That itinerary was one of our favorite cruises.

Am sad I will never be able to take this cruise with Regent. Lower your single supplements Regent and I will be back in a flash. :mecry:

me too

Peter, please add us to the WINES roll call. Our cabin is 663. After SPLASH was canceled, we decided to sign up.

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Gail and Eugene

Welcome Gail and Eugene, looking forward to meeting you!

Eugene and Gail, that's great. It looks like we'll be seeing each other fairly often next year. :)

Great news, glad to have the two of you on board.


Carolyn and Don

Yeah! This will be a great group and a fun time with interesting ports.
:banana:

Peter, looks like you can add Susan and Paul to the roll call--the latest winners of the free cruise.

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Eugene

WINES will be fun. I can hardly wait.

In Sunday's Travel Section, the Washington Post had a major article about Marseille--one of the last ports scheduled for WINES. See Marseille article from Post .

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Eugene

Thanks for the link, Eugene. I'll be there on 11/1/2011, a few months later than WINES. Cruising from Barcelona to Venice on the Mariner.

Add Jean and Clyde - 757. Late decision but a good one I know. What about the London hotel? Anybody know which one Regent is sponsoring?

Oh Jean you and Clyde will have such a great time and with such fun cruisemates. Wish we could do this too, but we have to be realistic. Too many things we want to do, and limited budget to do it with. LOL. We came very close to doing this as our replacement for unTUT.

We had the best time with you and Clyde on FUN2 having breakfast the morning of embarkation, and such a fun dinner the second night. Hope to cruise with you two again.

Hi Jean and Clyde, welcome to WINES! My husband Bob and I are arriving to London on 8/16 , still don't have hotel plans. Looking forward to meeting you both.

JoAnn, I didn't know you had been close to booking this, I would have tried to be more convincing!

Thanks Maria, we really did think about it, but we have done it essentially, so wanted to try and see those Pyramids - maybe a mistake in June, but we will give it our best.

You will love Jean and Clyde, be sure to try and have dinner with them one night they are absolutely delightful and they are Frank's and my idols. We want to be them when we grow up.

Add John & Lynda from Houston and Dan & Brenda from Wichita Falls to the list. We did the reverse itinerary about 5 years ago when it was a wine & food focus cruise with guest chefs, and it was one of our favorite trips.

Hi Lynda/ John ! Welcome to you and your friends. Looking forward to meeting you. Excursions will be available for booking in 2 weeks and cruise will be here sooner than we know!

JoAnn- If CLEO is a no go, remember WINES!

Hello WINOs (is that what we're called??)!

Excursions are open today for booking!

I could certainly qualify as a WINO, just as long as we don't have too many WINERS on the trip, Maria! I signed up for excursions as well. Not all of them appear open as yet-Lunch at Chataeux Pomys in Bordeaux is "waitlisted", for example. Can't wait to catch up with you and Bob-

We signed up for the excursions yesterday from here in Sydney. Now I think I'll concentrate on the cruise at hand :D We're leaving the hotel for the Voyager in about an hour.

Unfortunately, Bert and I have had a change of plans and will not be going. I will be having some surgery over the summer (should not be serious, but the timing is terrible)and we are both very dissapointed. We will follow the seamail and miss all of you-

Hope everything goes well

So sorry to hear that Mitch--we were really looking forward to seeing you again, but maybe we'll see you in Florida sometime. Hope the surgery goes well.

Sorry to hear this Mitch, even though we are not on WINES. Hope it is nothing too serious. Frank and I send our best wishes for a quick and speedy recovery.

We too hope to see you both soon on a future cruise.

Mitch, I am sorry to hear about this, as I know how excited you and Bert were about it when it was first discussed at Ho Down. Please keep us posted on your recovery.

Arlene

Good luck Mitch and sorry to hear you had to cancel - there will be another one for you two

Hi Mitch,

Bob and I are really disappointed not to have the opportunity to cruise with you and Bert again. But , of course, health comes first. We wish you a speedy recovery and that soon you can be onboard another cruise (and hope we're there with you!).

Oh no! I'm not on this cruise, but LOVE traveling with Mitch and Bert! I know you will be sorely missed by this wonderful group aboard, but more than anything, hope all goes well and you will have a speedy recovery and be back in your game in no time!

Mitch, sorry you and Bert had to cancel. That's always disappointing. Hopefully you'll breeze through your surgery and there will be another cruise waiting for you.

Mitch, I do not get on LCT very often, but sorry to hear you had to cancel. God speed for a speedy recovery and you and Bert will be sorely missed.

We are looking forward to seeing the wonderful LCTers we have cruised with before nd meeting some we have not.

Rod

Just wanted to alert those in this cruise that Regent is making some changes to the excursions and you may be affected. They now have us on two excursions at the same time in Bordeaux and canceled one we were booked on the 2nd day there. I have to call Regent and straigthen this out. They have also changed the excursion time to San Sebastián to the afternoon. That's too bad as we were planning to stay there for the day and come back on our own.

Please let us know what you find after calling Regent, Maria, being aware of some comments on the other board about excursions and cancellations.

Funny, I posted about this on CC yesterday in an excursion-related thread, though I didn't mention the particular cruise. I had noticed that the same thing happened to us, and something similar to the Byrnes.

In Bordeaux, the Medoc tour and luncheon at Chateau Pomys for which we were wait-listed was totally canceled. Regent seems to have randomly assigned substitute excursions not paying any attention to conflicts. We, too, were scheduled for two at the same time and none on one day. I called and they straightened things out, though I am disappointed at the end result. Although we're in Bordeaux overnight, because of the early afternoon arrival and departure, it really doesn't allow for much time. Furthermore, if you want to see Bordeaux itself and St. Emilion, one has to be done on your own because Regent isn't offering any tours of Bordeaux the second day. Poor planning on their part.

As I mentioned on CC, the moral of the story is to check your excursions every so often to ensure that there are no surprises once on board. Regent should notify us when they make a change, at least by e-mail.

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Eugene

Eugene, I found out through your CC post that something was amiss and checked on ours too, so thanks for posting that. I just took a guess that you were referring to WINES since I knew you were booked on it.

I called Regent last night and it's very strange because although on my account it shows we have two excursions on Bordeaux for 8/22 at roughly the same time, on the Regent rep's screen it showed that one of them was on 8/23 at 1:45PM (15 mins after we're due to depart Bordeaux !!). I kept insisting there was something wrong with that but he said there was nothing for him to change since on his end it didn't show I had two excursions at the same time on 8/22. I'll be calling again later today.

I'm also disappointed with the arrival/ departure times in Bordeaux since it limits what we can do there. Ditto about the excursion to San Sebastián from St Jean de Luz now being in the afternoon. SS is the food capital of Spain, famous for , among other things , its "pintxos" (their version of tapas). We were looking forward to going there in the morning with the tour and then staying on our own. The excursion is now at 2:00 pm , so obviously not a time conducive to do any eating. We're not foodies but do enjoy sampling local cuisine whenever possible. We might look into going to SS on our own. If anybody is interested in sharing in that possibility let me know.

I also just read on the Oceania CC board about an excursion cancellation for which the passenger was not notified, causing all sorts of difficulties. I sure hope that these incidents aren't confirmation of the negative posts about FDR's son being the head of this department, which I think oversees excursions on both Regent and Oceania.

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Eugene

Unfortunately that is completely dependent on the tides, assuming the ship is in fact going up the estuary right to Bordeaux itself. They have to come and go with the tides!

We did a great private tour of St. Emilion. Freddie knows the details of that, although I believe others here have used the same guide.

Well, I called Regent again and the information on their records still differed from what I was looking at in My Account. They insisted that we're booked in an excursion in Bordeaux which departs 15 mins after scheduled departure time from that port. So , given all this uncertainty, I decided to change to an early morning excursion on 8/23.

Our St. Emilion excursion was changed from AM on the 23rd to PM on the 22nd which is OK with me. We didn't sign up for the San Sebastian excursion--picked Biarritz and Basque Coast. Maria, should we change that and go to San Sebastian instead? Depending on the $$, we'd certainly be interested in doing it with you on our own.

Peggy, we were also changed to the St Emilion excursion on 22nd PM (although the Regent reps keep insisting it's on the PM of the 23rd), but it conflicted with a Bordeaux vineyards excursion we have at the same time.
Right now on 8/24 we are booked also on Biarritz/Basque coast on AM and San Sebastián on PM. I'm going to investigate options to do SS on our own and will let you know. I know there are direct buses, and train (with one transfer) but I'm not sure if the times will be convenient. I'm also going to look into the cost of a driver (that might be pricey).