in the dining room has been more of a comedy of errors than anything else with every night bringing a new adventure in the saga of "what will they screw up tonight?"   One night we were delivered the after dinner gourmanderie tray with several pieces missing -- clearly it had been at someone else's table before ours!  Strangely enough, it was delivered to us by the MANAGER who noticed that we had been sitting at our table for quite some time after all the dishes had been cleared but nobody had come over to take our dessert order.  Another night, Mike was served wine in a glass with a giant hole in its side -- you would think the wine steward would have caught on as he was pouring in the wine and it was pouring out the side!  Fresh pepper for your salad or meal??  Half the time the waiter might come by to find out if you want it.  As for getting something to drink if you didn't want the wine offered....expect to receive it midway through your entree, and only if you remind at least two other servers that you are waiting for it.  Of course, we at least got waited on every time we went into the restaurant; not so the case with friends of ours who on more than one occasion were ignored for an appreciable length of time.  These things did not happen in Prime 7 or Signatures, only in Compass Rose and La Veranda.  However, as poor as the service sometimes was, the food itself was magnificent each and every night, each and every course ordered!  Some pictures:

Ports of Call Part 2 - Colombia and Ecuador

CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA:  The Old city is a Unesco World Heritage Site with its 400-year-old Spanish colonial buildings huddled along brick streets enclosed in a 2mile long stone wall.  One of the easiest ways to see it is via a horse drawn carriage (unfortunately my driver spoke only Spanish and I don't so I basically just nodded and smiled along as he "described" everything to me).  Cartagena is one of the most photographed cities in South America and it is easy to see why with its colorful buildings and beautiful churches.

The Main entrance is the Clock Tower Building. The walled city includes the neighbourhoods Centro, San Diego, Getsemaní and the modern part La Matuna. The oldest part of Cartagena is around Plaza Trinidad in Getsemaní.There are also museums such as the Palace of Inquisition, where the Spanish Inquisition tortured, judged and convicted men accused of crimes against religion. Almost all churches in the historic center are worth visiting, especially Iglesia de San Pedro Claver, in honor of the priest St. Pedro Claver, who was the first saint of the new world for his work with slaves; La Catedral, near Plaza de Bolivar and the Iglesia de Santo Domingo.  At the port itself, there is a store which is fairly large and some loose parrots running around.  Taxis are plentiful if you want to hire your own tour guide which we did (twice).  Mike took his own cab ride with a tour guide on our 2nd morning who took him to a friend's house for coffee -- I think he might have been looking for a rich American to help his friend get a wife/green card!!  Only you, Mike, only you!!!

MANTA, ECUADOR: This is clearly a fishing port, in fact we were docked right next to a fishing vessel which had come in to unload its catch of tuna. Using a crane and large nets, they started offloading tuna into trucks by 7am. Working nonstop, they finished about 10 hours later! There wasn't much to see right at the pier since we were docked in a commercial area but en route to our destination we passed a "boatyard" and saw a number of boats being built right on the beach in various stages of completion. This is not a beach for swimming as it is loaded with old fish hooks. Our excursion today took us a half hour away into the city of Monte Cristi which is where they invented (created?) the Panama Hat. In Monte Cristi, there is a small market featuring local handicrafts such as scarves, jewelry, carvings, and of course tons and tons of Panama and Pana-wanna-be hats. We also got to witness how the hats are made by hand. We bought a few souvenirs and of course Mike's official Panama Hat which I am happy we did because The UK's Financial Times Magazine recently reported that there may be no more than 15–20 years remaining for the industry in Ecuador, due to the competition of paper-based Chinese-made imitations, especially as a few hat sellers dominate and manipulate the market. Mike looks quite handsome and jaunty in his hat, (even though I look like Becky Thatcher from the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in mine!) and we had a great time with Wayne and Susan and a couple of Cubanos at the Pool Bar that night for the Panama Hat party!

GUAYAQUIL, ECUADOR: a friend who is involved with a bowling center here warned me in advance that this is not a place to be wandering around by yourself (which is true in pretty much every city we've seen so far in South America) so we decided to take a cab downtown (very very long ride from the pier) to Malecon 2000 which is one of the most visited places in the city. Since 1999, the Malecón has received over 5 million national and foreign visitors who marvel at and enjoy its beauty and safety. Malecón 2000 is divided into several sections:

- The central area, where we began our walk, is home the historic Civic Plaza with its sculptures: the Moorish Clock Tower and Rotonda Monument. The Guayaquil Yacht Club and the Naval Yacht club are located here too.

- In the south part is located the modern Bahía Malecón Shopping Center where you can buy clothes, eat, and even buy souvenirs. Mike enjoyed a delicious cup of cafe americano here at a generic "starbucks-type" of place for a price of 71 cents!

We never got as far up as the north section which has several plazas, water fountains, an antique Ecuadorian train, spaces for aerobics and games for children, a Planetarium, an anthropological Museum and a Contemporary Art Museum. Also, at the end of Malecon is the oldest village of Santa Ana. Instead we walked back through the very busy, very crowded streets to the Seminario Plaza where we saw them filming a commercial and got up close and personal with the Iguanas. Not watching where he was going, poor Mike almost stepped right on one. Our shuttle bus back to the ship was escorted by two armed policemen -- they don't mess around down here.

Ports of Call - Aruba and Curacao

Regent's new all inclusive policy makes it very attractive to do "their" excursions.  Unfortunately that means it is attractive for EVERYONE and so where you used to have some people getting off the ship in port spread out over hours, you now have the MAJORITY of the passengers getting off the ship at around the same time all heading for 6 or 7 different tour buses.  Regent does the best job possible with coordinating the tours -- all of the buses or vans are as close to the ship as they can possibly get so there isn't much walking.  But it is still an exercise in patience waiting for all the passengers on your tour to get off the ship, get on the bus and get ready to go.  It makes it especially painful when you have people on your tour who either A) have gotten on the wrong bus because someone made a mistake somewhere along the line or B) you have people on your bus who should not have signed up for the tour in the first place due to old age, medical infirmity, etc.   Yes, Yes, I know we're all going to be there some day.  I get that.  All I am saying is that since Regent has taken it upon themselves to be running/scheduling these tours, they should also be responsible for vetting the guests who are signing up for them and making it clear as to what is involved.  Example:  one of the tours was a Chivas bus ride into Monte Cristi.  The word "bus" is purely operative here as this vehicle was less a bus than it was a wagon cart with narrow benches.  The climb into the "bus" required a fair amount of flexibility and dexterity as it had a very high step, no railings and the space between benches was narrow.  We spent a good 10 minutes (3 of us) basically lifting a heavyset woman, squeezing her into the vehicle and getting her maneuvered onto a bench seat.  She was thankful for the assistance, but I'm sure also mortified at three strangers mushing her hips and ass in and around the framework to get her situated.  She didn't even bother getting off the bus when we reached our destination and I don't know who helped her get off the bus when we got back to the ship.  On the same trip, another gentleman who was somewhere between 98 and 118 (years, not pounds!) insisted on getting on the bus even though it was clear there was no way he was going to be able to pull himself up into it.  Another 15 minutes for the three of us to again use our lifting technique and get him on.  Our 9:10am bus tour finally departed at 9:55am -- I would expect this on a mass market cruiseline, not acceptable for a luxury experience.  Regent could avoid some of these problems in the future if they are more specific:  rather than say generically "the bus has a high step" they could say "do not sign up for this tour unless you can easily get yourself in and out of our pool"   Okay, well that's enough of that....on to the sites!

CURACAO:  was our first stop and we were anxious to get off the ship and see some land after 3 days.  We have been here before (playing golf and touring the island) so this time we decided to do a couple of beach visits. Our first stop was Porto Marie which is a small public beach with lounge chairs for rent and food/beverage stands.  Prices were reasonable.  The beach is clean and narrow but loaded with coral and rocks (not just at the water's edge, but all the way out which I discovered when I tried
gliding in once it got a little deeper and sprained 3 toes by jamming them into a rock).  There is a dock which juts out a little deeper and you can snorkel off here, but the ladder climbing in/out off the dock is slick with algae so be careful.  Our 2nd beach was Cas Abao which you enter via a former private plantation.  Again, this beach is very clean with the same services as listed above, but still loaded with coral and rocks.  Water shoes are a must for both places.  I did get to see a baby reef shark which was pretty cool and of course there were multitudes of other fish swimming along with us, especially along the stone "wall".

ARUBA:   wanting more beach time we headed to De Palm Island which is a small islet that is privately owned and developed.  You take a ferry from the Balschi beer brewery parking lot over to DePalm. Once on the island there is every amenity you can imagine:  beach volleyball, basketball, snorkeling, banana boats,  water park, kayaking, lounge chairs, pavilions, thatched umbrellas, bathrooms, showers, open bar and unlimited buffet etc. All INCLUDED in one price (about $115 pp).  You can also do a helmet dive or snuba or get a massage for an additional fee.  We stuck with the included activities although Regent had paid for the Sea Trek helmet dive (we just couldn't stand waiting on another line after the last two days) and we heard from others that the walk under water was good so maybe we'll try that in the future.  One thing we did do was the banana boat ride.  Expecting a short ride, we were surprised when the crazy driver took us out for nearly a half hour and it was all we could do to hang on for dear life.  Really fun was the fat Russian behind me whose knee kept squishing my already injured toes into a throbbing mass of pain!  We had taken bets on who was going to be the first to fall off the boat with a pretty clear consensus that it would be the 80 pound 80 year old grandma.  We were wrong....it was me! (In my defense it was the fault of the kid who hopped off my side of the boat and jumped into the middle causing the boat to buckle)  Anyway, because my life jacket was too big, as soon as I hit the water it came flying up around my neck and my arms couldn't reach the water to swim but luckily some brawny guy hopped in to my rescue while Mike looked on!  It was a great time!!!

The Games People Play...

Those of you who have followed my previous blog already know I am a token fiend and by that I mean I go crazy trying to win Regent tokens which can be exchanged later in the cruise for logo geegaws.  Regent has now replaced the tokens with a "reward card" which is a plastic coated, color coded sort of playing card sized item showing either 1, 2 or even 3 points.  The gist is the same:  you win a game, you win a reward point.  The difference is that some of the games now have 1st and 2nd place prizes (hence 1 point, 2 points, 3 points). 

Anyway, I was intent on winning some of these point cards.  I just didn't realize it was going to be so difficult to do so!  At the end of the two weeks I had amassed a few more points than my good friend Susan had...her face in this picture is priceless!



While I give proper credit (and deservedly so) to the wonderful performers while they are on stage, putting them in charge of some of these games has been less than effective.  Mason, for example, is a wonderfully talented dancer but he has been letting a couple of the passengers turn the games into a mitigated disaster.  Bocce was such a joke that we skipped all of the rest of the games that day and hadn't tried anything else since.  Today we participated in the putting contest but, again, there is a group of game players who just aren't any fun to be around.  I don't know any nicer way to say it.  The passengers who ARE fun to play games with are a lot of fun, indeed.  Mike got kind of a "rep" around the ship as the guy who brought his own Ping putter with him while everyone else has to use the rusty ones from 1972.  Also, funny is when someone overheard someone else talking about Mike's putter and thought it was a PINK putter which resulted in an additional conversation about why some guy would have a pink putter.  There were a couple of guys (Mike, Wayne, Paul, Jim(?)) who put together some putting skins games a few times....Mike won $38 one day but the rest of the time they all pretty much broke even.

Luckily, the daily tea time trivia contest still awards reward points to the winners. We have a team that we felt would be very strong (or at least should have been!) and we have fun, and even though my "officially fluid" team of 3 to 6 players never claimed a victory, I have a few CC friends who are super smart/well rounded and they have donated some of their points to me as you can see above (Much love to Jackie, Dennis, Dick, Peter and Pat) I finally remembered to bring my camera one day and present here are Bonnie, Joel, Kathy, Me and I believe that seafoam green shape in the bottom left is Susan whose head is chopped out of the picture

One game that I AM good at, apparently is bingo!  One day I won the $185 cover all and

twice I won the small round robin --once for $80 and once for $139!  We only play bingo on sea days, but I still have a few more chances to win some money.  Which is especially good because the casino games are kicking my ass.  The "ice-breaker" for Bingo winnings was Wayne who won two out of four games one day; next day Joel won and was kind enough to pose for a picture!

Here's one last thing regarding games which really aggravated me (although I have noticed more of this on this cruise than I did previously)  tonight was the Liar's Club game show which is another event you need to form teams for.  My friends who had planned to play unfortunately had disbursed -- two turned into sleeping beauties (LOL you know who you are!); two wouldn't leave the casino tables (again, not mentioning any names!) and Bonnie & Joel have managed to avoid me all day....(on purpose?? methinks NOT!).  So I went into Horizon in search of a team.  Important note before I go further -- there is NO LIMIT on the # of people you can have on your team.  This policy was announced a few times by the host/cruise director.  I already knew this and on my last cruise, I made a point of looking around us to see if anyone was alone and invited them to join our team.  Okay, so getting back to tonight's game.  I spotted Ed and Anna who were sitting with a 3rd woman.  I joined them and introduced myself to the 3rd woman who said her name was Barbara.  At that point Anna told her her own name and introduced Ed.  I didn't realize that they all didn't already know each other -- but no biggie, like I said it's a friendly game and anyone can & should join anyone else.  Now here's the part where I got aggravated.  About a minute before the game started, Barbara's two other friends came in to the Lounge and instead of having them join us, B slides her chair away without even a goodbye and shouts to the cruise director "Can we get our own team #?"  What the hell??? 

But this is the kind of cliquishness (is that even a word?) I am finding around the ship that I didn't find the last time.  Last time the people who did the same kinds of things, were all very sociable (at least amongst each other) and I kind of assumed that was because we all knew we were going to be seeing a lot of each other.  The smokers all chatted and socialized with each other;  the game players all chatted and socialized with each other; the casino players all chatted and socialized with each other.... you get the picture.  I'm sure it was the same way in the gym, in the puzzle corner, in the card room, etc.
THIS time I am finding a lot of "pockets" of people congregating in smaller groups and keeping to themselves to the extent where they don't even acknowledge others in passing.  Weird!

Meeting, Greeting and Eating

Today was our first full sea day and I had a full day of activities planned.  First on the agenda was sleeping late! So when my eyes popped open at 7am, I promptly shut them again, rolled over and went back to sleep until 9.

The Meet and Greet was

scheduled to begin at 11, which gave me barely enough time to shower, get dressed and eat breakfast twice (a bowl of cereal up on the pool deck, and then eggs, bacon, hashbrowns when I located Mike).  When I arrived in the Observation Lounge at 5 minutes to 11, I was dismayed to see only 5 or 6 other pax there -- especially since 2 of them aren't even ON cruise critic or LCT but were people I had met since yesterday and just invited to join in the fun!  What fun??  I was totally bummed!  But then people started to trickle in and before I knew it we had a pretty decent group. 

Wayne took some pix for me (assuming I can strong arm him into sending me the pictures I keep asking him to take) which is a good thing because mine didn't come out so well.  If memory serves, here is who "made it" to the party:  Jackie & Dennis (travelcat); Peter & Nancy (kingfoot); Dick & Carolyn (cnn,rwn); Jim & Charlotte (grapestake); Elaine (sealover); Peggy (xrvl); Pat without Ray (snobird); Maxin without David (mcavanaugh); Susan & Wayne (nanook) Julie with her M-I-L (juleslovescruisin);  Martha &  Gurvis (oldgrump); plus my non-CC friends: Anna & Ed, Kathy, Phyl, Bonnie & Joel.  Everyone present said they had a good time and nobody made fun of me for forgetting my hairbrush and having a disaster mop for a hairdo.  In fact, later in the day Jackie gave me a hairbrush that had mysteriously been left in her cabin (at first she thought it was a slam on her own hairdo, but then realized it must have been for me).  Later that night I discovered the beneficent soul was Peggy....thank you sweetie, you're a lifesaver!  And it wasn't as if I didn't try to buy one, but the only one for sale at the salon was 6 inches larger than the length of my hair!

The rest of the day was occupied by eating lunch, eating a post-lunch snack, eating a pre-dinner snack, eating a pre-dinner cupcake (at least I think it was a cupcake but I'm still not sure), eating dinner.  In the midst of all these eating rituals I found time to play a team game of Top Toss which we supposedly lost even though I was keeping track of the score and know that we did in fact WIN but I'm not in charge of the point cards so the upshot was that our team didn't get any :-(.  I also played bingo which I didn't win but came close and I'm pretty sure I'm going to win tomorrow.  Another loss in the Team Luongo column came during Tea Time Trivia where the winning team got 13 correct (we only got 9).  I was going to try Name that Tune trivia but when I got up to the Observation Lounge there were only 4 other people there so I decided in advance that that would probably end up being a loss as well so came downstairs to work on this instead.

Dinner at Compass Rose was divine:
yummy Chicken Kiev, rice with truffles and a to-die-for dessert.  Service painfully slow but I already expected this and Mike and I are still early enough in our vacation to not mind a two hour dinner for two! 

Day One

We left home at 5am for Newark airport, not worrying at all about the weather because as compulsive as I am I had the airline website up all night making sure that my plane was most definitely at the gate!  Uneventful flight, other than the fact that it took FOREVER to get the plane loaded with passengers and we were only about half full!  Don't know what was up with that but even the flight attendants were scratching their heads.

The Regent rep, Joyce, was waiting for us in the baggage claim area and we met another couple (Ed and Anna) who had come in at the same time on another flight.  All of us took a shuttle bus to the port and I spent some time chatting them up and invited them to join us at the Meet & Greet tomorrow.

We were onboard, sipping our
first cocktails in no time flat, sitting at separate tables (Mike under an umbrella next to the pool with his laptop and Blackberry in action;  me at the Pool Bar enjoying a smoke) and grabbing a light bite to eat.  They have replaced the lounge chairs with a lighter (aluminum?) frame which are very comfortable but I miss the old teak ones and I wonder what they did with all of them.  Cabins were ready promptly at 2:30 so we headed down but our luggage hadn't yet arrived. 

Back up on deck 11 to check out my fellow passengers, I was suprised and pleased to find and recognize Bonnie and Joel (2009 members of Trivia Team Luongo!).  I also met Cindy and David (lonestarlady on CC/LCT).  New friends met in addition to Ed and Anna are Kathy and Phyl (her mother) who are travelling together.  I'm sure we will all be seeing a lot of each other over the next two weeks. 

Ran around the ship delivering invitations to the Meet & Greet including the "souvenir" calendar magnet I made for everyone.  Hope they like it!

Muster was awful -- way worse than the way Capt Delavault ran it! And it's the first (presumably last) muster Mike has ever attended in all our years of sailing! 

First we were herded in to the Horizon Lounge for a long lecture and demonstration about using life jackets. Then we had to sit through a speech about the policies on board.  Then we had to all stand and single file march out to the life boat stations where we were clustered in groups out on deck standing beneath our potential life boats.  After standing out there for a while, the officers finally came by to give their "approval" and then a mass of people all headed for one of the only 2 doors available for re-entry.  It took so long I didn't even have time to shower before having to rush back up on deck for sailaway!

Arriving at the pre-arranged location, I saw Cindy & David had already secured the Texas flag to the railing.  I also met Peggy and Elaine (xrvl and sealover on CC) and finally got to meet Susan and Wayne face to face (nanook).  We all waved and waved like crazy so hopefully the webcam will have caught us -- I haven't gotten a chance to go over there yet because this internet is slooooooooow.

Enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Signatures with my new friends Susan and Wayne and Dick and Carolyn.  We laughed and laughed -- it was so much fun!  Food was good, we all ordered almost the same thing (either lamb or beef)

without realizing it and then did the same thing for dessert (either chocolate/raspberry tart or something else that was like a puddingy/tart/flan type thing). 

The menu hasn't changed in two years.  Our waiter was Mijai and he was a lot of fun, as was Aurelia the sommelier.

Post dinner went back to the cabin to change into more casual clothes, Mike went to bed and I headed up to the Popcorn movie which was "The Social Network" but I couldn't get into it so stopped by to check out the casino then came out to Coffee Connection to get a tea but there isn't any hot water so instead I sat down at an empty computer to type this.

Note:  There are 275 passengers onboard who are on for the full Circle South America.
Note:  Poor Carolyn & Dick (full cruisers) have not had a very good start to their first Regent cruise.  First they were brought over to the ship from their hotel at 10:30 this morning and then had to sit in the port for a looooooooong time.  Then as of 6:30 they STILL hadn't received their luggage that was shipped 2 weeks ago!

The only employee I recognize from the past so far is the casino manager which is really weird because the casino contract is now held by Century rather than Casinos Austria.  All the employees have been very friendly and solicitous but I haven't made any connection with any of them yet.

Off to bed, tomorrow is the Meet & Greet "cocktail party" at 11!