January 9 – Georgetown, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Weather – 28º, sunny

Steps – 15,406 (5,000 dancing!!! – I think I should do more dancing in general)

Humidity – 75%

I feel spoiled when I say that this is the third time that we’ve been to Cayman Islands. We did a lot of the tourist things on our last 2 visits, so today we decided to wander the front street and get a beer.

I was also in search of Wi-Fi. I wanted to download a new book for my Kindle, but ship Wi-Fi never gets along with our Kindles – too many log-in hoops to jump

Kindle and beer

through, so I brought mine with me.

We chatted with a bar tender (from Vancouver funnily enough) about our previous visits to Cayman. When we told him what we did on previous trips he said “yup, you’ve pretty much done everything.”

In addition to the rum punch we had at the port bar, we had conch fritters and a local beer at a place overlooking the water, served by a guy from PEI. Meeting a bar tender from Vancouver is interesting, but from PEI…now that is something!!

Georgetown is a tender port…this is a first for us this entire time we’ve been

conch fritters

away…no tenders on the Regent trip at all. Tenders are kind of charming the first or second time you do them…then they are a pain in the A$$. Usually, tenders are operated by the ship. In a few places (like 2 that I can think of in all the times we’ve been on tenders) they are local tenders – for the economy I guess.) In my

local tender boat

experience, local tenders are better…bigger and more comfortable – comfortable might be a stretch…you are still sitting on hard wooden benches, but the local ones are roomier.

One of our suite perks is priority tender embarkation. We’ve done this once before when we were on a Celebrity cruise. You show up at the suites lounge and someone takes you to the front of the line. On Celebrity, it was more obvious to those you were jumping in front of that you were jumping…here it’s less obvious. This is a nice perk. If there were no tendering ports that would be better, but if we have to get on a tender…it’s nice to not have to line up or get tender

candle light guitar

tickets – makes the whole tendering process more palatable.

aerialists

Once back on board we relaxed in the room after our arduous day by splitting a smoked bourbon cocktail in a can. Another suite perk is a one-time mini bar set up. We got a selection that we could have exchanged for what we actually wanted, but we drink plenty on the ‘outside’ that we don’t care what’s in our room. I’m not sad I don’t have more of these bourbon ones…not great.

Then we set out for something to eat. We can definitely use to miss a meal, but split a sandwich.

The pre-dinner entertainment was a candlelight guitar player at the pool…it was lovely.

sax player

Then it was dinner in the main dining room. Followed by a Broadway style show, then it was the ship’s White Luminescence party. About half of people were dressed in white – Chris has a light shirt; I had nothing remotely close to white.

This party was something else! It was in the 3-story piazza, with a band, a roving sax player, a pait of aerialists  and what they described as go-go dancers. The cruise director on this ship, Cole, is something else! He’s young (probably 35ish) from New Zealand, overflowing with energy and really pretty awesome. We’ve experienced many cruise

of course there had to be the locomotion

directors and he’s the best. He was one of the go-go dancers. He and a woman danced hard for at least an hour! We were on the second level and did our own share of dancing

Then we spent some time in the casino…I am still up about $100. By 1230 I had to go to bed…Chris stayed at the casino and joined me about half an hour later.

Christina – just trying to get the step count up with the dancing…it’s quite motivating!