Medary.com

The Bollywood to South Beach Voyage - Regent Seven Seas Voyager, October 29-December 18, 2009

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Thirty-seven

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December 17 (Thursday, Day 50, Crossing the Tropic of Cancer) -

Doughnut

We both woke up around 9:30 and hurried upstairs for our last leisurely breakfast. Christiaan saw Snookums coming and immediately found her a chocolate doughnut and ordered Filbert’s two pots of hot water. There wasn’t much of a breeze and we were mostly in the shade but it was still quite warm so our breakfast wasn’t too long.

More after the jump . . . Filbert worked on putting photos in the journal in the Observation Lounge and Snookums attended the auction in the Atrium. Voyager has an auction twice a year of items donated by passengers as well as Regent and the proceeds benefit the Crew Welfare Fund. Passengers donated items that they bought and no longer wanted or had room for like African paintings and wooden and Regent donated dishes from the various restaurants and a housekeeper’s apron signed by all the housekeepers and things like that. Snookums was the only bidder on size-12 black cocktail dress for $10 and at the end of the auction there were a few items that were leftover and up for grabs. She also got a black and purple casual dress from the leftovers (although it never made it to the auction). When she tried them both on, the black cocktail dress was way too big but the black and purple casual dress fit quite well so she was happy. Snookums’s mom can probably alter the black cocktail dress to make it fit perfectly.

Auction:

Stuff for sale

Auction on the courthouse--er--atrium steps

Filbert had two of his meal replacement bars for lunch and Snookums ordered a tuna salad sandwich from room service. There was a German sausage buffet by the pool but it poured for about 20 minutes during the time it was scheduled so it might have been cancelled. The rain turned into a partly sunny day. Snookums went up to the pool bar to find Oscar, the bartender that has been saving “Coke Reward” codes for her from all of the 12-pack boxes of Coke products. He gave her a bunch of them so now she can get more free magazine subscriptions or Holiday Inn points or other free items. It started pouring rain around 3 PM and that’s when the swells came, too. The sea was so calm and it was kind of neat to actually see the swells develop. Snookums went to her final workout class and did make her goal of going to the gym 22 times for an hour each time. While Snookums was working out, Filbert started the packing process but said he had to take it kind of slow since he was getting a little queasy from looking down into the suitcase and then back up again. We had a nice dinner with Joel and Monica and Kay and Marleen but everyone left the table around 9:30 PM for their rooms to finish packing. We got to turn our clocks back one last time which was good since we needed that extra hour to finish our packing. The $12.50 travel scale that we purchased from the boutique didn’t work and the boutique was closed so we put that on our “to do” list for tomorrow.

December 18 (Friday, Day 51, Ft. Lauderdale, FL) -

We had our alarm set for 7 AM but ended up waking up around 5 AM since the ship was bouncing up and down so much. It wasn’t rolling or pitching, but was “jumping”. Filbert looked outside and Ft. Lauderdale was very close. The ocean was pretty calm but the ship was going 2 knots. Obviously the captain got to the port too early and had to cut our speed to almost nothing which caused the bumpy ride. Oh well. It was raining, too. We ate breakafast around 7:30 and Snookums was disappointed that there were no cinnamon rolls and that the doughnuts were the yucky peanut butter ones. Christiaan managed to find her two cinnamon rolls from somewhere on the ship so she did get them, albeit 20 minutes later. Snookums went to the front desk to inquire about what to do about the broken luggage scale and was happy to find that the boutique manager just happened to be there, too. The boutique manager had to do some checking but ultimately gave us $12.50 back so we were happy. We took a cab ($12.10 was the metered fare) to the Ft. Lauderdale airport rather than using Regent’s transfer service that cost $60 per person. We also skipped the shuttle service van that was waiting outside the port terminal that was charging $11 per person to go to the Ft. Lauderdale airport. The 10-minute ride was uneventful and so was Southwest check-in.

Holiday candy at the Ft. Lauderdale airport courtesy Southwest Airlines

Our flight was 30 minutes late due to the severe rainstorm. We didn’t think that was any big deal until we got home and unzipped our four suitcases and found that just about everything in them was soaking wet! Snookums started doing load after load of laundry. Nothing was ruined, but that sure put a damper on our trip. Other than that, we had a fine time and met lots of great people. Our next cruise will also be on Regent (ms Navigator) for a 20-day Panama Canal cruise with Snookums’s parents and sister. We are interested in seeing what the 450-passenger ms Navigator is like compared to the 700-passenger ms Voyager. For now, though, we’re glad to be home! (Note -- We did weigh ourselves when we got home. Snookums gained one pound and Filbert gained ten and already got back on his diet.)

Next: hey, there is no next! We're home! Oh, we might get around to posting some kind of finale sort of thing, but it's Christmas and we're going to get into the holiday spirit--at last. So, until the next Journey . . . see ya!