Monday, Day 3 - January 8 - Sail-A-Way

What a glorious day!!! We board the Navigator today for our 137 day sail around the world! We are down in the ballroom to check in about 9AM, no lines, no fuss, a great way to get started. Passports, visas and Yellow Fever card turned in, pictures taken and key card in hand, we go into the breakfast buffet. There is a nice choice of cook to order eggs, hot dishes and cold foods to pick from. So far so good.

We sit a table of people we know from our past Grand Voyage and new friends and have a delightful time talking and eating for about an hour.

Back in the room Carolyn tries to get caught up on the blog while we still have good internet. Dick corrals the last bits and pieces into our carry on stuff. At noon we go down and check out. Our departure time is 12:25PM and at 12:10PM they direct us to a van. It is a shiny black limo type van, the first of five or six in a line. The only seats left in the first one are in the very back row. The passage is only about 10 inches wide, and blocked by over flowing shoulders and rears. No way can Carolyn do that so they direct us to the next van and seat us in the first row. We are on our way to the port at 12:20PM and arrive at the ship at 1:05PM. Boarding is a piece of cake after the security “strip search;” we look so much like terrorist!!!  We simply walk on board, get a glass of bubbly and head to our room. So much better than the arrival to our first Grand Voyage. We find our shipped luggage already in our room, but the luggage from the hotel is not there yet.

The cabin is really hot....about 79 degrees. We promptly turn the thermostat to as cold as it will go and open the door. It is now raining and about 65 so hopefully the room will cool off soon.

We head to La Veranda for lunch. There is a nice buffet of hot and cold foods with pastas made to order. We have a leisurely lunch then go back to work on the unpacking. What a chore and the room is still very warm.

The Muster Drill is at 4:15PM. Fortunately it is short and sweet in the theater with nothing outside due to the rain.

The rest of our luggage arrives about 5PM. Carolyn unpacks and Dick puts away so by sail away at 5:52PM, an hour late, we have the bed cleared off and the suitcases out of sight for the next 130 plus days. The closet is set up, but things are still piled on every surface. Regent really messed up on the drawer space in the redesign...there is none. Carolyn will work on that later. Right now it is 6:15PM, time to sit on the balcony and watch Los Angeles fade away into the night.

On the way to dinner, about 7PM, Carolyn stops by the desk to arrange for the AC guy to get the cabin cooler...it is a stuffy 75 degrees. She also checks on a chair with arms we requested and asks to have the big, chunky, heavy, marble topped table removed. It takes up all the floor space. Carolyn had requested an extra chest of drawers for the closet which we got and the chair with arms several months ago. They say they will get right on it.
We go to the La Veranda for the Italian restaurant. We enjoy the meal, lots of good looking food items. Dick has the veal and Carolyn has a small sized pasta. We ask for a bottle of Chianti since the wine being poured is not to our taste. We sit next to a couple from Australia and have pleasant conversation. Actually, we are at the same table we had at lunch.

Back in the room, the AC guy has come and gone but it is still too hot and no air is flowing. So Carolyn calls again. The AC man is right back and tells us it is the best he can do. Carolyn says no that the rest of the ship is much cooler so he needs to turn the whole section down and let people adjust their rooms to a warmer setting if they are too cool, 72 to 74 on the coldest setting when it only 55 degrees outside is not going to cut it especially when we get into the hot weather!. Carolyn also calls the front desk and tells them the same thing. The man that she talks to is very understanding and says it will get fixed. A little while later we are told the chiller for our section of rooms has been turned down and we should feel better in about 90 minutes. Well it is actually about 2AM before the room cools down to a comfortable 68 degrees with our thermostat set as low as it will go. We are finally able to fall soundly asleep.

During all the AC back and forth the chair and the table seem to be causing issues for our two stewardess. They seem to be really swamped and confused as to what we are asking for. We tell them it is OK to wait until tomorrow to get our bar set up and the soft drinks changed out. It is also OK to deal with furniture tomorrow.

We are very tired and head to bed, the rest can wait.