forgap

26 minutes ago, bizinsider said:

Sounds like a great trip you have planned First time in Japan for us and we're loving it. 

I lived in Japan as a teen from ‘65 - ‘69 and this is my first time back in 50+ years.  (I don’t count transiting through the airport!)   It was such a formative experience for me and I’ve started to brush up on basic Japanese which I never did as a stupid teenager.  
 

My father was a dedicated collector of Japanese objects, prints, sculptures, and screens which now fill my house.  He studied kanji until his late nineties.  He had such a terrible accent the shopkeepers never could decipher what he was saying so he would write it down which earned him considerable respect!  I am really anticipating this trip!  

Thanks, Herb!  We are cruising Tokyo to Vancouver in April.  I subscribe to Mary’s blog so I look forward to her narrative of your cruise.  We are doing a ten day land trip prior to the pre cruise in Tokyo so we may or may not go on tours.  I’m more intrigued with taking a class of some kind.  Enjoy your trip!  

Another Georgia not-peach weighing in….we were on Marina in 2014 which cured us on Oceania.  Now almost platinum on R.  We were cruising around spain and did not have a drink package (although we bought Spanish wine for in cabin consumption).  Because spain imposed a tarif on alcohol consumed within a certain mileage from the border,  cost increased by 10%.  So a coupe of champagne, plus mandatory tip and tarif was about $20.  Hence, bars were dead at all hours!

But, there is a nice bar with small plates bordering the river and a vintage boat to take you across the river to a very interesting cultural mall…..shopping and food court. 

Curious minds want to know…..what were the answers to your questions posed to the F & B Manager?  Loved your post!   I think we have very similar points of view!  

I don’t understand why Regent can’t develop a survey for tours.   This would build a database so DS know the good and bad tours.  For that matter, assigning staff to take the tours and report back may accomplish the same thing.  
 

in my working life I often had to do training.  I was evaluated after each training.  It helped me to improve my content and my delivery.  

@rkaratsu  did you get an e-SIM for your iPhone while in Japan?

We are doing this as a free pre-cruise next April and you confirmed my instincts about this.  I told my husband that the advantage is the hotel stay and the transfer to the ship.   We are doing  a 10 day land tour prior to the pre cruise which includes 4 days in Tokyo.   The itinerary is interesting so I viewed the Regent pre cruise as an opportunity to do our own thing.  

We tried the evening pool grill once when Regent was offering that venue.  The food was not good so we never gave it a second chance.  There were also complicated rules about dress codes after leaving that venue.  
 

all that being said, we were underwhelmed by hot rocks on Silversea even though I like the concept.  I found the choice of proteins too large (except the shrimp) to cook on the rock.  I know that many like large cuts of meat but I thought a much better concept would be a changing menu of Asian (yakitori, stir fries, etc) or middle eastern (kebabs, etc) or whatever small cuts lend themselves to a quick, hot stone.  

Just off Splendor 748.  It is slightly bigger with a larger edge on one side.  Not really a deal maker. 

698 passengers on voyager according to the RSSC website. 

Anxious to hear the post-script after the travel gauntlet and embarkation. I’m sure that those who made it to the ship are sleeping in the Uber comfy Regent beds and they deserve to sleep in!  

2 minutes ago, cwn said:

 Din’t ever remember a deck Event on an overnight. Flip side of that….Some people would complain about wanting to go ashore for dinner etc and many times tours are night time ones for late sailings or overnights.

We had an overnight in Haifa and a deck BBQ.  Pre Covid. 

1 minute ago, Pcardad said:

Block party is Captain's decision based on risk of of communicable disease on board. Open air BBQ is not on every cruise as it depends on weather, sea conditions, port departure time, etc. It is more expensive to go into a port than to hire a couple of dancers.

On our cruise we had two overnights in ports - Bordeaux and Lisbon - perfect weather, too.  No deck BBQ.  Feel my disappointment?  Hence my conclusion that they were not making an effort on our segment.  

@loriva  well, that says it all, doesn’t it?  We are one week home and I have NO RECOLLECTION of the names of any of the senior staff! 

We are just off Splendor and we have almost 200 days sailing Regent.  I mentioned in my review that it seemed like the key staff were just “ dialing it in” rather than making this particular cruise memorable for the passengers.  Other cruises have been unique and exciting with accessible and engaged staff.  
 

Certainly the itinerary is a factor but in this recent cruise (London to Barcelona) there seemed to be little to make it special and memorable.  There was no deck BBQ, no special meals other than the wine lunch (extra $), no formal night, no dance parties, no variation in the daily or evening schedule. 
 

What is your take on this?  Are there factors behind the scenes that impact the cruise?  Is it the passenger mix?  Is it how close the decision makers are to the end of their contract?  Is it some edict from Miami that impacts staff mood?  I’d like to hear your take on this.  

2 minutes ago, CrushIt said:

I own a monthly fee based service business and I have lots of “fine print” that would allow me to keep every dollar that comes in. However, my employees know that we have a higher moral and ethical duty to take care of our customers and “make things right” even though issues may come up that were certainly not in our control. A real hero is someone who does the right thing, even when no one is looking.

Admirable and I wish more businesses added the “long game” to their business model.  When you value relationships, have pride in your product, make it right when things go awry, you gain a customer (and their friends) for life.  

Curious about what is driving Regent’s rigid response.  Is it the parent company or the new president flexing or is it her inexperience?  

 

Rachel has motivated me to come out of my travel stupor to add my take on our final days on this cruise.  This was our first time on Splendor and it is a beautiful, very comfortable ship.  For the first time in almost 200 days sailing on Regent, we didn’t go to one lecture and went to only one show.   The cruise had only one sea day, and port intensive cruises tend to be tiring.   I have to say our excursions were just OK.  None of them were memorable.  We are also at the age where we are not as robust as we have been on previous cruises.   So the long fast walks in heat took its toll.  Even with the little man symbols and tour descriptions, it was often hard to predict the level of stamina you would need.  I think the most problematic thing on a tour were thick accents and non stop monologues into imperfect bus microphones.  Next trip, we may skip the group excursions and go it alone.  
 

My biggest disappointment was no deck BBQ even though we had two overnights in port and perfect weather.  Apparently there was a deck BBQ in the previous segment that was held indoors due to weather.  And, NO DANCE PARTY!  
 

Our  last day we had a special tour in Palma as part of our travel agents participation in Virtuoso Travelers.   We did a food tour of Palma which included the central market where I stuffed myself with Imberico ham, then a tapas restaurant, then a vintage ice cream/coffee shop.  It was quite a bit of walking and standing and I think I would have loved to just meander Palma on my own. It is a beautiful town with interesting shops and cafes.  
 

We transferred to the airport from Tarragona which took about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  The 15 minutes was just leaving the port which appears to be a man made spit of land with a jogging/biking path next to the access road.  BCN was huge and navigating to the appropriate lounge was like finding a secret treasure.  Lounges are assigned by boarding concourse, so you have to go through passport control for your area and then look for the “VIP” lounge.  Who knew?  We flew Delta to JFK, then on to ATL.  JFK now has facial recognition for global entry so no line and we zipped right through to baggage.  JFK was a madhouse and we had to recheck our bags, go through security, wait in line for the delta lounge then walk miles to gate 53 for our flight.  We were home at midnight after almost 24 hours in transit.  
 

The passenger mix on this cruise was very congenial and it was an absolute delight to meet Rachel and George.  After years of reading Rachel’s blog entries, I fell like they are old friends.  Both she and George were absolutely warm and lovely and engaging.  I hope our paths meet again.  
 

I’ll try to post some pics when I recover from my travel malaise.  Thanks for reading along!  

Down for the count all day yesterday. Slept all day and all night and feeling much better this morning.  

Lazy day in Gibraltar.  We slept in and puttered about until we docked at 12:30.  

We decided to cancel our tours in favor of a walk about.  The last time we were here was about 10 years ago and there seems to have been a construction boom in that time span.  We walked from the port to the main pedestrian street, past box after box of high rise housing.  We took a cab back to the port and our driver had some choice words to say about developers making a fast buck (or pound in this case).  He was not a fan of this utilitarian architecture.  

The Main Street is sort of how I remembered, totally pedestrian with assorted shops and eateries.  

This has been a port intensive cruise which has us making sea days from port days!    

We had the ultimate bad excursion today and it was an excursion we paid for.  The description sounded wonderful. Wine tasting in Colores and then lunch and free time in Sintra.  It was an early departure as the ship was scheduled to sail at 2.  We settled into a small bus and off we went through Lisbon traffic with a running unintelligible monologue provided by our guide.  No sooner did we hit the freeway when the bus started to overheat.  We pulled over in a wedge between the highway and an on ramp.  After about ten minutes, our driver started up again hoping that the overheating was an aberration.  No such luck.  We managed to get to the side of the freeway, on a bridge in the exit lane.  There we sat for an hour while another bus fought Lisbon traffic to get to us.  Our guide assured us that we would still make all the sights but in an extremely abbreviated fashion.  

Our view:

The new bus arrived and we shimmied against the guard rail and climbed onto the new big bus.  Thirty minutes to Colores and a taste of really bad wine.  

Thirty minutes to Sintra, 45 minutes for a very rushed but nice lunch at Cafe de Paris, no free time to shop, then back to the bus to rebord Splendor at 1:30.  

Lisbon from our balcony.

This is the cruise port.  White tile that glistens in the sunlight. Really beautiful! 

We gained an hour so we took a leisurely tour of Porto.   Visually Porto is dramatic with the river dissecting the town, high cliffs, and a series of beautiful bridges.  

This bridge was designed by a student of Eiffel.  Eiffel himself designed a bridge further down the river.
 

Our first (and only) stop was port tasting.  Our charming guide gave us all the details about the harvesting of the grapes and the manufacturing of different styles of port.  We tasted a white port and a tawny port.  

 

We then had some free time but it seemed like only cafes were open and, frankly, neither one of us had the stamina to traipse up and down the hills by the river.  Back on the bus, we toured the city, saw impressive buildings multiple times as it seemed we made several loops of the city.  

I am always charmed by Portuguese tile work.  In fact the cruise terminal was impressive and designed like a nautilus with thousands of white tiles. 

We returned to the ship at about 2:30 with the rest of the passengers.  The pool grill was slammed to the point it was hard to get to the buffet.  I snagged a table and ordered a hot dog  NY deli style. That and a glass of rosé improved my mood considerably.