Departure Day - January 13, 2011

Departure day – Jyl picked us up at 9:30am and we were at the airport by 10:15am.  Boarded the plane right on time with push back at 12:12pm.  However….just as the plane was pushed back, the pilot came on and told us that we now had a wheels up time of 1:40pm due to fog in San Francisco.  Luckily, we went back to the same gate and they opened the door and allowed anyone to get off if they wanted to.  Since we had a nice Economy Plus row with no one in the middle seat, we just stayed put and read.

We did leave at 1:40pm and landed in San Francisco about 3:20pm.  We were met by the Regent Representative and our bags were among the first off.  We always feel better when all the bags come off of the plane.  He helped us with our baggage (4 bags and 2 carry ons) and the limo picked us up and took us directly to the port.

Boarding was super easy and we were check in and in our suite by 4:15pm.  The shipped bags were already in our suite so no missing luggage.  Ngaire, Linda and Susan stopped by as they were all on the ship for “top producers” meetings with Regent.  They even got to stay overnight on the ship.   Ngaire left us with a bag with her favorite cereal and salad dressing so she didn’t have to try and get it into Australia when they board in Brisbane.

We met our butler, Rajib, who showed us what we needed to know about our suite.  We asked him to go ahead and unpack for us since we were leaving the ship for dinner.  We left about 5:30pm to walk down and find a cab.  Regent representatives at the door helped us find one.  It was cool and very cloudy in San Francisco but it wasn’t raining at that time.

We met Susan and Andrew at the Millennium Restaurant.  It was excellent.  It is a vegetarian restaurant but the food was very upscale and delicious.  We all and the Harvest Festival Dinner which was a fixed menu.   I especially like the appetizers but I could not tell you what all they had in them.  The food was good and the service excellent.  We didn’t feel the least bit disappointed by having a vegetarian dinner.   It was Susan’s birthday so we had a nice evening catching up with her and talking with Andrew about his senior highschool year and his plans for college.

We were back on the ship by about 8:45pm in time for the Grand Gala Entertainment.  It started with Norm Crosby, who was very funny and we enjoyed him.  Then Joel Gray came on.  Joel Gray has been a great entertainer but I thought it sad to see him trying so hard when it was obvious he is getting too old to really put on a show.  We left before he finished.

Our suite is a penthouse on the Voyager.  While the square footage is about the same as the deluxe suite it is arranged quite differently and feels more spacious.  We had to do some re-arranging of our clothes after the butler unpacked for us.  We decided to do just the minimum that evening and do the rest the next morning.