Hello everyone,

Well, we are docked at Port Everglades and waiting for clearance. We had some wonderful blue water sailing towards the end of this cruise - flat seas, sunny skies and warm temperatures. Yesterday was a bit rainy but as it was our "bonus" sea day no one seemed to mind.

We had the finals of Dancing with the Voyager Stars last night and Lorraine and her team managed to assemble a very full program for our unplanned day. The Public Television at Sea team put on a few more excellent lectures and Chef Phillipe from the Cordon Bleu class did a cooking and knifework demonstration. All in all a very pleasant day.

We continued to have some persistent service (or more precisely lack of service) issues in Compass Rose - the staff there is new and still in training so things did not go as smoothly as we have come to expect. I hope with additional training and some more experience things will return to normal. The food was great and the wines were very good too.

Our friends were married by the Captain yesterday. Regent did an excellent job. Amanda the social hostess has a future as a wedding planner. They somehow managed to find some fresh flowers for a bouquet, produced a lovely - and delicious - wedding cake, and provided champagne and vegetarian canapes. The captain was charming and we received an extensive bridge tour as a bonus.

We are ready to leave our stateroom now - it is pouring rain at the moment. If all goes well we should be home by 5:30 tonight - in time to feed the cats.

Thanks for sailing along with us.

Mary Ellen