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We arrive at our home airport at 9 pm.
OK, not all of you will get the joke in the blog title but today we “debarked” the ship and then later picked up our six year old “puppy” who, by the way, is still “barking” (but only discretely and when absolutely necessary)!
The puppy meets us at his caretaker’s house, all nicely groomed!
For those of you who don’t have the time or inclination to wade through this ridiculously long post, suffice it to say we are home safe and sound. We had a great time and, while we will miss our cruise lifestyle and the new friends we made on-board, we are happy to be home. So, if you choose to jump into the nonsense to follow, shift your clock back to yesterday morning (Tuesday, March 16th).
The sunset last night is the last one of many beautiful ones on our cruise around South America and it is in now the blog header. It was VERY windy up on the top deck so I finished up on the service deck under the lifeboats. Today started at 6 am for me but yesterday didn’t end until 1 am today for Margaret. That’s when she returned to our suite after a night in the casino with her Blackjack Buddies (sorry, no picture…oops. Margaret couldn’t find her camera last night…hopefully it is packed in one of our 8 suitcases!). While it was a losing night financially, it was a fun last night (or early morning) with a great group of guys and gals that had bonded with her and tolerated (and sometimes even chanted along) with her “21, 21, 21” banter.
Before hitting the casino, we spent some time in the Horizon bar where the Regent singers were putting on a special Beatles tribute. Everyone was having a great time singing and dancing on our final evening. Margaret even got two presents (she loves presents)! Our friends Nick and Sherrie presented her with a Regent logo chef’s shirt – signed by all of the chef’s on-board the Mariner. They got this at a silent auction they attended where Sherrie got into a bidding war with another guy – but was determined to get Margaret that shirt! Thanks Sherrie! We also received a CD of the music from the on-board trio who had been playing their instruments and singing for us the entire cruise! Thanks Ron!
I stayed up late and got up early this morning to try and finish the blog picture uploads for Antigua and St. Thomas but to no avail. I forgot that they turn off the Internet service at midnight. Oh well, at least I will have the pictures ready to go when I get home and can work with my high-speed internet (can’t wait for this!).
Margaret had filled out a breakfast request card last night, which we discovered this morning she had forgotten to leave hanging on the door. Oops. So instead of a leisurely breakfast in our suite as we finished packing, we had to hurry. After filling every nook and cranny in all our original bags AND the large duffel bag we bought in St. Thomas, we were quite proud of our efforts but puzzled at why there was so little space considering we didn’t buy bulky items on the trip and we had that extra duffel. In a final sweep of the room, Margaret found an empty suitcase hiding under the bed! Oops! It turned out to be really good news because it allowed us to spread out our carry on load and have one carry on. Most of our bags were already downstairs and will be Fed-exed back to our home by Regent.
So we ended up at La Veranda for breakfast and seeing and saying goodbye to the many great folks who work at Regent. After breakfast we headed down to the Constellation Lounge to wait for our colored baggage tags to be called. Just as the Embarkation Day was a little rough (with new crew coming on board, etc.) the Debarkation Day was also pretty complicated and a bit frustrating. I guess it is hard to move 700 people onto or off of a ship in just a few hours but we’ve had smooth experiences on our other eight Regent cruises. I wonder how Carnival or Celebrity does it with 3,000+ people!
On our walk to La Veranda we ran into Franco, an incredible guy married to an incredible lady called Judy (you met them in a post long ago). We met Franco and Judy during our Machu Picchu adventure and since then have enjoyed some meals and some great fun together. As we said our final good-byes to Franco he put his hand on my arm (I think this is his subtle way of saying that he wanted me to pay utmost attention to what he was about to say) and gave me some serious advice in his wonderful Italian accent. He said, “Dale, listen to me, I have something important to say to you. You need to slow down and relax. I’ve been watching you and you are going to kill yourself running around all the time like you do…slow down and RELAX”. Margaret agreed. We will miss Franco and Judy as they have become dear friends. We hope to see them again someday soon. I must say that unfortunately today is not a good day for me to start relaxing. But I promise to work on it Franco!
Now in the Constellation theater, at our appointed time, we wait. And wait, and wait some more. It seemed that Regent was having a difficult time with the local unions getting all of the baggage unloaded and the ship won’t clear customs until all of the bags are off. As everyone needed to be out of their suites by 8:30 am, we are now (all 700 of us) milling around waiting, justly confused by the shades of colors and numbers being called by the destination services folks in the theater. Our bags were tagged with the “Salmon 1” color/number combination — but to make things complicated, there was also a Salmon with no number (simply called “Salmon”) a green, a light green, a blue and a light blue (with numbers), a star red (with no number), orange, purple, lavender, lilac and so on. Needless to say all of us were quite confused (including the Regent associates who were calling off the colors/numbers and trying to explain what they had already called off). This seemed way too complicated to me…but what do I know about off-loading a cruise ship!
So we sat on the 6th floor of the theater with our friends Mike and Cheryl and waited (Margaret even went and got me a latte – which is usually my job but as this was the last day she thought she should treat me to that service!). While we waited I helped Mike and Cheryl figure out some of the intricacies of their new Nikon S8000 camera which was fun because I have read about this camera and understand it to be very good, but have never actually held one long enough to see how the controls work.
After a while of listening to them call out what seemed to be every color/number but our own, I decided to go down and check. The guy calling off the numbers told me he had already called “Salmon” and would call “Salmon 1” in a few minutes. Sure enough a few minutes later he called our color/number and we debarked the ship and went out to find our suitcases in the terminal area. When we found our bags we noticed there weren’t any other “Salmon 1” bags in the area (strange) and then made our way through customs. Once through customs we stopped at the Baggage Free counter to have 5 of our 8 bags shipped home (this is a service Regent offers for no-charge to their Cruise South American 65 day passengers) and then proceeded to the area where the coaches were waiting to take us to the airport.
The now legendary Pink 1 bus and a sort of point “1” at that.
It turned out that the “Salmon” bus had already left…we figured out that the “Salmon 1” group “swam” down the gangplank with the “Salmon” group and the bus took off without us! Yikes! Luckily there was a Pink 1 bus going to Miami airport so we converted to Pink 1’s and got on that one, waited another 30 minutes for that bus to load and then headed out. Next time we will debark as an “independent” and that way you can get off anytime you want and just take a taxi to the airport or where ever…
Once settled on the bus we discovered we had one of those “chatty” drivers. He talked almost the entire 30 minute drive to the airport with a couple in the first row. Don’t they usually have a sign in buses that reads “Please don’t talk to the driver”? I wish there was a sign that said, “Driver, please don’t talk to the passengers” in this one. I guess I’ve been on too many buses doing too many “City Tours” and “Highlights” over the past 65 days as I am now a bit cynical! At least he could have been giving us the low-down on Miami instead of talking about his in-laws and such.
Margaret all smiley even though we’re going home.
About halfway there he tells us that the airport is under construction and he doesn’t really know where to drop us off. OK, not so sure what to do back here as a passenger…shouldn’t the bus driver know where to drop off his passengers? Aren’t the terminals clearly marked with the airline names, etc.? And, aren’t you as an experienced “bus driver” driving a bus for a living and going to the airport every day?
He ended up pulling up to the terminal in front of American Airlines, which was supposed to be the first of several stops he had mentioned. He then gets out (asking us to stay nice and cool on the bus), takes all the bags out from underneath and lines them up on the sidewalk. He then gets back in the bus and Gestapo-like says, “OK, everyone get out here!” And, of course, being the good Pink 1 rule followers we are, we got off the bus. I felt very sorry for the elderly guests with canes that had to walk as far as we ended up walking, which was a long, long way. Ugh.
Margaret still all smiles in her Business Class seat on AA.
I’ll summarize the rest of the trip short and sweet:
- We had some great Sushi at Miami International Airport. Margaret’s mother, who passed away some time ago, used to love flying out of MIA just so she could eat the sushi. She was right – the best airport sushi ever!
- We took a flight to DFW. First Class seat, not first class service (see next post).
- We went to the Admirals Club at DFW and did some work (again, see next post).
- We took the flight from DFW to our home city (uneventful for the most part but see next post).
- We met our driver and left the airport to pick up our puppy at the dog sitters house. He was very happy to see us. Just like he is when we drop him off for a few days…guess dogs don’t have the same sense of time that us humans do. He didn’t even give us that “where do you get off leaving me here for 65 day look”!
- We got home and everything was great. The kitty cat was happy to see us but not as happy as we thought he’d be…we didn’t even get a meow out of him like we do after 14 day cruises! He just sat there looking at us (picture coming) all relaxed and motionless like he was in a state of standing up hibernation, even let the dog give him a couple kisses on the mouth! He obviously has had some time to contemplate life — maybe he is now a Tibetan “Buddha” cat instead of a Persian!
- There is more mail than we can open tonight — so we’ll save that for tomorrow! Looks like it’s time to get our taxes together (Double Ugh…).
I thought this was interesting. Get ready for delay at the Admirals Club!
We hope everyone got home safely. We’ve got a lot of relaxing to do in the meantime. Ciao for now!
Dale & Margaret
Debarkation Day Picture Gallery: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Debarkation-Mar-16-2010/25179993_NxmKjK#!i=2065367694&k=9TjzTtd