SATURDAY, MARCH 5 - At Sea

It is another beautiful day. We have slept well and are enjoying a good breakfast when Franco comes over and apologizes again for the mix up the other night. He wants to set up a time for us to enjoy a dinner in Signatures for the meal we have been trying to have. We decide to do the meal tonight since it is a sea day. We are looking forward to dinner now.

Too bad no one was concerned when this same mix up happened the first time. It really left us with a bad impression. Our displeasure was totally blown off by the head staff and we were very disappointed with Regent. We have noticed that the attentiveness has improved this segment; a needed improvement. If Regent wants to be a true luxury cruise line they never should blow off a complaint or disappointment of a guest. They should always respond in some positive way so the guests feel their concerns are being taken seriously. And, this needs to be a consistance reaction to guest problems. This inconsistency is very much a mass market/big ship type problems.

The service was generally good the first leg and seems to have improved this leg. The middle two legs were really disappointing. The second leg had many staff who were at the end of their contracts...that may have been part of the problem. On the third, short leg, the ship was packed and there were many new staff. It was obvious, too many times, especially in the dinning rooms, that there were not enough staff to keep the service running smoothly and timely...heaven help us if something went wrong! This last leg, the ship is not very full, only about half the cabins are occupied in our section of Deck 10 and the ship really feels empty especially compared to the last leg.

Today is a busy one. We go to Terry’s talk on "Beyond Starbucks, There is a Whole Lot of Coffee in Brazil." We work on the pictures from yesterday. Dick checks out the deck Brazilian barbeq and goes to Trivia, but they come in second today. Carolyn goes to the dinning room for a fruit soup fix, the tour talk on Fortaleza and the afternoon popcorn movie, "Stone".

At 5:45PM we have our block Party and have to move down to the front end of our hall for the first time as there is no one on our end except the couple in the big suite at the end of the hall. The travel group we are part of has their last welcome party and we visit with some of the long timers and see a couple of new faces; then we head to Signatures for dinner.

We have a starter and a soup off the newest menu and our escargot and rack of lamb. It is good, the lamb is slow coming, because it is being fixed in the main kitchen (Thought the Signatures chef was going to fix it?), but it is good, a true rack instead of the chops we are getting in Compass Rose. In fact we like what we have off the new menu so we make another reservation for the 9^th to try the whole thing.

We go to the star gazing at 10:15PM on Deck 12 Aft. It is a clear night. We can see Recipe, Brazil on the western horizon and the beautiful Milky Way above us. The Southern Cross is pointed out along with the star that is the magnetic South Pole. Also, Saturn, Orion’s Belt and several other southern sky stars. It is an interesting event. Then it is off the bed for us well fed tired puppies!