January 15 and 16

Up early today to bright sunshine and calm sea.  We spent the day relaxing, going to lectures and playing trivia (we lost badly).  This was the night of the captain's welcome dinner and we have an early dinner reservation in Prime 7.  The swell has been building so even if we make it to St Bart's we may not be able to tender ashore.
After dinner we watched the movie "The Martian".  There are lots of recent movies available for free with the on board movie system so it is one of the advantages of cruising when you seldom go to movie theaters.

We did make it to St Bart's and the sea was calm enough to use the tenders to take passengers to shore. Our late arrival caused all the tours to be late and the tender service was slow as we were anchored quite a distance from the dock and everyone was trying to get off the ship for tours and just walking around.  We stayed on board as we had been here before.  St Bart's is a beautiful place with high end shops, lots of restaurants and bars and there are always a lot of big yachts in the port.

We had a very nice dinner with Jack and Angie Toth, a couple that had belonged to the same country club as us when we lived in Michigan.

January 17

We arrived in Martinique about noon and we had a tour of the Balata Botanical Garden.  A lovely garden but it was a strenuous walk with lots of steps and steep inclines.  We also stopped at a church that was supposed to be modeled on one in Paris, it was quite run down with plants growing out of the walls.  Martinique, other than being French is a typical low end Caribbean island.
We had dinner with two of our trivia partners.  They were having a special "French" buffet in the place where they normally serve Italian.  We will avoid having that dinner if they offer it again.

Arriving at the dock in Martinique

The Sacre Coure (sp?) Church

Bromiliads in the garden

Iridescent blue humming birds with long curved bill

The long cruise begins with some hiccups!

We have begun another long cruise with Regent Seven Seas Cruises.  This time we are on board the Mariner.  We left Las Vegas at 11:15 pm (well past Tom's bed time) and flew to Detroit where it was only 3 degrees.  After an hour layover we boarded our flight to Miami.  We were picked up at the airport and taken to the cruise terminal where we had to wait a very long time to check in as the -fi was out in the area and they could not connect the computers at the check in area to the ones on the ship.  We finally got on board about 1:30 and were able to have lunch in the La Veranda restaurant.  When we were able to get in our cabin at about 3:00 we only had two pieces of luggage when there should have been six!  We unpacked those two and then started planning what we would do for clothes if nothing else showed up as Tom had no socks and Noel had no underwear.  We had the lifeboat drill at 5:15 and on the way to the meeting place we did spot two of our bags in the hallway, yeah!!  The last bags finally showed up at 6:00.  We later found out that the teamsters had taken a one hour break and our crew cannot touch the bags until they are on the ship. We had an early dinner and went to bed about 8 pm since we really had not slept at all the night before.

Tom studies our tour choices

With one of our favorite waitresses

Tom was up early and we were able to put everything away so we could at least walk around in the room.  It will be nice to have two sea days to relax and catch up on our sleep.

When the captain made his noon announcement he told us that there had been a helicopter evacuation during the night of a passenger with a heart problem.  He stated that the original plan was to send the passenger to the Bahamas but it was decided that the best solution was to turn the ship back towards Miami until we reached a point that a US Coast Guard helicopter could safely reach the ship.  This all took place between about 1 am and 4 am.  We were so zonked out that we never knew the ship had turned back or that a helicopter had come. At this point it looks like we will miss our first port St Bart's.  Not a big deal for us as we have been there before.

We recognized several crew members and passengers that we had met on prior cruises.  One of Tom's favorite bar workers "Rambo" is one of them, although now he is a waiter in one of the specialty restaurants.
We won trivia today with of team of two other couples that we had met on a prior cruise.That was a nice way to start!

We had a nice dinner in the more casual Italian restaurant.  Our waitress "Raylene" had been one of our favorites from last year's cruise on the Voyager. Even though the seas were moderate one of the passengers at another table got sick and ran out on the deck to heave over the side.  As we were on deck eleven, one could only hope that the people with the deck ten room were not on their balcony.

We made it to the production show where the cast did numbers from several different Broadway shows. We lose an hour tonight so will probably need naps tomorrow!!