Gilly

@DeepFreeze63 thanks for the Splendor report which is of special interest since three weeks today - ?tomorrow? - we'll be boarding her in Copenhagen, hooray! I was especially happy to see Andy and Tammy on board, for they're amongst our all time favourite CD/SH. Sorry about the bad weather. I watched our (UK) weather forecast this morning and saw the stuff over Scandinavia, thinking that cruising up there right now was possibly not the most fun, but that was before I read the reality in your post just now. Here's hoping that all blows through pretty swiftly and that normal Regent blue skies will appear. After all that really hot and sunny weather we've had of late, this chill and rainy stuff is a bit of a shock to the system, I can tell you (and most certainly not Hampton Court Flower Show or Wimbledon weather, is it?) Look after the lovely Splendor for us and have a wonderful cruise!

OK, so you are more than twice as likely to have encountered a disappointing situation on board a Regent ship than I am.

That's true, I haven't. But I am also entitled to my opinion based on my own experience gathered over 300 days on board Regent ships (including the occasional disappointment).

Remember that for every one of the people who write here or elsewhere about their disappointment with this or that, there are another few hundred happy clients who count their blessings and can't wait to step back on board a Regent ship - whichever one it happens to be - who appreciate all those thoughtful touches from incredible staff who make our experience so special.

But if you can't get to Berlin - or if you know the city already - then the Regent tour to Schwerin was excellent and fascinating too. Few people get to see Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Angela Merkel's home state) and the castle, lakes and cathedral are all well worth a visit and were part of the tour we took (and very much enjoyed).

Aaaagh, @lprp, I have so many friends I've never met... @flossie009 and @forgap included and others who got on and we got off or vice versa ( hi @liptastic !) It was fabulous to finally meet @briar14 last year and @2012_Alaska_bound too - perhaps one of these days we'll all find ourselves on the same ship and heaven knows what mayhem might break out! We managed Shetland and the Orkneys last year and have aimed for the Faroes once before (and the Falklands) and missed...but hey, this may be our lucky year!

@lprp we're sailing a B2B on Splendor, having enjoyed our Norwegian trip with @briar14 and @2012_Alaska_bound so much last year. We'll leave Copenhagen on July 26th and return home from Reykjavik on August 23rd, overnighting in Southampton which will be strange as it's not much more than an hour from home. Our previous Greenland itinerary was cancelled due to CV, so we're making up for lost time, I hope - we were eager to see the Faroes too. We already heard that our Stavanger stop has been cancelled, which doesn't bother us terribly, but I know how disappointing such things can be. I have my fingers crossed for all the others as I know that Greenland was a no go for quite a few people last year, because of bad weather (I think?) How about you @lprp ? Will our paths cross?

@flossie009 I love it!! 🤣 I hope you are able to enjoy the city as planned, though I'm wondering if it's a fuel/environmental issue that's taking effect as Norway is particularly concerned about the impact of cruise ships. I think many are rescheduling as a result of not going to St Petersburg, perhaps? It's a little ironic when Stavanger gained so much as a result of oil and gas exports though, isn't it? 🤔

I agree, Quebec City is delightful and I really enjoyed being taken back there - thank you @GeorgiaPeach51 ! For "next time" I highly recommend the Auberge St Antoine, a family owned Relais & Chateaux property with a fabulous restaurant too. Too late now, but in my experience you'll want to return 🙂

I agree @Techno123 because whilst it's a far from impartial film, nevertheless it gives a little insight to the effects of these huge ships. I'm not sure how frequently Iona is in Stavanger but think that last year, she was on a regular Norwegian Fjords itinerary aimed at families. When we were in port, my dh went into town to seek a cash machine and reported that it "felt like being in Basildon" (not that either of us has any first hand experience of that!) Watching the crowds returning to the shi in the late afternoon, I understood what he meant. I just looked at P&O itineraries and it appears that at least one of their ships visits weekly, with Iona doing the Norwegian Fjord cruise throughout the summer. Iona is fuelled by LNG which I assume makes it more acceptable to the Norwegian environmental authorities.

@GeorgiaPeach51 I can't believe you are already packing to go home! That cruise has passed an a blink. Ha, not the next one though, eh? 😉

We are also on the Splendor cruise from Copenhagen, but having stopped in Stavanger last year on board Navigator, on the same day as the enormous P&O Iona, I can understand how residents feel. I posted a link to a video on the FB conversation and can't find it right now to share here, but it made for interesting viewing I thought. Yes it's disappointing to miss a port but that's life on a cruise...and at least we have a beautiful ship on which to sail. Ps found the link

@pappy1022 You can request a special menu to be served in CR to you and however many friends you'd like to invite to join you at your table (I think max 8 generally speaking) We've found the most successful evenings to be those which allow the chefs to share the flavours from home - last year on Navigator we organised an Indian supper and then friends invited us to share a more general Asian menu (we've also had Filipino, Indonesian, Thai on previous cruises....) The staff - both chefs and restaurant team - did a fabulous job, preparing specially printed menus and serving each dish individually with explanations where necessary. We've found such menus are to be savoured - not hurried - and have been utterly thrilled by each experience, created and served with such pride. Chat to the F&B manager about what can be done, give them a couple of days notice and be prepared for a real treat.

I find that by the time our cruise is coming to an end, I am ready to "break free" 😉 The strange thing is, that is the same regardless of the number of days I've been on board (we usually sail between 15 and 30 days). I love to settle into a routine on the ship, I enjoy a good mix of sea days and port days and have never tired of the menus on offer. Usually when the time comes to pack, however glad I am to be starting the next part of our trip - or heading home - I think that if someone came along and offered me another couple of days, I would probably cope, though!! Actually, I do recall a couple of occasions when the note has come around offering the possibility to stay on for the next cruise at some very reasonable price - not recently though and we have never been able to take advantage of any such offer, sadly. On one lovely long cruise with quite a few sea days, the social hostess (Adriana...if anyone remembers her) gathered about twenty or so "ladies who lunch" and organised a terrific champagne lunch in CR one day early on in the itinerary. That meant that quite a few of us got to know one another, resulting in a very sociable atmosphere on board for the remaining days. (I think that there might have been a "rival" event elsewhere on the ship for the gentlemen who didn't fit the profile too) Now, I hope to have an occasion to request a star gazing session, @forgap - what a great idea! Oh, and definitely request a special dinner in CR for a table of friends - those evenings are spectacular! (Whetting my appetite for our next trip in a couple of months time!)

As far as I know...though we have certainly made our opinions heard! I agree about the lavish pleather wallets and so on...costly to produce and those of us who have been travelling with Regent for some years probably have a collection of them. But we do need some pre-cruise things, eg luggage tags! My thought is that Regent's challenge is to come up with a "slimmed down" alternative; something worth getting as part of the luxury pre-cruise experience but which is eco-friendly and less costly to make/send. I'm thinking furoshiki...with the labels etc inside 🙂

I agree with @flossie009 - in my experience both of those people have always gone to great lengths to accommodate our wishes and on the odd occasion when something hasn't been possible, they've explained why and made suggestions (choose another evening, say, or perhaps a different time) that worked for everyone. Compass Rose is more flexible in that respect than the speciality restaurants.

I believe that, like so many places, those of us who were fortunate enough to travel to Myanmar (and China, to some extent) some years ago experienced the best of a country which will never be quite the same again. The question is, where ought we be considering travelling to now, to experience the best before it changes?

I use the free Snapchat app to edit my photos when travelling - might be an alternative to have up your sleeve. And @GeorgiaPeach51 I think of Navigator as "classic cruising" and especially love the proximity of everything. I also believe the Navigator theatre is the best in the fleet!

I appreciate that we could have been particularly lucky with the weather, and that coming from the UK, we are pretty much used to "chilly" and "damp" but I'd trade that early morning Brrr for the beautiful, empty ports and townspeople happy to greet the first ships of the year every time! We've sailed Alaska in school holidays when we had to do that and there was no comparison!

I offered the suggestion a while back about exploring the restaurants on the upper floors of these department stores, which are smart, "proper" restaurants and not food courts. Most large stores have two floors of restaurants, open till late and offering a wide range of cuisine. We always find them much easier to navigate than trying to find somewhere at street level and though we have enjoyed a couple of Izakaya bars in Shinjuku I very much doubt that we'd ever be able to find them again! On our first visit to Japan, some 25 years ago, we requested our guide offer some guidance about how to identify a restaurant, for at the time most were quite hidden behind the door curtains and didn't always have a menu outside. Sadly, in many visits since then, we've never found it easy and as a result, have usually resorted to the department store practice!!

I can't say about Shelburne, but I'd happily do my own thing in Quebec, which is a very walkable and beautiful city with many nooks and crannies to explore. Our cruise ship berthed right in the centre of the city, right beneath the Chateau Frontenac, so we didn't even need a shuttle bus.

I guess she probably wore them on just the one occasion, when she had her bridegroom to support her!

@HongKongAlan if you're interested, I wrote about that cruise on my personal blog and it begins here with my post from 27 April 2019, leaving Tokyo on board Mariner and follows on with a post each day. We did a Regent tour in each of the ports (except for Dutch Harbor, where we used the Regent shuttle) and consider it one of our favourites. @DeepFreeze63 you mean to say we've shared a cruise and didn't "meet"? I'm sorry to have missed that opportunity!!

Hehe, @Techno123 same here!

@HongKongAlan my FB popped up with a "five years ago today" image of us leaving Tokyo five years ago for that very same itinerary, which we loved. I don't have restaurant recommendations for any of those ports, but would say that if you are in Hitachinaka during the festival with the blue flowers those who did the tour to Seaside Park were delighted to be part of it all and I regretted that we didn't choose that tour. Hitachi Seaside Park (Hitachi Kaihin Koen) - Ibaraki Travel (japan-guide.com)