BOARDING DAY

         What happened????  Let me begin with last evening.  We started at 5pm with Marcia, Rebecca, and I at a table in bar area.  Then Marge (friend from LA area) showed up.  The friends from Tucson, Paul & Bonnie, pulled up a chair.

Rebecca had chardonnay and I had this drink called a "Smokey Toro Toro" (name of bar and restaurant).  It was basically a Makers Mark Manhattan with smoke from smoldering wood.  Probably best drink I have ever had.   

I had a couple drinks before going in to our special cocktail party followed by dinner hosted by the owner of our travel agency, Craig Pavlus.  There I probably had 3 more of these.

Rebecca and our great friend, Marcia.  Craig Pavlus in black shirt to left of them.  To right is Susan, our travel agent.

It was a nice group of the Pavlus Travel's clients.  On right are our friends, John, Cathi, and Marge.

        Our dinner consisted of hors d'oeurves with cocktails to start with then a 6 course dinner.  WOW! A lot of food and all very good.

                                                                          Ceviche

                                                                       Avocado salad

                                              Forgot name but was octopus with potatoes.

                                                              This was a chicken course.

                Main entree was this beef dish.  Very good but we were pretty full by then.

                                               Not too full for this chocolate cake dessert.

        We had wine with dinner so I was feeling NO pain by the end of the evening.  I think I was still drunk when I woke up at 7am this morning.  It was an incredible evening thanks to Craig.  His travel agency is the best!!  He also returns half of the commissions to his clients.  Our check for this world cruise was over $14,000 returned to us.  Let me know if you want to be clients of his.

        When we looked out our window this morning, there she was--Regent's Mariner.  She will be our home for the next 5 months.

        Alex, senior manager for Regent Operations, showed up at the hotel with our new piece of luggage in tow at 11am.  This is the first time we have met him but I have emailed and talked with him many times over the years.  We had a nice visit up in our room while we finished repacking the bags we had open at the hotel.  I called down for porter to come take our bags down to a taxi.  It took several minutes for him to show up as they were super busy getting bags from all the world cruise rooms.  Then we had to wait for an empty elevator.  All were full going up and down so he took us to the staff elevators.  He had called ahead and a large taxi was waiting out front for us.  T

        The port was very close so it was a short ride.  There were no lines for security and for the check-in process.  We went right on board.  Easiest boarding EVER!

        Dropped our carry on bags in the suite then headed up for some lunch.  Lots of crew members came by our table to say hi.  We are now back in the suite waiting on our checked luggage to be delivered.  I got our phones and my laptop signed in the the ship's wifi.  Problem is I have to have our suite door blocked open to get wifi signal on my laptop.  I am having Kus, the internet manager, check out the problem.  Sure hope he can fix it.

        Tonight we are to have cocktails from 6 to 7:15pm in the Stars Lounge with tonight's gala entertainers.  At 7pm we are invited to dine at the Cruise Director's table.  Paul Reynolds it the CD whom we known for a long time.

         The internet was not working yesterday so I am publishing this post on Sunday morning.  Not much better today.