Gray Lady

Glad to hear you came through! Hope your road to total recovery is smooth. Being home will be wonderful. Also best wishes to TB, as going through this with you is hard on her too! Thoughts, prayers, and best wishes, Cindy

Thank you for your kind thoughts. We are one step further towards surgery as the cardiologist gave him the thumbs up. So far no one has posted anything, but I am hoping that changes soon. If you have any pictures of Rome or from your cruise, I would love to see those posted. Have a wonderful cruise!

Did you happen to buy trip insurance? Due to your age and the stress involved with these changes, would your doctor say that you were medically unable to go on the cruise?

Thank you so much for your beautiful pictures, wonderful insights, and witty commentary. It allowed me to “get away” with you and leave my “reality” for a bit. Always enjoy reading about your travels. Would love to meet you sometime. Best wishes!

I posted this in the roll call for this cruise, but there is little activity on that board. So I am also posting here with my fingers crossed! 🤞 This is for the upcoming Splendor Barcelona to Rome cruise on April 14th. Hubby and I had planned this cruise as a bucket list trip. We had our preferred cabin, airfare, and excursions all booked. We also added on the pre and post cruise packages. We had to cancel right before final payment because of hubby’s colorectal cancer diagnosis. We are still in treatment, so no cruising in our foreseeable future. Would someone please post a blog about this trip? I would like to travel vicariously through all of you. Pictures would be a plus, but I would love reading about everything on this cruise: people, food, experiences, ports, excursions, etc. Also if anyone does the pre and/or post cruise tours, I would love to read about those. I would greatly appreciate anything that anyone would post! Thank you so much!! As a footnote, hubby and I were made whole monetarily with our trip insurance. We now just hope he can have surgery soon to take care of the cancerous tumor. His heart attack caused by the chemo has really set us back with that. After two cancelled cruises because of illness, I am beginning to think God wants us to explore other travel options. At this point, I just want hubby well so we can go anywhere!! I still read the wonderful travelogues here and go along with everyone in spirit! Cindy

I would like to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers. I believe it has truly helped. A quick update. Hubby had 4 radiation and 2 chemo treatments. He had a very bad reaction to the chemo which resulted in a mild heart attack. He is at home gaining strength for a few weeks before resuming radiation. It has not been an easy journey so far, but he has cheated death twice in the past month. Always look at the positive! So thank you again, dear unmet cruise friends, for your help, thoughts, and prayers. Best wishes for a happy and healthy new year!!

Joanie, please continue to write about your adventures. I so enjoy reading them. I am happy to travel vicariously with everyone who shares their cruise experiences. Zqueeze1 also keeps me very entertained. And pictures are always appreciated! Maybe I just have enough child deep inside me who loves to read about places I have never been to and feel that expands my horizons. Thank you!

Life is fickle. We had planned the perfect Mediterranean cruise for next April: excursions, cabin, flights, and pre/post tours. And our first cruise! Then the wrench got thrown into the gears! During a routine colonoscopy, hubby found out he has cancer. While doing tests to help with the diagnosis, they found a big aortic aneurysm. Needless to say, our life has been turned upside down. He had the surgery to repair the aneurysm. Now we are embarking on a 6 to 8 month journey to deal with the cancer. Needless to say, we are not able to go on our cruise. I want to thank everyone on this forum for all of their help. A few of you, pappy1022, DaveFR, papa flamingo, and Pcardad have been extra helpful with your insights. I have learned so much here from everyone and feel like I know you. Hopefully, life will allow us to try a cruise again and we can meet some of you in person. I would like to ask anyone who is sailing on the Splendor from Barcelona to Rome April 10th to please post pictures and commentary from your trip. That way I can sail along with you in spirit. Again, a heartfelt thank you to everyone! Cindy

As a Maker’s Mark Ambassador, I find that very sad. 😢

I am presuming here, not knowing definitively, that the late booking date added to your troubles. I am so sorry for your misadventure. If it wasn’t for the advice I received here from veteran cruisers, I would have not known the importance of deviating and been stuck with a yucky flight schedule. We also added on an extra day before our pre-cruise tour because of issues we read about with flights being changed. We decided to add on an extra cushion for contingencies. Flights fill up quickly these days and we didn’t want to be left getting the leftovers. I will let everyone know how things go for us next April. Again, sorry for your experience.

How many days out were you when you booked your cruise?

Our air credit was only $2800 per person. We did pay a $400 pp up-charge, but $2800 isn’t even close to the $10,400 pp if we had to buy tickets on our own. You only get the credit that Regent allows for your airfare based on your cruise.

As I’ve stated before, as have others, we had no issues whatsoever with booking flights through Regent Air. Our flight times may change, but that will not be Regent’s fault. Right now, the cost of the air is just $2000 less than our base cruise price! We couldn’t afford that if we took the air credit. We don’t have points or frequent flier miles, so using Regent Air is a no brainer.

All I can add to this is when we booked our flight to Barcelona, the agent wanted to give us a shorter timed stopover in Frankfort than I thought acceptable. (The reason for this is all the great information I found here from fellow travelers!)I asked for a longer layover, 3 hours, and it was gladly given. Without extensive reading in this forum I would have put us in the situation of possibly missing our connecting flight. Yes, we are flying in a day earlier. Yes, we deviated. Yes, I was up at 6AM to call Regent at our 210 day mark. My experience was a very good one, but I had done extensive homework.

We are new to Regent, and yes, the idea of all-inclusive and luxury hooked us in. That being said, after reading posts and getting wonderful advice from veteran cruisers, we upgraded to Concierge so we could get first crack at excursions. It worked out very well. Then we read about flight deviation and decided this was the prudent thing to also do. We even booked a room one day prior to our pre-cruise tour to allow for contingencies. Again, we are very pleased with our flights and the small up-charge. Regent Air was very helpful and worked to find routes/flights that were acceptable to us. We could not have booked these flights on our own for the price Regent was offering for air credit. The devil is always in the details. As to our upcoming cruise, our expectations are not unrealistic. We know “things” happen and are easily pleased people. The glass is always half full. I am sure we will be very happy with the overall experience and food. As I have heard it said, the worst day on vacation is better than the best at work.

How is the wife doing? Feeling better?

Personally, I don’t like to feel other people’s breath on my face. I was a school teacher, so I am very used to being close to others…especially young ones with all of their coughs, runny noses, and sneezes. I didn’t breathe on them and positioned myself so they didn’t breathe on me. My immune system is fairly robust. Common sense and common courtesy when coughing or sneezing is all anyone should ask for.

Hope your wife gets well soon. May you stay virus free.

Often people are crammed in close together. People are basically breathing right into your personal space. I also find that if I wear a mask for preventative measures, people have a tendency to be more conscientious about getting too close. Very courteous.

I believe airports are where most pick it up or give it to others. Then when people get on a ship……….there ya go! I will always wear a mask in an airport or even on a plane (if in economy) for the rest of my days. Something we just have to live with; but hopefully using common sense.

I believe wine tasting and preference is very subjective. Everyone has a different palate. One should drink what one likes. I never judge. Many are influenced by “experts”. I have done some blind tasting events and surprisingly, the favored wines were always mid-priced. There are “special” wines and everyday wines. Have I had some bad wines? Yes, but that is by my standard and taste, not someone else’s. I find my taste buds dull after a glass or two. I believe each to his own and you should drink what you like (and perhaps afford) be it bottled, screw-topped, corked, boxed, red with fish, white with beef, or red chilled. The idea is to enjoy and not judge others! 🥂

-Lew-, the same thing happened to us back in April. We were finally able to book our excursions Sunday afternoon. And more importantly, we were able to book everything that we wanted. Hopefully you are in a suite where you are booking a full year out. It is very frustrating, I know.

Believe it or not, we have never been on any cruise! Or to Europe! We almost were on a cruise in Alaska, but COVID reared its ugly head and we were quarantined there then flown home. We decided that if we going to give it one more try, we would do something big and splurge making it a once in a lifetime. Thus, we are doing the Mediterranean next year. So far, everything is good!!

Hey, if it close to the Maker’s Mark distillery, then I am all in!

Thank you for sharing the phone number. I am just curious. Did you call on 210 days out? Maybe it is because of where we are leaving from? I am making a huge assumption, but it may also be because there are so many people going across the pond from the East coast? I don’t think there are that many people going out of San Francisco. Also, we are leaving after all spring breaks next April. 🤷🏼‍♀️