Regent Seven Seas Explorer, 2023

• By Barry & Allyn Shulman
• On January 12, 2023
• 7 Comments.

 

It’s been almost a year since we have been at sea. We are so excited to be back, although we had to take two flights totaling 15 hours to get to New Zealand. I’m not up for long flights anymore and will factor that in for future itineraries.

The ship is truly elegant. We have been on so many cruise ships and this is the loveliest to date. Additionally, we absolutely love our cabin. We have had larger, but none as functional and lovely.

We ate at Chartreuse, their French restaurant. It is gorgeous. The service was tops. The food was good, but not great.

 

The biggest glitch is that we only sailed with four of our six pieces of luggage. They are stuck in customs in Auckland. We decided to make our life easier by shipping three pieces ahead. My bad, big time. To make matters a bit worse, prior to shipping Allyn pointed out the potential delay risk because of Covid labor shortages and renewed tourism crowds.

 

One other problem today was our first port got cancelled because New Zealand authorities with new environmental zeal said to move the ship out of NZ waters until the hull is properly cleared of contaminating marine life. This is the third time in two weeks that they have had this problem. That concerns me.

 

So far it is no biggie for us because we are just happy to be back at sea and being with many pals whom we have not seen for a year.