Halloween on Board!

The Regent Seven Seas Voyager team has gone all out to make for a Happy Halloween!  When we headed to the La Veranda buffet for breakfast this morning, these creatures from the darkness greeted us!  The carved pumpkins, the marzipan scarecrow, pumpkin and cake truly showed some talent!

The port side of the buffet had a different display, equally creative.  The folks that did these must have had a ball!!

One of the specialty restaurants (Prime 7) had this display!

And, Signatures, the other specialty restaurant had yet another!

The Compass Rose, the main restaurant, had this display.  I especially liked the large orange pumpkin on the right with a wine bottle sticking out of his head!  My kind of pumpkin.

   

Lunch time buffet brought more Halloween treats.  The cupcakes were really cute and probably easy enough to do if you're into cupcake baking!  Kids would have to love them!

A carrot cake with a purple pumpkin made of sugar!  I kept humming the song "Purple Pumpkin Eater", ur uh, "… People …"!

And a tray of miscellaneous desserts!  I was most fascinated by the chocolate raspberry mousse with the marzipan amputated finger!  Guess you could call it "finger food"!

A closeup of the mousse!  Who knew that moose has fingers!!

And down on Deck 5, the Voyager Lounge, our favorite for after dinner lively, is all decorated for tonight's Halloween Party.  This lovely fellow, doing his moves and bidding folks scary things was standing outside the entrance.  To the left behind him you can see ceiling decorations of balloons, bats, spider webs, etc.  One of the entertains told me that they wanted to do all the public area with bats but were STRONGLY advised against it!!  Today has been a "turn day" (end of one cruise and beginning of another) so they had too many other assignments!

Happy Halloween to all!!

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Istanbul-Welcome to Minaret City!

Today we arrived in Istanbul!  Albeit a mostly gray day at the time, the city is beautiful to behold!

If I understood the Cruise Director, the mosque on the left is the famous Blue Mosque, officially the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, built in the early 1600's, much later than I had thought.

The "Blue" comes from the blue tiles inside.  The mosque looking building on the right is the Hagia Sophia, originally a Christian Basilica, then a mosque, now a museum.

We sailed close to the Bosphorus bridge connecting Europe (west) Istanbul, on the left,  to Asia (east) Istanbul then made a u-turn to dock on the European side.

 

This afternoon, our excursion is "Cruise on the Bosphorus" so perhaps we will then see the bridge from the underside.

Tomorrow we will also be in Istanbul.  It is a "turn day" where most passengers will be disembarking with new ones coming on.  There are a few that are continuing on to Dubai or Cape Town so Regent has arranged a couple of shore excursions for us to choose from.

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Cruise Day 10 - Koper, Slovenia

PREFACE:  This was written back on October 30th to cover October 21, Tom's BD.  I have no clue as to why I didn't publish it.
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Approaching Koper, Slovenia, we looked out to see a beautiful Sunrise!  It looked more like a sunset but was indeed a sunrise - oh but that a camera could capture the full beauty!

We docked right at the main part of town and were soon off on our walking tour.  Walking down the main street of the old town, the Praetorian Palace quickly came into view.

A few steps further and we were in the Tito Plaza.  On one side was the palace and opposite it was the Loggia Palace, this one Venetian Gothic dating from the mid 1400's.

To one side of the plaza was the Koper Cathedral and its bell tower.  Yes, we did go into the cathedral and it was very similar to other cathedrals of that period.  I took a couple of pictures but none came out very good.  Thus, no interior pics here.

  

After leaving Tito Plaza, we continued our walk through the old town.  Tom got some great video that we'll edit when we get home.

After going through the old town gate to the original port area, we walked to a newer part of town where we stopped for the included refreshments.  Bread, ham and cheese arrived, standard snack in this part of the world!

    

The "birthday boy" collecting video around the plaza!

The winds were quite stiff and this fountain was truly dancing to the gusts!  Fascinating!



I could have watched it for hours.

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Catching Up!

Today, we're in Venice for the second day and will be sailing in a couple of hours toward Split, Croatia.

After Séte, we stopped in Provence, more on that in another post, before heading toward Monte Carlo.  The mistral winds whipped up to a point of being dangerous for that stop and the Captain chose to anchor in the safe harbor of Villefanche.  Being not far from Monte Carlo all excursions proceeded as planned with a few slight modifications.

Having been to Monte Carlo in 2010 (Tom's 75th birthday!), we chose to cancel our excursion and stay on board.

The next stop was Livorno, the port for Florence and Pisa.  We had taken the all day trip to Florence in 2010 so this trip we went to Pisa.  It was pleasantly surprising to find there is more there than just the iconic leaning tower!  And, In Venice, we learned there lots more, 14, if my memory serves me correctly, leaning towers!

After Livorno, Civitavecchia, port city for Rome.  After having spent a week in Rome in 2010, we chose to take the excursion to Ostia Antica.  WOW!  What a smart decision!  Ostia Antica, originally a port city on the Tiber, is now several miles inland.  Much like Pompeii & Ephesus, it is an ancient city still being excavated.

From there on to Sicily, this time Palermo.  Last time was Taormina!  Dubrovnik and Koper were the last two stops before Venice, beautiful Venice!

That's a brief run down to sort of catch up.  More another time, and with pictures!!!
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Tom's Birthday!

WOW! What a day! A few days before we left, friends had sneakily given me cards for Tom, plus a couple had come in the mail before we left. Then our friend who's collecting our mail said there were a couple more. I asked her to open, scan & e-mail. Onboard Internet Manager printed them for me, all-in-all, a dozen cards! When we came back from breakfast, our room had been made and our stewardess had arranged them on the bed!

Tom was quite pleasantly surprised!

Around noon, we headed out for our scheduled "Walking Tour of Koper". When we returned some two to three hours later, our butler and stewardess had turned the room into a party place!!

In the mirror, you can see Tom sitting on the end of the bed admiring their handiwork!

After a nap and "cleaning up" for the evening, we headed to the Horizon Lounge for cocktails. There, we were joined by lead singer Sara Budnik.  As you might guess, Tom was quite pleased to have such a beautiful young lady in his company!  A delightful young lady with a marvelous sense of humor. A great improv comic!  That, along with a great singing voice!

After cocktails, we were off to Prime 7 Steakhouse for a birthday dinner starting with a shrimp cocktail and ending with a beautiful "Happy Birthday" cake!

And, yes!  I am now sleeping with an 80 year-old-man!!
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Cruise Day 9 - Dubrovnik

On our way to Venice, we came around under the boot of Italy and into the Adriatic Sea, our first time to this area.  Our stops, Dubrovnik the first, were on the east side of the Sea.

In Dubrovnik, the main highlight was the walled "Old Town" which in today's times is not even 15-20% of the total geographic size of the city. It was a short walk from the bus to the main gate.

One of the many churches in Old Town.

      

One of the palaces in the Old Town, this one has been converted to a museum.

The main street through town had lots of side streets, many of which provided outdoor seating for small restaurants.  The main street itself had many shops along the way.  We did stop in one and purchased a little souvenir!  Only the second one since we left home!

We were fortunate that it was early in the day as the hoards of tourists had yet to make the streets be wall-to-wall people!

  

And, at the end of the main street, the gate to the original Dubrovnik port.

  

After our walking tour of the Old Town, we were back on the bus for a ride up into the hills to a small restaurant, Mlinica Šapro, for a bite of local food, a glass of local wine and a little entertainment!

The entertainers welcomed us into the courtyard on the way to our tables.

And then added liveliness to our "feast" of ham, cheese, bread and wine.


  


From there, we headed back down the hillside and to our ship "parked" in the commercial dock away from Old Town Dubrovnik. We did manage to see the old town from above!

A delightful tour, and, very educational!
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On Board & Day 1

As I post this, we're in Venice about to begin the 2nd cruise/leg of our journey.  On a "sea day" a week ago, I'd hoped to get the 1st post up, however, internet was sketchy and we just got busy!  It's so easy to do!  Hopefully, I'll get better at posting!!

The 1st 2 legs are quite port intensive, the last two have more sea days!  Perhaps then, a chance to post more! 

Day 1 - Barcelona on Board:

On board, as soon as we were on board, we were offered a glass of champagne!!  Ah yes, back at home on Regent!  

As soon as we checked in and got our cabin keys, we headed there to drop our drag-alongs before heading to lunch.  We were extremely pleased to see that our shipped bags were waiting for us!  Luggage Free came through for us again!

And, on the table in the sitting area, a bottle of champagne and a plate of sweets!  Nice!

  

Checked out the closet!  It is quite spacious and will certainly hold the clothing & stuff we brought.

This is indeed our favorite cabin layout!

Day 2 - Sète, France:

Once upon a time, it was spelled “Cette” and though the spelling has changed, the pronunciation is still “set”!  Our excursion today was “Picturesque Pezenas & Valmagne Abbey”.

 The drive to Pezenas was about an hour through the beautiful French countryside.  Having never seen anything like it, we were fascinated by the huge mussel farms in a nearby bay.

On the way to Pezenas, we passed through Montagnac,  a VERY quiet town with no one on the streets.  

One little shop we passed had a sign that, even without knowing French, we could read!!

Before long, we were in Pézenas!

After a walk through the old historical area, we stopped for coffee then headed off again for the Valmagne Abbey.

Valmagne Abbey was our last stop on this excursion. The Abbey began its life in 1138 as a Benedictine Monastery and 20 years later became part of the Cistercian Order.  After the French Revolution when monasteries were destroyed or confiscated by the state, the buildings of this abbey were sold in 1791 to a gentleman who turned the abbey church into a cellar for curing wines.  The sizes of the barrels in the "niches" are only dwarfed by the large barrel in the Heidelburg Palace!!

    

No trip to a monastery turned winery would be complete without a little wine tasting!  And, likewise, no tour would be complete without a pass through the gift shop.  In this case, one and the same.

One thing that caught my eye was this somewhat smaller barrel with a wine cork top!  It wasn't for sale!

Our excursion ended back at the port where our "home" was waiting for us!
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