BellaOnline

On 9/6/2022 at 7:17 PM, 2012_Alaska_bound said:

Glad she didn't get sick until she got home. Hope she has a very mild case. I got it, but my cruise roommate didn't even though we traveled together the whole time.... who knows?

She was flat out in bed for at least three days once she got home. So I suppose it depends on what one compares it to. If she had been that sick on the ship, and then prevented from going to the dining room, she would have been fairly unhappy. That dining experience is a key reason she cruises (and the aforementioned missing string quartets ...) So in that sense she is very very lucky the symptoms only emerged once she got home.

 

I am extremely fortunate that I was my sister's roommate on the April cruise, and didn't get sick, and then I was my mom's roommate on this cruise, and didn't get sick. I'm not going to go out of my way to test this mythical immunity, though ... 

On 9/6/2022 at 6:16 PM, FengShui@Sea said:

I sincerely hope your mother feels better soon.  Sending her positive thoughts, and good wishes.

 

As someone who has had Covid, and racking my brain wondering where I may have caught it (being a total germaphob, and ultra cautious) I can almost guarantee you that she can set her exposure like a watch.  It starts at day three after exposure thinking ‘ghee, I kind of don’t feel so well’ to day four with ~ okay this is something (sore throat, fatigue, etc.). She may have caught it on the plane home, in the Miami airport, or who knows?  But I can sympathize with any uncertainty in thinking “Where did I let my guard down?”  

 

 

On our April cruise around the Mediterranean she was using hand sanitizer at each dinner, wearing a mask out, etc. This time there was no masking at all and no hand sanitizer use at all. So there wasn't much 'letting the guard down' thought. She pretty much knew she could get it and was, to be sort of blunt, past caring. I don't think she realized it would hit her as hard as it did. Again, it's just lucky she got home before it really hit her hard. She really likes to enjoy the dinners and so on, while on ship.

On 9/6/2022 at 4:16 PM, kjbacon said:

Sending our very best wishes to your mom. We just had Covid, almost a month ago, on our seabourn cruise so we can sympathize. 

 

Your pictures and descriptions are fabulous. With many of those ports in our future, even better!

Thank you. We cruised a few months ago and my sister got COVID where she was sick on the boat and had to miss some ports. So in comparison this time it was relatively good that Mom got home before she felt that sick.

This is out of order in terms of the travelogue, but my mother has been feeling awful for the past few days and has barely left bed. She finally got tested and she does in fact have COVID. Our most crowded day was in Istanbul, when we went to several mosques and also the grand bazaar. So she figures she probably got COVID at that point.

 

Fortunately even though I was her roommate, I do not have COVID. At least I am still testing negative.

Day 5 / Wednesday August 24th / Bodrum Turkey

 

We were now at our first stop in Turkey! The view from the window was sort of a mix of Mykonos and Crete. That is, the buildings were all white against a greenish background, going up hillsides, and in that sense it did look 'picturesque'. On the other hand, the buildings here were all fairly modern looking - squares with rows of windows. So it had a much more modern feel to it.

 

We had no official excursion planned for today. I slept in, having woken up bunches of time through the night. Mom sweetly brought fruit to the room for me again. Once I was done with that, I tossed on clothes.

 

The shuttles to town are on an EXTREMELY odd schedule. They only leave every half hour – and they have a long lunch break between 12:30 and 2pm. But this doesn’t mean they actually leave from the town at 2pm. It means at 2pm they leave the ship and get into town at 2:30pm to pick up people waiting there. And you have to be back on board by 4:30pm.

 

We were able to catch the 11am shuttle. It’s a minivan with maybe 10 seats total. It took about 15 minutes to drive around the bay to the main plaza of Bodrum. That plaza is immediately aside a minaret, which makes it fairly easy to find from around town. You just look for that minaret tower. The plaza is also right against the water.

 

From the plaza it was a short maybe 10-minute walk along the water to the historic castle. There was a longish line which didn’t move ‘steadily’ – it seemed as if they were waiting for enough people to come out to then accommodate a tour group going in. It moved in fits and starts. At last we got to the front, paid our dues, and went through security to get in. We saw a man go through security who had a bottle of alcohol removed from his bag. The bottle was held at the security gate for when he was done.

 

I adore castles. I write many books involving castles. This castle was one of the highlights of my trip. It is quite large and has all sorts of history associated with it. So for me the castle was quite interesting. I want to warn that the castle had a LOT of high-step stairs made from worn rough stone. There weren’t always handrails. I had to help my mom up and down a number of them. The stone was very uneven and bumpy. It’s good to wear sturdy shoes for visiting the castle.

 

The views of the town and water from the castle were quite pretty. There were many embedded stone coats of arms in the castle walls, representing various important people who had ruled over the castle. There were displays of ancient mosaics, gravestones, and other items around the grounds. Some of the tower rooms were used as museum display rooms, holding beautiful pottery, vases, jewelry, weaponry, and more. A variety of styles were represented. There were peacocks and cats roaming the grounds.

 

I really enjoyed this visit immensely. I liked being able to take our own time as we went through it. Many of the rooms were smallish so I appreciated being on our own and being able to linger. It was hot, but some of the rooms with artifacts were air conditioned, so there were ways to cool off.

Finally we were tired, starving, and done. We walked back to the town in a light rain. It was only 1:30 by this point so we checked in with the Regent people hanging out by the shuttle pickup location. We were a bit worried about this shuttle filling up, and we let them know would be ready for the 2pm shuttle. We held up 2 fingers. They said sure, you are all set.

 

Since we had a half hour to wait, we went off in the little alleys to do some shopping. I got a few items - two shawls, one with the blue eyes, the other with a lavender design. Cloth triangles were draped across the overhead areas of streets to act as a rain and sun shield. It was lovely. About 1:45 we got back to the plaza and hung out in the shuttle area. We figured there might be a swarm of people when the shuttles started up again, and we wanted to get on the first one as we were very hungry, thirsty, and tired. We checked in with the Regent people again.

 

2pm came. 2pm went. At 2:10 I went over to check in with them. They said, oh, it doesn’t get HERE until 2:30. The shuttle was over at the ship at 2. We said, but we already asked you before to make sure we had the time right. We would have gone right back to the ship on a taxi if we knew it would be this long until we got water and food.

 

They pointed us to the taxi stand.

 

We got a taxi and it was only 5 euros to get back to the ship. Clearly we should have done this back at 1:30. The taxi happily took euros even though the currency here is Turkish lira. 

 

At the terminal, it was a quick zip through a security station, just showing our room key and nothing else. And then a quick walk down the dock where we were across from another cruise ship. And up the gangplank.

 

I’ll note that nobody in Bodrum commented on my Ukrainian gear, either positively or negatively. It was a neutral issue. I was also wearing rainbow pride socks, but those are less visible with my long pants.

 

We went right to floor 11, but of course the main restaurants were all closed now. At least the pool grill was open still. I had my usual salad and Mom had a panini. I was very thirsty but it took them a while to come over to even check on our drinks, so at least I had the lettuce which is watery to eat. I should have brought a shoulder-holster for the water bottle so I could more easily carry it with me. It’s just a pain to hand-carry the big metal bottles the ship provides. I didn’t want to bring a waist pack big enough to carry these massive bottles.

 

Now, back to the room. I packed up all my laundry, added in some of Mom’s, and went over to the laundry room. It’s all free to do and they have detergent there. I started it up. There was nobody else using the machines (two washers, two dryers) and no sign instructing people to stay with their laundry. So I set my phone timer and came back to the room to relax a bit.

 

Near the end of the laundry timer, we got a call that somehow the front desk didn’t have my Turkish Visa, even though I had brought it to them and they’d copied it. So I took it again to reception. This time they didn’t copy it – they just wrote down some numbers from it. This made me a bit nervous about my visa situation, but I hoped for the best.

 

On the way to the room I swapped my laundry into the dryer – I was again the only unit in use - and set my phone timer again.

 

When my timer went off I went back to the laundry room. There were two women standing right in front of the units, talking. All four units were now going. They talked for about five minutes which was confusing to me because my unit should have stopped. Then one woman turned to me. I said my laundry should have been dry by now. She explained she’d taken out my laundry and left a few things in to finish drying. I let her know I’d just take those damp things and hang them, and did so. It felt a bit odd that she’d handled all my underwear and bras, and unless my timer had been off, the dryer shouldn’t have been finished yet. So it felt very strange. Still, a minor inconvenience, and now my laundry was all set again.

 

We dressed for dinner and went down to the lounge first to hear the musical duo. It was a keyboardist and a singer. The lounge was very dark. Again, small casual snacks like pigs-in-a-blanket and chips were offered. The musicians were technically good, but to me very mechanical sounding. We would rather have had a string quartet option. I will note that my boyfriend plays in a classic rock band, so I might be a bit more picky about music than most people would. I go to a *lot* of gigs. And, again, people were talking loudly and not even listening anyway.

 

Finally it was time for dinner at Chartreuse, one of the specialty restaurants. I happen to *adore* yellow Chartreuse, so I was really looking forward to this. In the front area, there was a couple animatedly talking by the maître d' podium and he gently tried several times to interject to ask if they were ready for dinner. Finally they said they were joining another party and moved on. The next person in line was waiting for someone, and realized he probably shouldn't have been in line if he wasn't ready. Then the maître d' got to us to seat us. It was just an odd feeling in terms of starting an evening at their high-end dining restaurant.

 

We were brought Champagne to start, then bread, then the meal began. It was quite lovely. The flavors and plating were quite nice.

 

At the end I asked if they had Chartreuse and if so which kind. They had the green kind which Bob and I always joke is ’not ripe yet’ as it is the tarter-tasting one. So they went off to check, and yes indeed they had some yellow, which was delicious. I'd been looking forward to it all evening, and it was nice that they did have it.

 

Then back to the room, and to sleep!

 

Steps: 7,328
 

17 hours ago, Yankeeclipper1 said:

Ah - getting the included wine list.  Every luxury line protects that document as if it was Top Secret.  On SilverSea the F&B manager admitted that it was intentional and actually against policy to provide a list. This is what he explained - it had to do with provisioning and presenting what was in quantity until the next provisioning. Many of the included wines are not available in the quantities that could be provided for meal service. Many of the available included wines that are “hidden” are remainders from previous provisioning - or are leftovers from wine contracts no longer being fulfilled.  Additionally, each of their provisioning points may have different items loaded.  I said OK - great explanation BUT with the detailed inventorying and oversight over all spirits and wines it is not hard to quickly sort and print a list - he did for me.  

 

Presently - on the first day of a cruise - I seek out the F&B manager and politely state I do not want to play the wine guessing game and would he/she be so kind as to provide an included wine list I can study - if not possible, then I would like to set up my own wine tasting each day - tasting 3-4 reds and 3-4 white.  Several times when the promised list never arrived  - we did our own tastings, making it our own special event - in various lounges and had sommeliers bring us three or four samples of included reds and whites.  By the 3rd day we had a nice list of maybe 20 wines for the rest of the trip.  Have done our own wine tastings 3 times and it was actually fun. 

If the ship really is not going to provide a wine tablet / wine app, then this absolutely sounds like a brilliant idea. Normally my mom likes to get a glass of Champagne in the lounge before dinner - but it's easy enough to change that to each of us getting two half-glasses of wines we think might go with our chosen dishes. We already know by this point what we're planning on ordering for dinner. So we can taste the various wines, maintain our notes, and build a reference library. We'd have to do that every evening because as mentioned the wine lists are really changing that frequently right now.

 

I know other people mentioned doing this process *at* dinner, but the last thing I want to be doing while enjoying an appetizer is tasting 'awful with the dish' wines to see what works and what doesn't work for the main course. I'm more open to that process an hour beforehand, with nuts and olives and such, when it doesn't directly impact the actual meal.

18 hours ago, Techno123 said:

My husband still teases me about this but our only (for now) Regent cruise was on Voyager having previously cruised on Oceania (and Seabourn but that was as a total cruising newbie so we didn't really know the ropes 😁). Oceania had a wine list (paid for by the glass or included if you had the drinks package) so we could choose the wine we fancied each evening. On Voyager I tried a few of the included wines at the 'horrible wine drinking time of 10:30am'. I asked if there were any others available and was told no. I asked for a list and was told there wasn't one. Then at both lunch and dinner that day there were included wines which hadn't been at the tasting and several more arrived over the course of the cruise. I then chatted with another passenger who had many nights with Regent and he had been given a printed list on the first day which we had a peruse of but it really, really annoyed me at the time as I felt I had been lied to twice in quick succession. Definitely a first world problem but it was as if the wine list was top secret and only provided to 'special' passengers 😂 I had a chat (complain is too strong a word) with the hotel manager and lo and behold, he managed to print off the 'list that didn't exist' for me too 😜

I think it's not even that 'easy' any more - the list seems to change day to day. I really think they need a wine tablet to let you know what's in inventory that evening ... 

19 hours ago, DaveFr said:

About a month ago I posted the Complementary and Connoisseur wine lists from my Splendor cruises in June and July. (See Wine Lists) While the wines on the list change from time to time, the lists are a pretty good example of what is normally available.

 

Dave

Our crew told us due to current volatility in the shipping market that the wine list was changing day to day, which means even preparing ahead doesn't always give solid information once one is moving from port to port. Again I point to them claiming they ran out of Champagne one evening ... 

19 hours ago, RetiredandTravel said:

I agree 100%.  They (all "luxury" cruise lines) should just have complete lists of the "included" wines easily available but they don't.    I don't think this is by mistake.

 

There is no way the highlighted wines of the evening go well with all the dishes.   My suggestion is to try to find out more information perhaps ask what Red Bordeaux is included.  It may be easier to get more information in a little less stress free environment than dinner at CR. 

 

The Connoisseur list is also very reasonable but its starts around $60-70.

 

IMO the quality and transparency of the included wines leaves much to be desired.  

I remember one time their recommended red would have been completely atrocious with the dish I was going to order. Their recommendations might match with their 'most popular dish' of the evening, but as you said there's just no way that it could possibly pair well with every single item on their menu.

20 hours ago, irishwitchy said:

We normally order off the list, but once in awhile we don’t.  However,  ordering off the list the first night seems to get the sommelier attention and after that they are very quick to recommend a free wine based on what   I just ordered,  a reasonable one on the list or something special.  Also,  attending the wine tasting,  which normal held at the perfectly horrible wine drinking time at 10:30am!  I also believe all of the wines may be lined up in a couple of places that you can go check them all out.   

Part of the wine staff's claim was that wines would become available or unavailable on a day by day basis. I really think they should have a wine tablet, like many restaurants do, so you could quickly scan it and see what was available that night. That would save them from printing and tossing lots of paper lists every day, or making patrons play the guessing game.

1 hour ago, kjbacon said:

This is a great report, thank you for posting. We are holding a Middle East and Greek Isles cruise so this is very helpful!

 

We are in complete agreement on the art and also think that the Riviera art is a stand out.

Now we just need one uber-ship which combines the food of this cruise with the art of the Riviera ... 

1 hour ago, cwn said:

 This is the best way to find some free wines to your taste. At that event they will help you to find ones to your taste and it is fun. 
 We have never had a problem at dinner, DH taste the one they bring and OKs it or ask for a different one giving them a general type he likes. I go to the tasting as I am a bit picky and find one I like usually a red. I ask for that every night. After a night or two in the CR , it is always waiting for me. Of course if I find I like what DH is having that night I have some of that one too. Point is there is not only one free red and white on offer each night….that is just the red and white they have chosen to feature that night. Tell steward what you like and they will find something on the included list that should suit you.

 

I suppose the challenge for me is I eat different things on different nights. The wine I want with a filet mignon is going to be very different than the wine I want to have with pork piccata and so on. So I can't just find one wine and keep drinking it. I like LOTS of styles of wines, based on the situation  :). I adore Arrowood viognier and Stag's Leap cabernet. I love Chateau Maucoil Chateauneuf du Pape. But it depends what dish I'm having. Something that would be perfect for the viognier could taste awful with the cabernet. So I really don't want someone else making those decisions for me.  I want the full list.

2 hours ago, forgap said:

Regent often has a wine tasting in the atrium early in the cruise.  You can get a nice overview of the range of complementary wines and peruse the other wines on offer for a cost.  I have never had an issue getting something I liked.  

Hmmmm we didn't see a wine tasting on the schedule, but we could have missed it. We are wine aficionados so we might have more specific types of wine we enjoy with certain dishes than most people. We of course understand the trade-off of a ship only carrying a small inventory of options. My mom cruises quite a lot. So I do understand it's a balance. But for example I would want more detail than 'Californian Chardonnay' or 'Burgundy Pinot Noir'. To me each is too wide a range of flavor options. And at the same time I don't really want to spent twenty minutes playing twenty questions with the sommelier. I'd rather just look down a list, figure out what my best compromise is, and choose it. 

1 hour ago, RetiredandTravel said:

There are actually several "included" wines that are available, you can ask for anyone of them at any time.  It is a frustrating process to find out all the included wines but its worthwhile because there are generally some of much better quality that they don't advertise.   We have always asked for the French Burgundy Chardonnay that is very good, far superior to the Chilean one.   I've seen lists published here from some bars, maybe just make friends with one of the wine people or bartenders to get more information.

 

Attached is an older list but it gives you a sense of what's available.  Someone here may have a more recent list.

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2645719-current-explorer-complimentary-wine-list/

 

Yes absolutely there are a range of wine options but the ship makes it really troublesome to figure out what those wines are. Which makes no sense. I'd think they'd want passengers as happy as possible, so they want to keep coming back. A poorly matched wine can make food taste less than stellar, and now people are blaming the chef when it's the wine's fault ... 

 

My mom filed a mid-cruise comment card with a number of items. She got calls back on pretty much every item except this one. This one, they ignored :).  She asked one of the sommeliers and got a non-answer of 'it changes'. Of course it does - so does their actual full wine list, too. At least a list that is mostly accurate is better than no list at all ... heck, there was one night they 'ran out of Champagne'. Suspicious ... they certainly had plenty the next morning for the Champagne and Caviar breakfast ... 

2 hours ago, Dr. Cocktail said:

100% agreed - why they (they being the town) haven't built a second cable car is beyond me except .... from their point of view - why?  Keeping people waiting in town really has no negative consequences for them. Better to keep people waiting and possibly buying more stuff.

 

You could tender to the far side of the island but that then means more buses on the road....

 

ps .... thanks for the  tip on the wine!  Forewarned is forearmed!!!  We will be charmingly Canadian in our polite insistence!

I suppose if enough people refuse to come ashore because the passengers don't want to deal with the hassle, the town might then put in a faster way to get up and down. Or maybe when someone has a serious medical issue up on top and sues the town for not having prepared a faster option ... or when a donkey squashes someone!

Day 4 / Tuesday August 23rd/ Crete Greece

 

We were now at the island of Crete. We had been scheduled for a long 5-hour tour today which came with a ‘lots of walking’ warning. Because the last two days had been so tiring, on tours with NO walking warning at all, we decided to cancel our tickets for today’s tour. That meant I could sleep in! Hurrah!

 

My wonderful mom brought me some fruit back from the buffet, which was lovely. I tried to sleep some more, but the ship's crew was doing ship alarm testing so there were blaring alarms going off all the time. Not conducive to sleep.

 

For lunch, Prime 7, one of the specialty restaurants, was open. No reservations needed. It was lovely. I had seared tuna. Then we gathered our things to go explore the town on foot. I wore my usual Ukrainian-angel earrings, Ukrainian-colored hairband, and Ukrainian-colored bracelet.

 

You would think for a touristy town like this that their dock area would have easy access to the city center. But the walk is along busy streets with no benches, no shade, and fairly narrow walking areas. There are steep stairs. There's a "yellow line" on the ground to follow, but it's not always clear which way to follow it. By the time we got up to the center of the city, Mom was exhausted. We sat on a bench. After a while of people-watching she was ready to go back.

 

I'll note the first two Greek islands were 'beautiful' - white buildings, blue domes, and the like. Picturesque. This stop, at least where we walked to, was just 'industrial'. Square brown buildings, car-filled streets, and so on. It felt like 'any other city'.

 

I was looking for a shawl for a friend, so we stopped into a few stores. I found a lovely ‘protective eye’ shawl at one shop. While we were chatting with the store clerk, she asked us where we were from. My mom said the US. The store clerk said, in essence, “No, where are you REALLY from” indicating my earrings. Yes, the store clerk was Ukrainian, too, and we had a good conversation.

 

The walk back to the ship was just as hot, humid, and arduous. I was drenched in sweat. We at last got to the ship terminal and went through security. We only needed our ship cards, no other paperwork. Then a short walk to the ship itself and up the gangplank. We checked in with our cards and didn’t have to go through security a second time.

 

Up to the room! Right into the shower!

 

We relaxed in the room until about 6pm, when we decided to go down and hear the guitarist. We really hadn’t done any ship “musical activities” until now and thought it time to give them a try.

The lounge area was quite nice, with a small stage. The guitarist had a tiny travel guitar and played from iPad-style tablet notes. Unfortunately, most of the people around us were babbling at quite high volumes so it was hard to hear him, even in the ‘second row’ of tables. He did play some older classics like from the Beatles and Eric Clapton, but he also (amusingly to me) played some fairly recent hard-rock kinds of songs, and songs like 'Nothing Else Matters'. So there was a mix.

 

Nearly all of the cocktails on the menu featured fruits. I had a lychee martini. The wait-staff brought around little snacks like a roll of salmon with cream cheese and a little container of olives.

 

After an hour set the musician was done. We went to the Compass Rose for dinner. We were seated in another area, perhaps because all the window tables were taken. The food had lovely presentation and was delicious.

 

I will note something odd about wine here. Passengers get base-level wines for free, unlimited, and then you can pay to get more expensive options. On a given evening's menu they show you ONE white and ONE red for the free options. That's it. If you ask for a wine list, they only show you the for-pay wines. There is no way to know what all your free white and red options are. It might easily be that the free white on tonight's menu is a very acidic sharp one which just doesn't go with your chosen main dish. You'd rather have a buttery chardonnay. But now you're stuck in a guessing game asking them what other free whites they have, and having them try to describe those options to you. It makes no sense at all. It took a few days into the cruise before we started to have a sense of what our options REALLY were, to know what we could order with different dishes.

 

I thought about doing laundry after dinner. However, I realized that it was too late, as the laundry room closed at 10pm. So I put off laundry until tomorrow. 

 

It was time to sleep!

 

We didn't end up seeing much of Crete, but I am very glad we did not completely burn ourselves out on a long-distance walking tour. We still had many cruise days remaining that we wanted to enjoy. As it turns out, even just walking on our own into town we walked nearly the same step count as we did yesterday.

 

Step Count: 7347

2 hours ago, Dr. Cocktail said:

Bella: Great review so far!

 

I will be making a long awaited return to cruising this winter and will be trying Regent for the first time so your thoughts are much appreciated!

 

A discussion on donkey poo? How would it NOT be possible for me to weigh in?!

 

Our last time in Santorini was 11 years ago and there were 1/2 a dozen ships in port. An entirely different poo show!   After arriving in town, we did an exhausting 49 second walk, said hello to the most deserving (ok, all of the) cats and sat on a rooftop patio and killed a bottle or two of rose.

 

The line up at the cable car was INSANE - an hour + wait in a slightly higher temperature than I would use to roast my Thanksgiving turkey.

 

Now, at that time I was 48 years old (my partner was 46), both of us 6 feet tall and weighing about 165 pounds. Now 1) I hate animal poo. 2) hate bad smells 3) hate the heat and 4) don't particularly like donkeys or pony's or the such.

 

Bad attitude in hand, we walked down .... I would love to say that it was the worst experience of my life but it wasn't. We chatted with a woman our age as we went down. The BIG challenge is that is extremely physically challenging - I do/did about 50 minutes of intense cardio daily and it left all of us knackered by the end.  

 

Our first thing onboard was to stand with our shoes in the pool shower - those feet were NOT marching down a carpeted corridor!

 

It is just so strange to me that donkeys, brutal walk, or brutal line are the options the town provides to people - especially elderly people who might need to get to their medicine. The tour write-up didn't warn about an 'hour wait to get down to the tender, waiting standing in the heat'. That kind of information might be a make-it-or-break-it issue for some people. I know the town wants to keep a historic feel about the process, but surely for safety reasons there should be another quicker / safer option, too.

3 hours ago, papaflamingo said:

Don't "re-think," UN-THINK it!!  Our "adventure" above should serve as a warning.  In addition, during our ride down, my donkey stumbled 2 or 3 times and almost went down.  It's worth waiting for the Funicular.  Just give yourself enough time to stand in line, especially if there are multiple ships in. 

Yes, our tour guide said in essence "hang out in town for another 3 hours, the line will reduce once another ship or two leaves port". But our entire group was exhausted by that point and wanted to get back to their rooms to shower and nap. I think it would have helped a lot if people knew up front what the situation was going to be, to mentally prepare.

11 hours ago, irishwitchy said:

Wow, I would normally be on the donkey, but I  may have to rethink that if I’m ever there.  

Avoid The Donkeys :).

16 hours ago, RJ2002 said:

 

As your cruise continued, you probably discovered that each evening La Veranda is 'transformed' to the Italian venue, Setti Mare.  

 

Lots of dining choices on Explorer.  Hope you were able to experience some of the other options.

 

We were on Explorer a couple of segments before you (Barcelona-Rome), and I'm enjoying reading about you and your Mom's time onboard.

Yes it turns out my mom was looking at the lunch menu when she saw a Chinese option, not the dinner menu. We did end up eating everywhere at some point, I'm pretty sure. The food in general was quite good, although I found some of the meat to be a bit tough.

16 hours ago, papaflamingo said:

You got THAT right!   We made the mistake of riding the donkeys down a number of years ago.  The donkeys are tied together and led by a guy on foot.  My wife was on the donkey ahead of mine so mine was tied to hers.  She had a "killer donkey."  It didn't try to rub her leg on the wall, but instead would go from one side of the path to the other pushing people walking down into the walls!  All my wife said the whole way down was "I'm sorry....I'm sorry... I'm sorry!"   And THEN my donkey walked up and had it's head next to my wife's donkey and suddenly her donkey raised it's tail and I KNEW what was coming!  I quickly lifted my leg as much as I could while her donkey "unloaded" right where my leg had been!!!  😱. 

Yeah.... NEVER...EVER...EVER ride the donkeys, especially down.  And by the way, don't even consider walking down.  All that "stuff" on the trail was "dumped" by the donkeys!  😜

 

Wow that is scary! The donkeys sound like a real menace!

18 hours ago, ronrick1943 said:

Nice review, thank you for taking the time.

I'm glad you're enjoying it! I find it very valuable to read other cruisers' reviews before I go on a cruise, so I want to 'pay it forward'.

Day 3 / Monday August 22nd / Santorini Greece

 

It was now our second full day of our Regent Seven Seas Explorer cruise! Today, we were going to explore the island of Santorini, Greece. I always think of "Santorini" by Yanni when I think of this island, and in fact I'm listening to the song again as I write this :).

 

The Santorini tour was an early morning one at 8:20am. Santorini is a tender port. This means you can't just walk off the ship. You have to take a small boat from the cruise ship to shore.

 

Thank goodness we actually got SOME sleep last night so we could be ready. We had a quick meal (fruit pieces for me) and then went down to the two-level theater to muster. The theater was STUFFED overfull with people. This was the one and only time that it actually felt like the ship had people on it. To be fair, though, people only sat in the 'edge seats' of rows. The inner seats were all empty. Also, for some bizarre reason, there was practically NO room for people to get past people on a row. The rows were enormously tight front-to-back. So, really, if someone was in an edge seat, there was no way to wriggle past them to get to an inner seat. I know ships want to keep space tight, but the theater row spacing was fairly extreme. Especially when you take into account mobility issues many of the elderly passengers had.

 

The way theater tour processing works, you are given a ticket in your cabin. You then go to the theater with it. You would bring your ticket down to the front area of the theater to trade that ticket in for a specific bus number. A single tour (like ours to Santorini) might have so many people that multiple busses made up the group. It's important, if you're in a group, to get your bus tickets together. Otherwise you could end up on separate busses.

 

Once the appointed time comes around (or often, quite a while past the appointed time) the crew members call groups by number, in order. Eventually they got to our group 15. 

 

We went down the stairs to level 3 which is where the tenders were gathering up people. Tenders are small boats that transport you from the cruise ship to the dock, in situations where the ship can’t make it up close itself. Crew members help you onto the tender. It can be relatively dicey depending on the weather, crossing from the "hole" in the side of the cruise ship over to the deck of the small rocking transport boat.

 

Then it’s a short 5-minute ride or so to land.

 

We all got onto the tender boat. The crew members who help you across the gap are generally burly and well used to doing this.

 

Once we landed, we got onto the indicated bus. This landing area was a narrow land strip with just a few little shops and cafes. We were at the bottom of a VERY steep mountain with back-and-forth roads that the bus had to navigate to get up. It was very challenging for the bus to make the turns, but of course it managed it. Often the bus had to wait at a turn for other cars to wriggle in between, to leave space for us.

 

Soon we were up to the top of the cliff. Where our time on Mykonos was mostly down at sea level, our time on Santorini was mostly up in cliff-edge towns.

 

We drove through fairly quiet rocky landscapes. Along the way our guide strongly warned us that we were going to a tourist market town. There were going to be pickpockets. He warned us quite strenuously to not wear wallets in back pockets. We had to keep them in zippered purses. The purses had to be kept in front of us. The guide was born in Santorini and felt strongly about keeping us safe during our trip.

 

We reached the market town. The bus parked in a lower parking lot. It was a long steep walk to get up to a plaza area. We were brought to a 'corn stand' in a plaza. We were told to take photos of this area and to meet up in an hour in this same spot. Then he walked us a short distance further up the hill to show us the beautiful ocean overlook. Again, he told us to meet in the lower plaza area once we were done shopping.

 

From this upper area, there were two main paths – left and right along the overlook – to look at shops and items. That was really all this was - a shopping area with little shops along the cliff top. It was extremely hot and humid.

 

Mom and I walked around a bit, took some photos, and we stopped at a pharmacy to get something for Mom. Back near the meeting spot, I finally found some cats and owls to buy. It turned out the shop owner used to be a ship captain and had been to Boston many times. He said the people on Cape Cod were not very friendly :).

 

Then Mom and I returned to the meeting place. We found a bench to sit on.

 

Nearly everyone gathered fairly quickly after we got there. However, there was a woman missing and nobody knew where she was, even her husband. The tour guide was worried. The husband provided the phone number, but she wasn’t answering her phone. I said to Mom that everyone should have given the tour guide their phone number ahead of time and he could just 'watch our dots' in case someone got lost.

 

Finally we found that this missing woman was back at the bus. So we could move on.

 

On we went to a winery for tasting. It is a cooperative winery that allows all the Santorini grape growers to work together. Like on our previous Canary Islands cruise, the wine vines here are short bushes, kept short to avoid the strong winds. They manage the volcanic rocky soil. This was not a 'formal wine tasting' situation. We all sat at random small tables along the cliff. For us to eat, there was a tiny buffet just with cheese, tomatoes, and little pistachio rolls which were soon all gone. We could go up to get, one at a time, three glasses of wine. There was no 'information' provided about the wine. 

 

There were restrooms. And then it was time to move on.

 

However, at the bus, a couple said that they realized that they’d lost their wallet. I thought at the time they meant someone at the winery had taken it, which was strange, because it was a fairly open space with a relaxed atmosphere at the winery. It was definitely not a 'pickpocket' kind of environment. Nobody got anywhere near anyone else in the patio area.

 

It turns out the wallet had actually gone missing back in the dense-packed shopping alleys of the town, which makes much more sense. The woman first thought she just left it at the pharmacy. But with the tour guide's help she called the pharmacy and they didn't have it there. It became more clear that it was actually stolen after her pharmacy visit.

 

The tour guide was very upset by this. He’s a local and has done tours for ten years. He had never had anything stolen from one of his people. He had done everything he could to make it VERY clear to us to watch our wallets. He made grumpy comments about Albanians and such coming to his island and causing trouble. I thought that a little iffy - what if someone in our group was Albanian? He could hardly know the thief was an Albanian. But he clearly blamed the 'invasive Albanians'.

 

We went on with our tour. The woman would have to report the theft at a police station at our next stop.

 

The third stop was - yup - another shopping town to explore. The bus again stopped in a fairly distant parking area and we all had to get out. We walked up a long steep road to get to a plaza area. We were told we could explore town as long as we wanted. When we were done we’d have to take a cable car down as the easiest route. The other two options were a donkey ride or walking steep stairs. I.e. there was no direct way back to the ship. We were on a cliff top. To get to the ship you had to get to the cliff bottom, and the bus was NOT an option.

 

I’d heard MANY horror stories about the donkeys scraping your leg hard against the cliff as it went down. The donkeys were NOT an option for me.

 

Mom wanted to get right for the cable car, as did pretty much everyone else. We did poke into a church for a minute before heading over to the cable car line. It was a ten minute walk through dense crowds to get to the cable car line. This was a VERY long line that snaked through the streets. We got into line at 1:42 and were at the cable car embarkation area at 2:08. So 24 minutes in the hot sun. This was the only option other than walking down.

 

The actual area where you get onto the cable car is a bit risky. It is a steep set of stairs, where the cable cars come in. I.e. the cable cars are on a "sloped line" when they come to rest. So you have to stand on steep stairs waiting for the cable cars to come to a stop to climb in. It could be very easy to trip and fall on those stairs. I wish there was another option for people to get back to the ship, other than these cable cars. Certainly I would not recommend the donkeys or walking for elderly people.

I helped Mom into the cable car. It holds about 5-6 people each on two opposing metal benches.

On the cable car ride, we could see the donkeys. The people with us in our cable car with us told us they'd personally heard horror stories about the donkeys scraping peoples' legs against the cliff. I tell you, avoid the donkeys.

 

We disembarked at the bottom.

 

Once we got out of the cable car facility, the Regent dock was right there and a tender was waiting. We climbed onto the tender and very quickly we were heading back to the ship. We were helped on board and were set!

 

Shower time!

 

Mom went to listen to a lecture, so I went over toward the gym to experience the 6pm guided meditation. I love yoga and meditation and was thrilled our schedule let me give this a try.

The gym is at the back of the ship next to a bunch of cabins. It turns out all the cabins on both left and right were blocked off, marked quarantine. Hmmm. 

 

I had to go down to the spa entrance on the floor below, and then go up through internal stairs to get to the gym. It turns out I was the only one there for the meditation. When I went up, a pair of very bulky men was using the meditation room for weight lifting. My meditation man came up and scolded the weight lifters (crew members, I think) in Greek (I think) for being there. They said something unhappy in return and he snapped something probably meaning "she is a guest, get lost."

The two men wiped up most of their sweat and left. 

 

The meditation man put a yoga mat for me right next to the remaining sweat pools :). As directed, I laid down on the mat. 

 

He put on typical meditation-type music. He told me to breathe in deeply, then out a few short breaths. Then he said nothing. I kept breathing. I could hear lots of strong grunting from the weight-lifters in the next room.

 

About five minutes later he said something about breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Then nothing. 

 

A while later, he had me sit up and breathe-hold-release. Then nothing. Then he had me stand and make ten arm circles. We were done, after a half hour.

 

I wouldn’t quite call that a guided meditation. I won’t be going back for that :).

 

My mom thought there was Chinese food tonight on the Veranda, but no, it was Italian again. So we went over to the main dining room. They put us into the exact same seat at the first time, which is sort of a shame. One would sort of like to see different things. Mom really wanted to see the sunset, but the sun set ‘over a mountain’ on a nearby island and she was sad that it didn’t set on the water itself. I showed her a map that we are inside a volcano caldera and the sun can’t set on the water in here.

 

I had seared tuna over veggies and then filet mignon. Chocolate mousse for dessert. It was all nice, although the meat is tougher than I'd expect. Also, these first few nights, they only gave us butter knives. Very strange. They gave us actual meat knives later in the trip.

 

Instructions had been broadcast to the rooms to please bring copies of your Turkish visas to the reception desk sometime today. So, after dinner, I stopped by the reception desk to drop off my Turkish visa. They made a xerox copy of it. While there, I heard that at least two different people had had their wallets stolen in Santorini. So it is a place to be cautious.

 

Tonight was my teen writing group I run online. I went to the computer area and fortunately they have US plugs so I didn’t have to deal with my converter. I did a test zoom with my boyfriend Bob. Near the end I had (ahem) gastric distress. I wonder if it was the tuna that did it. It was the only time during my trip I felt unwell (thank goodness).

 

After my Bob-Zoom session, I went back to the room and took a nap. Then I returned and ran the class from 12 midnight to 3am. The connection hiccupped a few times due to the satellite signal, as we were sailing between Santorini and Crete at the time, but it always came back, thankfully.

 

Then off to bed!!

 

Step count: 8354 steps

 

On 9/3/2022 at 4:32 PM, forgap said:

That’s the thing about art - some pieces speak to the heart, some to the brain, and some to the intestines!  I rather liked Frank del Rio’s championing of South American artists.   I have my favorite pieces on each ship as well as my “worst in show” choices.  Bottom line, though, they always catch my attention.  
 

We just returned from a cruise on the Silversea Whisper.   The art throughout the ship was monochromatic to the level of wallpaper.  There were also objects in cases that looked like dust covered souvenirs from trips made 50 years ago.  Trust me, Del Rio’s choices were much more interesting,  

 

I absolutely agree that we all have different tastes in art. It just seemed like this set wasn't bought with much thought. The Oceania was fascinating to walk through. Here, most of the walls were bare and the ones with items seemed to be the same as the previous items I'd just seen. Again, not everyone cares about art. Some probably don't care at all. But I suppose I was expecting something a bit more, with the level of this ship.

On 9/3/2022 at 12:23 PM, flossie009 said:

Yes I remember we made the same comment. Frank del Rio's only criteria for choice appeared to be size & colour; maybe he assumed price determined the quality 😉

The best wall decoration for us on Explorer is the excellent variety of vintage photographs on the passenger accommodation decks 🙂

 

I have to admit I chuckled at the vintage photos on deck 8 at least. They were mostly of sexy women from the 1960s in various poses. It was as if they were catering to people who were lusty in the 1960s and wanting to look at bikini-wearing women in that era. As a female who wasn't lusting after females in the 1960s I found that less than enticing. I'd have rather had Mykonos landscapes or heck half male images even.