Oct 20 – Valetta, Malta

first 12 days

Weather

one of the coolest embarkations

– 25º, much less windy than yesterday

Steps – 8,189

Cruise embarkation day is always exciting. The anticipation of stepping foot on the ship, unpacking everything, knowing how the ‘system’ works - not wondering if I’m being scammed in anyway, tasting the first glass of

champagne, and settling in for the cruise – in this case…for the next 19 days.

The Regent Seven Seas Grandeur is docked in Valetta, so we have to make our way once more from St Julien to Valetta. Check out time at the Westin was noon and our check in time on the ship was 1230 – seemed perfect. Post-covid, Regent has assigned check in times for boarding day. These are never strictly adhered to and usually you can’t

last 7 days

unpacking

even tell when you are checking in – the common understanding is that if you show up any time after 11/1130 when check in starts, you’ll get on. What you want to avoid is arriving just after a busload of other passengers – we slipped in just as a bus was unloading – whew! Otherwise, we’d have been behind 50+ other passengers.

Because of the number of nights we’ve been on Regent we’re big deals…being big deals means we are still assigned an embarkation time, but there should have a special line for the special folks that we are. Embarkation was so smooth today, we barely had to swing our bigdealness around.

Security was in the terminal but check in was on board – this was fantastic! We’ve checked in a few times on a ship, but the vast majority of the time it happens in the terminal. Today there were only a

a lovely sight

few people ahead of us checking in, but once we told the woman managing the check in line, she made very sure we were the next ones to check in. It really isn’t that obvious that we are cutting the line. There are a bunch of check in people, so she just took us to the next available.

not a bad place for a spritz

Even if without priority embarkation, we would have been checked in super fast.

Another perk that comes with being a big deal is being able to access our room sooner than other – us at 1, others around 230. It was nice to go straight to our room to begin settling in rather than waiting for a while. We could certainly check

in later in the afternoon and go straight to our room, but on embarkation day we want to get on with things.

Malta and the moon

Laundry service is included on Regent. This used to be a perk for bigish deals but recently has become included with every fare. In my opinion, this is a huge advantage of sailing with Regent – to be able to put a bag of laundry outside your door in the morning and it coming back perfectly clean and pressed in the evening (at the latest the next day) feels like a miracle!

There is always the option for DIY laundry in the ship’s launderettes. Having been on the road for the last 6 days, means we’ve accumulated some dirty laundry that is nice to just take care of on our own. The day-or-so turn around for Regent to do it is hard at the beginning when we have a bunch that is dirty. After

we get to our room, we head straight to the launderette.

The Grandeur is Regent’s newest boat – built in 2023, capacity of 750. This is the only Regent boat we haven’t been on.

Regent Signature Orchestra

The rest of the afternoon is spent unpacking, eating lunch, meeting Julie (our room attendant), changing and adding a tour for the next week, and having our first spritz at the pool bar made for us by Eshwar, the pool bar bartender.

We quickly slipped into our cruise routine of a predinner cocktail while listening to the duo. Each Regent ship has a musical duo who play pre-dinner oldies, post-dinner more upbeat tunes, and post-show more current stuff. Vivace duo is fine…typical, nothing that knocks my socks off, but fine.

Dinner was in the main dining room – Chris made our usual request for a table by the window which is always nice in a busy dinging room.

always available

tonight's menu

Icons was the name of tonight’s show, and showcased the ships singers and dancers around Hall&Oats, Celine Dion, Pointer Sisters, songs. It was good, the theatre was packed.

Since tomorrow is a sea day and we have nothing to get up for, we decided to go to the Meridian lounge to see the ship’s orchestra. The orchestra is a 7-member group who tonight played mostly jazz

tunes. These orchestras usually have a front man
(we have only in the history of Regent orchestras seen one female player) who talks a bit but only says what’s necessary. This front man is a-typical – definitely over the top and almost uncomfortable.