Our First Days on Regent Grandeur

 We arrived in Miami on Monday afternoon to lovely clear skies and 25 degrees Celsius. We had already planned to do some shopping in a local pharmacy on Tuesday morning, so we took a short stroll in nearby Harborfront Park. We had not stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel before, and were quite impressed with the room and the lobby area - that is, until people started arriving for an upcoming conference, and sort of took it over. It turns out it was IHG Hotels Group, the owner of Intercontinental and a number of other chains. We had no problem with them being there, but when we were sort of nudged out of the way it got a little annoying. After all, they may have been paying for their drinks, but it was us and a number of other guests who were, ultimately, paying their salaries!

We escaped from the lobby to the restaurant, Toro Toro, a steak house with South American influences in the cuisine. It was very good, but lots more than we expected.

One of the Ceviche options, made with Corvina fish. Anywhere else
this would have served at least 2!

Larry chose a tuna Ceviche

The restaurant was very, how can we say,
Steakhouse-ish!

Larry's steak and truffle fries in front; my lobster tail 
with brussels sprouts on the side in the back. They
didn't tell us about the onion and peppers - apparently
they are considered as 'garnish'

Tuesday morning we walked around a bit.
This park looks much nicer now than it did after
a huge rainstorm in November.

As soon as we boarded, we went to meet Mary Ellen and Ed. Our suite wasn't ready yet, so we had arranged to meet in the Observation Lounge. We haven't taken any around the ship photos yet. Will do it in the next few days.

Our first day was the ONLY sea day in this first part of the cruise. We know now why we don't take 7 day cruises if we can avoid it. The day was busy enough, including a cooking class at the Culinary Centre and the needlepoint get together.

Watermelon and Duck Confit Salad

The filling for a B'Stilla Dome, a
North African style dish

Prosciutto-Wrapped Prunes with
Gorgonzola Cheese filling

The finished B'Stilla Domes. They were delicious!

Chef's treat, Salted Caramel Ice Cream with  
Togarashi, a Japanese spice mixture, on top

At the end, the Chef set out a display of all
the dishes he prepared - we all ate ours!

The following day we were in our first port of Roatan, Honduras. We had booked an excursion to the Gumbalimba Preservation Park, where we would see some indigenous animals and learn some history of the area.

Roatan is actually a large island off the coast of Honduras, a 35 minute plane ride away. For that reason it is much safer on the island than it is on the mainland! It is mostly tropical jungle and beaches, but we did see some very nice resorts as we drove to the park.

At the park, we were introduced to a couple of different types of iguanas, one vegetarian and the other carnivorous. The Green Iguanas are the vegetarians, and the males can get to a huge size!

On our way to the macaws and the monkeys, we had the chance to cross the Shaking Bridge - and yes, it certainly was shaky!! Larry was surprised that I chose to do it, but we all survived....the only person who took the Coward's Trail around the pond was our Tour Guide! Hmmmm......

The park has a flock of 20 macaws that fly free during the day and come into a large enclosure at night to protect them from potential predators. Many of the birds were brought to the park from private owners or had been rescued in the wild. Now they have a safe place to live and are fed every day, so there is apparently no problem getting them into the enclosure. Staff just opens the door and they all fly in!

Not far from the macaws we visited with some of the 30 Capuchin Monkeys who weren't shy about jumping or climbing onto people. Larry even got a visit from a Mom with her week-old baby. Too bad she jumped off his shoulder before I could get a good photo of her and the baby.

So that was the excitement for the first couple of days. We only had one other excursion booked, to the Mayan ruins at Kohunlich from Costa Maya. More on that in the next post.