October 2 - Santa Barbara, CA

beautiful, but invasive

view while tendering

Weather – 18º and clear when we threw open
the curtains, nice for a bit of morning blogging, sunny and high of 21º

Steps – 14,240

Room 2155 is located one floor below the ship’s buffet. I wouldn’t never choose a room directly below any public space, in my opinion the best rooms are surrounded by other rooms. Usually, the poshest rooms are high on the ship which I really can’t understand. High rooms have the most motion of the

quaint Santa Barbara street

ocean (something most do not want) and are next to, over or under public spaces. We never choose the poshest rooms on any boat unless the price is right. The very best room we have ever had was on the lowest floor on the back of the boat. Anyway, because we booked this cruise so close to sailing time, we took what we could get. We’ve had a room like this before (because of late booking, you’d think we’d learn our lesson) and it was a bit loud, not terrible, but enough that I’d steer clear if given the choice. Last night was fine, there was some other kind of undesirable noise, but it didn’t seem to be from above. Tonight, we’ll get the

good bye Santa Barbara

white noise going. Or we may just open the balcony door. I might have to have them bring back the industrial fan…you can’t hear anything over that.

daily planner

Santa Barbara although on mainland California, can only be reached by ship anchoring in the bay and tendering ashore. We’ve been down the tender road many, many times in the past and the process lost its shine long ago. Tendering on Regent can be tedious as only 100 or so people can fit in a tender,
this in addition to the loading and unloading is tiresome. However, Regent only has 600 people to deal with, this boat has 3000. The operation here has 2 tender boats rather than one operating, but everyone was cautioned that the wait for the next available tender could be 90 min!! Good thing we have priority! A perk of being in the “Retreat” is that we basically cut the line…I didn’t feel real good about that, but still did it and was on the first tender we wanted – we weren’t cheating at all, but kind of felt like we were. Coming back was another story and we lined up with
the masses – that didn’t take 90 min…maybe 15. The ride to and from the ship was another 15 minutes.

seals!