May 27 – Cruising The Mozambique Channel

Country fair

Weather – 28º

Steps – 5,223

Humidity – 68%

Today is the ship’s ‘country fair’. See my pic for a description. Not really our scene, but we like to be on the fringes. We sat at the pool bar and watched the action. Seems like I don’t talk to bartenders anymore…I sit, a drink is in front of me within minutes – exactly what I would have ordered! Wow!

Speaking of bartenders remembering our drink preferences…at the beginning of the cruise, a bartender we kind of knew on a previous cruise, asked us if we were recently on the Mariner ship…why, yes…we were. He said

country fair

he remembered us because we always ordered the same thing together.

Anyway, the fair is at the pool, so all of the loungers are put away to make room for the festivities. Last night we saw that all the chairs were away, so we knew we could laze in the morning a bit.

My first order of business today was sunglass shopping. Thankfully at the ship’s shop I found a pair I like, not as much as my last pair and I’m still aggravated, but my eyes will be happy.

On our last day in Dubai, before boarding the ship, we learned that Namibia, one of the countries we will be visiting on the second half of this trip, requires that we get visas if we want to get off of the ship. This is the cash-grab kind of visa that

hooray for us!

you apply online for. We tried in Dubai as soon as we found out but weren’t successful. The requirements for a passport photo and a PDF of our passports plus the fact that I couldn’t actually get the confirmation email to come to me to start the visa process made us give up temporarily. We figured Regent would help us out - they didn’t really. We have to do everything ourselves online. Chris got his email confirmation, so he was able to do the visa for me as well. However, he was trying to do it today in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The credit card he was using wanted to send him a text verification, cell service in the middle of the ocean is zipo, so we’ll wait until we get cell service

party nibbles

tomorrow. I’m thankful Chris fought with all of this very calmly, I’m not sure I would have been so calm. I’m not sure how other people on the cruise are fairing technologically speaking.

It was Tex-Mex day at the pool grill for lunch. We don’t usually eat lunch at the pool grill, preferring to go into the more elaborate lunch buffet at La Veranda. Today we thought a taco might hit the spot – it did.

I did end up going into La Veranda for cheese. One downside of eating at the pool grill is that they don’t have the cheese station La Veranda does. Everyday, La Veranda has 4 or 5 cheeses to c

sea bass

hoose from. I typically cannot resist, today was a typical day! I mention a lot of what Regent does well, however, one thing they do not do well is keep the cheese station stocked with Ritz crackers. The cheese station is stocked with Ritz, water crackers and those crispy-rye type crackers – note to Regent…NO ONE WANTS ANYTHING BUT RITZ!!! Every cruise every lunch time, the Ritz run out. It’s weird, but I can’t blame people…all I want are the Ritz out of those 3 choices too.

Guess what we did next?? Back to the room to listen to the recorded lecture from this morning on our next port – Mozambique, nap, blog, and read.

Before dinner tonight there was a party thrown in our honor. Well, not exactly in our honor, but kind of. As I’ve mentioned before, Regent has a loyalty program based on the number of nights you’ve sailed with them. This cruise marks the 400^th night Chris and I have been on a Regent ship. They give out pins for each guest achieving their next level, at parties such as these once each cruise. It was nice, but a bit weird. Congratulating us for taking vacations is a bit odd – Regent should be congratulating itself for keeping us, maybe that’s what the pins are about after all.

Then it was up to deck 11 to listen to Kelly with a drink I didn’t need to ask for. We did end up talking to Gorgio, the bartender, who reminded us of which ship we know him from. We remember the people, but not necessarily the ship.

Dinner on the night of the loyalty party historically has always included miso glazed sea bass and tonight was no different. This is a thick cut piece of sea bass with a slightly sweet glaze – delicious.

We made it to the show tonight – Songs of Broadway, both old and new! I have to say, the ship’s singers this cruise are particularly good. None of the shows are more than 45 minutes, so even if it isn’t your cup of tea, you’re not investing a huge chunk of time.

Chris did some post show gambling and I sat on the deck for a while – the stars were out!