BethElgert

We did it! Mark and I have talked about wanting to cruise in Alaska for...ever? Yes, I think that’s about right. We have been so fortunate to travel extensively, at least through Europe, North America and some of Asia but neither of us has ever been to Alaska. When looking at what to do for vacation this summer, we found that we could trade some timeshare points for credit on a cruise. SOLD! We started this planning process back in March which, it turns out, is fairly late for planning a same-year Alaska cruise. We do not have a standing dinner reservation in the main dining room, for example. Having been on a Regent Seven Seas cruise two years ago, we looked to see if we could afford an all-inclusive trip this time around. Uh, no. ... read more

A couple of months ago, a friend of Andrew’s had posted on Facebook that he was missing Croatia. The picture he posted was lovely and I went to Google Images and put in Dubrovnik—yep, same place. I thought I could definitely spend a day there. I had been to Dubrovnik once before, in 1978 when I was on a cruise to Greece with the high school football coach and a bunch of International School of Brussels people. Back then it was not Croatia, though, but Yugoslavia. The two things I most remember about that trip was that passport control to get off the ship was scary and that from the port to Dubrovnik town there was a long flight of stairs. I remember we climbed the stairs, looked around the mostly deserted streets and went back ... read more

We were scheduled to take the Berat: City of a Thousand Windows tour but it was 8 ½ hours long. 8 ½ hours. Don’t think we can do this. We went up to breakfast and saw Skate who said she was on her own. As we finished breakfast, Michael came in and we asked him what he was going to do. He said he thought he’d take the Archeological Treasures tour. That sounded good so we took our tour tickets to the destinations desk to see if we could change them. Absolutely no problem. (Regent’s favorite words, actually.) Got to the Seven Seas Show Lounge and met up with Michael. It was cloudy today and there was evidence of rain so I brought my linen jacket. I forgot my hat and sunscreen, though, so went back ... read more

Zakynthos—aka We Won Today was our first stop in Greece, on the tiny island of Zakynthos or Zante. The ship did not dock until noon so we had a leisurely morning. I woke up early (5:40 a.m.) and could not sleep so decided to try and get the blog and pictures uploaded. It was fairly successful. It took 2 hours to upload 28 pictures to Facebook. Like I have said before, Wi-Fi on this ship is horrid. Mark got up around 8 and went to get breakfast. He saw Skate in the restaurant and had a nice conversation with her. I updated and uploaded the blogs and re-uploaded pictures that failed to upload the first time. Sympathize with me here, people, I’m having REAL first-world problems! During the whole cruise planning process, Julie and I had ... read more

While Mark and I were at the pool yesterday, the captain had come on the loud speaker and said that due to high winds and rough seas, it was decided to change our port for tomorrow to Naples instead of Sorrento. All of the tours would be the same but Naples would be a better starting point. John the cruise director came on a few minutes later and said, “All excursions will be the same, no worries on that, just check the Passages (the daily flyer of what is happening on the ship) to see what your revised departure time will be. Our original departure time was 8 a.m. and the revised one was 8:15 so not much difference. We got up, had breakfast (no sunshine for Mark today, thanks very much!) and got to the ... read more