At Long Last, A Post!

 It seems strange to have gone a whole week on a cruise without posting anything, but there really wasn't much to say on the first 7-day segment of our cruise.

We arrived in Miami so late on Friday night that we had something light to eat at the bar - a Caesar Salad for me and Tuna toasts for Larry, at around 11:00 p.m. We noticed that it was quite busy and noisy there, and it seemed there was a rather large convention group from a company called MacArthur & Company. Little did we know.....

After a light breakfast in the morning, as we knew we would be having lunch with Mary Ellen and Ed once we boarded Regent Grandeur, we thought we'd better pack up and perhaps leave for the port a little earlier than originally planned. There were people all over the place, and the elevators were jammed on their downward journeys.

That turned out to be a good idea, and we were at the port within about 15 minutes, although we had to keep correcting our taxi driver. We told him that the ship was at Terminal J, and that it was Regent, but he seemed to keep hearing 'Virgin' instead for Virgin Voyages, who also had a ship in Miami on Saturday. Once we got that sorted out, we noticed all of the construction going on in that area, as Royal Caribbean is building a new terminal facility nearby, and there was a convoluted detour around it. Once we got into Terminal J, things went very swiftly and we were on board in almost no time.

I have taken some photos of the ship, but when we are in port tomorrow I'll get a few more to give a better overview of the ship. We've been on Grandeur before, in 2024, and our other recent Regent cruises have been on her sisters Splendor and Explorer.

Back to MacArthur and Company. Well, it turned out that we wouldn't be lucky enough to leave them at the hotel. All 375 of them were on an incentive cruise on our ship for 7 days. That's fully one-half the guest capacity, and many of them had either never cruised before or had been on mass-market lines like Carnival and Norwegian.

To say that it was a little chaotic for the first week would be a bit of understatement. In fact, it got so bad for the bar service staff that they put beer out in coolers on tables on the pool deck so everyone could help themselves rather than having to order and take up the servers' time. And the 'chair hogs' were also out in force, dropping bags and hats on the lounges before going for breakfast. All the sorts of things we go on luxury cruises to avoid. Everyone on staff just kept repeating 'It's only for one week' until we got back to Miami and offloaded them.

We tended to stay away from the more popular areas, opting for the quiet of the Observation Lounge during the day. We wouldn't have been able to get in or around the pool anyway. 

I managed to get quite a bit of crafting done. Mary Ellen had found some yarn she'd bought years before and offered it to me for charity knitting. I don't really want to take it all home in skeins, so I brought my needles and have been knitting it up. Let's see how much I can turn into flat pieces before I have to pack my suitcase.

The first mittens and hat set

Mary Ellen and I usually go the Needlepoint Nook and either work on a kit we brought with us or get something new. As I didn't bring one, I picked up a coin purse kit to go with a cosmetic bag I have at home.

My other main project for this cruise is 'Frederick the Literary Cat', a counted cross stitch I started a few years ago but haven't picked up for a while. This is the left top quarter that I just finished yesterday. I want to get as much of the black on black done as I can while I have really good light, and that's going to be Frederick's back leg and tail on the right hand side. I'll post an update before we leave the ship.

We have also been to the specialty restaurants at least once, with two more reservations in each for this segment. I will do a food post in a few days.

We had booked two excursions for the first week, but the weather at Costa Maya was very windy and expected to get worse during the day, so the port was cancelled and we had an extra sea day. We were supposed to go to the Mayan ruins at Chacchoben. Oh, well. We did see the Kohunlich ruins a couple of years ago, so they will have to do.

So far we have only had one shore excursion, in Cozumel. It's been so long since we've been off any ship there, that I booked the 'Ultimate Taco Tasting' tour just to see what the town looks like now. That will be the next post.

Back to the Caribbean on Regent Grandeur

It seems like we only just finished posting the last cruise and here we are again 😄!

This time we will be on Regent Grandeur again with our friends Mary Ellen and Ed. Even though we will be repeating some of the port stops from our cruise in November, we won't be doing that many shore excursions. I still hope to be able to go ashore to take some photos for sketches.

All the packing is done and we're ready to go, but when I got up to feed the cats at 6:30, there were notifications from Air Canada that couldn't wait.

Our flight to Miami has been delayed by about 5 hours, so at least I have time to get the blog up to date beforehand. Unfortunately we'll be eating dinner on the flight instead of at Truluck's, our favourite seafood restaurant in Florida, but at least we're not going to miss the ship!

Hope you enjoy following along!

The Food Post - better way too late than not at all!

 When we got home from the cruise we got right into preparations for Christmas and I forgot all about the last blog post. So here it is! Hope you will forgive not identifying many of the dishes we ate.

We'll start with Beefbar. We had a couple of lunches and dinners there. The food is still great, but those huge extra charge slabs of wagyu beef are way beyond anything we could finish. I have to take a photo of the display stand sometime.

Larry's steak with frites on the side

Deconstructed Caesar Salad

Steamed ginger seabream - great lunch option

Tartare and Tartine - veal tartare in wafers

Dessert to share - gelato with toppings

On to Umi Uma. Still our favourite. I think we've had almost everything on the menu so far. Good thing it gets a new dish every so often.

Sushi and sashimi

Melt in your mouth Black Cod

Shrimp and scallop stir-fry

The trio of creme brulee. Haven't had it for a long time.

Soft shell crab spring rolls

Chocolate souffle cake with sesame ice cream

The Osteria d'Ovidio. Now that the Alajmo Brothers have updated the menu and are constantly tweaking things, we really enjoy it.

An interesting shrimp appetizer

Tuna carpaccio

Minestrone soup

Fettucine carbonara

Rack of lamb

The lasagnetta tastes as good as it looks!

Risotto with fresh burrata

Veal rolls

Burrata ravioli

My favourite Branzino with sour potato puree

The very popular tableside Tiramisu under construction

by our favourite server, Kasia.

And finally, a few phots from the Vintage Room where they present specially curated menus with wine pairings. They are only offered a couple of times per sailing, and lunches are usually based on a theme where the head sommelier gives a talk on the theme, whether it is a region or a type of wine. There was a Vintage Room Champagne lunch on my birthday!

Lobster with truffle and cheese

Ravioli

Sea bass with mushrooms

Beef tenderloin with potato mousse

The cheese course

So there you have it! A selection of the food available on Crystal. Still the very best food at sea...and there are even a couple of YouTube content creators who say the same thing.

Now that this is done, I am setting up our next cruise....and we're leaving today! See you soon.

Milestone Celebrations and Other Stuff

 The first segment of this cruise from Bridgetown to Ft. Lauderdale was our 50th Crystal Cruise. It still seems amazing to us to have achieved this level, but it did take 26 years to do it, starting in 2000. As it is a major milestone, it comes with a couple of perks, including dinner with the Captain in his quarters.

Our dinner on November 24th included Captain Birger Vorland on Larry's left, Hotel Director Scott Peterson, and Crystal Future Cruise and Loyalty  Managers Beate Zaderer on my right, and Maria Lopez.

 

The lovely bouquet lasted more than a week 
in our suite.

They do things up right at these celebrations, with individual commemorative programs, the photo and a lovely dinner which included some of Crystal's fine wines. Our butler, Ayhan, happened to be assigned Captain's Quarters as well, so he was in charge of the dinner. Our friend Jiri, the Head Sommelier, presented the wines at the beginning of dinner as he also had to oversee premium wines in the dining room, and each course was delivered in a synchronized service by the six Deck 11 Butlers. Talk about feeling like royalty!

Crystal Society pins are presented to guests achieving loyalty status starting at 5 cruises and working upward in colour and the type or number of stones set into the pin. At 50 cruises, it is a Gold and Two Diamond pin which we will now proudly wear to Crystal Society parties on our future cruises.

We had a fantastic two hour dinner with everyone. We have known Captain Vorland and Scott for a long time. We only met Beate in 2024 but it seems like we've known each other a long time, and we met Maria earlier this year. We talked about all sorts of things - Captain Vorland is a self-professed talker - from previous cruises and memorable events to, of course, pets. Beate's family has a pet cockatoo who she Facetimes with!

It was a lovely celebration but it wasn't over yet. Beate had asked if she could present us at the Crystal Society party later in the cruise. Guests celebrating milestones and those with the highest numbers of cruises are always recognized by the Loyalty Manager at the party, and those achieving round number milestones from 50 up often are presented as well. Beate had only done this in April of 2024 on Symphony for our 45th cruise, but wanted to do it again this time. Another couple celebrating their 90th cruise was also presented.

Another bouquet which is still on our table
almost a week later. They have a great florist here!

That was the end of the milestone celebrations, but there is one perk that keeps on giving. Each guest is allowed one complimentary visit to each of the Osteria d'Ovidio, Umi Uma and the Sushi Bar per cruise. Any additional visits come with a $50 per person charge, just to keep them from being overrun. At the 50 cruise milestone, this charge disappears and you can have unlimited access, space permitting, to these dining venues on all future cruises. You still can only make one reservation online pre-cruise just like everyone else. We'll try that out on this second segment. We've already been to the Osteria once and are going back tonight (Dec 2).

As well as the milestone celebrations, we also celebrated my birthday on board again. It was on U.S. Thanksgiving Day this year, which was also a sea day and the last day of the first segment. Jiri offered a Champagne Lunch and Lecture in the Vintage Room, so that became the celebratory meal. He had also arranged my birthday cake to come with the dessert course. The whole lunch was lovely - we tasted four different champagnes along with the meal and learned a lot about the wine itself.

There were 12 of us at lunch - everyone got a piece
of the cake

A rare 'selfie' - me and Jiri

Barbara and her daughter Jodi from Woodstock. We've
sailed together before on Crystal and Silversea.

There is a jewelry shop on board the Crystal ships called Facets. The main designer they work with is Hubert Gesser from South America. Over the years, we've gotten to know his business manager, Karen, from her stints as a tour escort on shore excursions, as well as Hubert himself. Every couple of months the Facets staff organize a jewelry fashion show to showcase some of the designs and they ask guests to be the models. I had participated in this in September and Gabriel, the retail manager overseeing all of the shops, asked if I'd like to sign up again. There were about 12 of us in the show, and this time I was wearing some rather large opals. Much larger than anything I would ever wear, but it was a fun hour or so.

As we really haven't left the ship much in the past week, I'll post a few photos taken from the ship in these ports, and then get into the good stuff - the Food!

Finally Seeing Tortola

Considering we have stopped at Road Town, Tortola on many cruises over the years, we had never taken an island tour. We had gone to Virgin Gorda a couple of times, and wandered around the port area, but hadn't seen much else. We decided to change that on this trip, and I booked a panoramic drive with a short beach stop. We climbed into our open jitney buses and headed out.

The view of Road Town's cruise pier with us
and Oceania Allura

It was quite the drive, up to 1,400 feet on narrow, twisting roads that weren't always in the best condition, and back down again on the other side of the island. The views, however, were quite gorgeous.

The views from our first stop

Our beach break of about 45 minutes came at Cane Garden Bay. A beach lounger rental was included in the cost of our tour, and the umbrella cost an extra $5 for the two of us. There were already quite a few people there from the local hotels and resorts, and we're sure there were also tour groups from Oceania Allura, who was sharing the pier with us.

Arriving at Cane Garden Bay. You can see why
it is a popular beach spot.

On the beach.

The island in the distance is Jost van Dyke

A last view as we drove away after
our break

Rather than taking the same route back to Road Town, we were driven along the coast for the most part, coming into Road Town from the opposite site from where we left. It was also a very scenic drive.

Coming back down to sea level, you can see how
steep the roads are. It reminded us of the
twisting road on Tenerife a couple of years ago.

It was a nice drive back, as the coast road is in much better condition than the mountain road, and the views of the island and others in both the British and US Virgin Islands were beautiful. It is only a very short distance between Tortola and St. John, which we could see during our drive.

St. John across the water

We had to stop at the Shell Man. Apparently these
folks lost everything in the last hurricanes to hit Tortola,
Irma and Maria, within a couple of weeks of
each other in 2017.

The entrance to the beach area of an exclusive resort.
Sure looks inviting!

The view as we sailed away toward Ft. Lauderdale.

It was a beautiful day and an opportunity to finally see something of the island. We only have one excursion planned for the next leg of the cruise, in Martinique on the last day, so the rest of the blog posts will focus on what we did on board the ship.

I have been working on my travel sketchbook while on the cruise as well as a few other sketches. Here are a couple based on my photos from Tortola: