POP on the Hanseatic in Antarctica was our favorite, without even a close second. Perfect weather (thanks to Ngaire's famous weather juju), hundreds of thousands of beautiful penguins, some of the most glorious scenery on the planet, superb cuisine (including the fantastic European cheeses which so delighted Leslie and me, fellow cheese-addicts, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner), 18 exciting Zodiac landings or cruises, wonderful English-speaking travel companions, dreadful (but humorously memorable) German-speaking travel companions - who will ever forget the bloody Battles in the Boot Room??!!, and sipping vodka chilled in ice just chipped from an iceberg. This was a cruise so special that we will not likely repeat an Antarctica cruise because it would be so difficult to approach the marvelous experience of this one.
Second choice: Hard to say, as we've enjoyed every cruise. However, perhaps our first cruise on Regent - Baltics on Voyager in 2003, which hooked us on luxury cruising - or CROSS last year - with the 8 intensive days of great ports followed by 8 languorous days at sea - would be at the top of our list.
Worst cruise - As "worst" is the superlative form of "bad", we don't have a worst cruise. We've been fortunate not to have had any cruise which we considered bad or regretted taking. If the sense of the term is "least favorite", ours would be MUSH, because we'd been on an Alaska cruise previously and found little new of interest and because the rotten weather prevented us from flying in to see the bears nabbing salmon in the river (the one "new" experience we'd hoped to enjoy). That said, however, we loved the extra day on the ship that was due to the engine problem. After all, a day on a Regent ship (in that case, including another marvelous dinner in Signatures) is a pretty good day in almost any event.
Enormously grateful that we are so blessed to be able even to indulge in such an exercise as "Best Cruise Ever" - (see, you cynical readers, Freddie does have a soft side) - I remain, eagerly anticipating our next cruise adventure, whether it be best, worst, or who-the-hell-cares-if-it's-fun-and-there's-lots-of-booze, your humble servant, just back from CAVIAR and still completely jet-lagged (as if you couldn't tell that from the incoherence of this post), Fred
