GONDOLA

Venice to Rome, October 31 - November 10, 2013.

Roll call:

Ngaire and Ken
Ray and Penny
Carolyn and Don 749
Kathy and Al
Priscilla and John 730
Peter and Mark 754
Mary Ellen and Jim 745
Pat and Fred

This cruise squarely hit our "Bucket List" as we have only been to one of the ports and dearly want to spend some time in Venice.

So we're booked.

Eugene: Pls add Ray & Penny to the roll call.

Cheers! Ray

Welcome aboard. We'll have to share Cleveland stories. Did I ever tell you that's where I'm from?

---------------

Eugene

Thanks for the welcome aboard Eugene. We're really looking forward to this cruise.

No, we never did talk about where you're from but we sure will while we do our "floating" from port-to-port. Actually we only had a short conversation during Ho-Down.

Cheers! Ray
p.s. I was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska but was transferred many times by the railroad. Penny was born and raised in England and we met in Brooklyn, NY.

I remember that we had a short conversation at Ho-Down in the lobby of the Aloft. Of course, I follow your posts, videos, etc. on LCT.

---------------

Eugene

Eugene,

Please add us to the list, we are in cabin 749.

Carolyn and Don

Sorry you canceled Grand Prix, but very happy that you'll be with us on the Med. cruise.

(Interestingly, I was just saying to Gail today hat I hadn't seen a post from you lately.)

-----------------

Eugene and Gail

Eugene,

Please add Kathy and Al to the roll call!

We are in!!!! Suite 730

:app: :app: :app:

Gosh, have to really take a look at this one. Love the itinerary, Venice, Rome, Sorrento and Portofino -- whewwwwwww! At the top for the moment, but still thinking. Oct 7 would be our next favorite. Not to mention what a great name this one has. :D :app:

It is a great cruise JoAnn - I have wanted Istanbul for sooo long why we are doing the 7th- we booked Istanbul 4 yrs ago it was chartered so had to move our plans - you cannot lose on either trip - nice people/ports - :lct: :lct:

Istanbul is so awesome Joanna and I know you will love it. We stayed two nights after CLEO last year and didn't come close to seeing it all. But we had a great guide and saw a lot.

Priscilla & John: Welcome aboard and how nice it will be to see you again but in the meantime, see you at Hee Haw. Kathy & Al, the same goes for you!

JoAnn & Frank. Good luck on your decision. Either way you can't go wrong.

And who will we be meeting for the first time on this cruise? That's always something to look forward to.

Cheers! Ray & Penny

Well this may be the one.

Very good and dear friends for 42 years + are really interested in this one, so if they go we go so to speak. Hopefully will know in the next couple of days. Love, love this itinerary so it won't take much for us to do it.

OK we are in!!! Finally made a decision.

Frank and JoAnn 751 and our friends,
Dick and Nancy 753.

JoAnn, Frank, Dick and Nancy,

Welcome to GONDOLA glad you joined us, should be a wonderful cruise and a good group.

Welcome aboard. JoAnn and Frank, we're almost neighbors already. Have a friend who lives in Oakton; he owns Out of Site Wines in Vienna.

------------

Eugene

Really??? Will have to check it out next time we go to Vienna.

BTW Eugene,next time we meet up with Tom and Mona for dinner, I will let you know, maybe you can join us.

Great news, JoAnn and Frank!

Thanks Kathy, but luckily we will see you a couple of times before that, HEE HAW and Grand Prix. :D

Great news, JoAnn! It will be fun cruising with you and Frank again. Yea!

we too are looking forward to cruising with you and John, but again, we will see you before at HEE HAW, so 2 for 1. :app: :app:

We just signed up on Friday - 754 - Peter & Mark

Greetings Peter and Mark and welcome aboard. There will be six of us Ohioans sailing together again.

Cheers! Ray & Penny

Great news Peter and Mark, look foreward to cruising with you again.

HEE HAW too?

Hopefully for Hee Haw - right now we have 4 commitments on 3 continents the weekend before and the weekend of Hee Haw - so at least 2 will have to go.

well since our friends decided not to go and we have done so many of these ports before, we have moved to PAGODA and won't be doing this.

Will miss everyone, but decided to use our $$$ for something new.

Kathy - thought you and Al had signed up for PAGODA but don't see you on the roll call.

Priscilla - sorry we will miss you, but so glad we saw you at HEE HAW.

JoAnn are you telling me that I should also remove Dick and Nancy?

-------------------

Eugene

yes that is right Eugene, they flake all the time LOL.

Sorry to miss this we want to do them all, but one must choose their priorities.

JoAnn, it has been months since I checked this thread, and I see that you have moved to another cruise. So sad that we will miss you! But glad we got to see you at HEEHAW anyway .... oh, and congrats to Frank about the game last night.

We will miss you too Priscilla and so glad to have seen you at HEE HAW. It was a hard decision, but several factors contributed and we decided since we had been to almost all these ports previously it was time for something new.

Thanks for the good wishes, Frank was most happy, needless to say.

Hi JoAnn,

Sorry you won't be joining us. Yes, we are on PAGODA. We are also booked on SUMO and most likely will have to cancel one of them....if only we could say YES to everything!

Kathy - well we are dearly hoping and keeping our fingers crossed that you will choose PAGODA, I mean come on, Frank won the teapot on that one, so you have to be there with us.

Truly hope to see you then, and we will truly miss being with all of you on GONDOLA. But things are changing in our lives and we have to make choices......not to mention the money fountain is running lower and lower gotta win that damn lottery!!!

Yes Kathy, JoAnn is right...please don't cancel PAGODA. We'd love to travel with you and Al again

Thanks JoAnn and Marcie....the scales are definitely tipping!

Keep tipping!!!

Marcie - your turn to tip!!!

Hi Eugene,

Please add Jim and I to the list. We'll be in 745.

Thanks!
Mary Ellen

We are staying on to Barcelona, is anyone going to join us for the next cruise?

In just over two months we will be leaving for Venice and this wonderful cruise. Bumping this thread up to see if any others are joining us.

Hi Priscilla,
Jim and I will be on GONDOLA. We are arriving in Venice on the 27th for a few days of exploring on our own. Really looking forward to this cruise.

Mary Ellen

So sad we will miss this cruise, but as things turned out, with the house going on the market in the next week, and our potential move to Williamsburg in Nov, it wouldn't have worked out anyway.

Sure will miss everyone, and hope its a fantastic cruise.

Today, Pat & I had to cancel our Sept 23 Navigator cruise from NYC to Montreal because one of our sweet pooches must have eye surgery and wouldn't be well in time for us to leave her in the care of a housesitter in 3 weeks.

However, our wonderful Ngaire managed to switch us to GONDOLA (since Regent wanted our cabin on Navigator for the oversold NYC cruise).

We are still a bit stunned, as this has all occurred over the last few hours; but we are excited about the Venice to Rome itinerary and enormously looking forward to cruising again with such delightful people.

This is great news, welcome aboard Fred and Pat. Looking forward to sailing with y'all on Gondola.

Here to a quick recovery after your baby has her eye surgery.

Darn......as we had to cancel this and now our house goes on the MLS tomorrow, so we could well be in the moving stage.....so sorry to miss a chance to cruise with you two again, in fact we will miss cruising with everyone on this one, but sometimes the timing just isn't right. Sigh.........wish we could just go on them all. LOL.

Good luck with your pooch, hope she recovers quickly.

Poodle did fine this morning and is now back to her old blind self. Thanks for the good wishes. One of the big happy surprises in booking this trip at the last minute was discovering how many wonderful friends we would be seeing. Then we saw, sadly, that some had to cancel. It's been too long since we've had the pleasure to cruise with you, JoAnn. Pat

We feel the same Pat. Hope you guys have a great time, glad Poodle is doing well. So......sign up for PAGODA, thats our next one, a whole new area of the world for us, really excited.

Pat, so happy that things worked out for you & Fred and Poodle is doing well. Tom & I can relate since our little Daisy had eye surgery requiring us to change plans.

Sounds like a great group on Gondola.

Not that it really matters much; but the poodle's name is Misha, not Poodle. We are not quite so lacking in imagination as to name our dogs their breed names, although that would be easier. I should edit Pat's posts before he hits the Submit button, right?

OK so glad to hear that Misha is doing well.

No Fred, you don't need to edit Pat's posts, we all got it. Or at least I think we did. LOL. Just glad to know all is well.

I thought her name was Magoodle Poodle. The itinerary is fabulous. Wish we had the ports on the same day.- we have some of the Italy ports just a few days behind you on Riviera.

She's only Magoodle Poodle to her dearest friends, Kathy. Of course you and Frank are at the top of her dearest friends list.

A very interesting experience for us. We, indeed, booked late. Just tried to book P7 and S reservations. P7 is fully booked for all ten nights. And very limited options in S. We have no doubt we'll dine once in both alternatives. Several of the excursions we wanted are also not available. Not just wait listed but listed "closed." I'm not posting this to complain. We're just pleased to be on this cruise and will be delighted by whatever comes our way. But it is instructive to see how far in advance everything books up.

The dates are the same as the Barcelona to Venice cruise we took two years ago where Park West had a group on and two nights of Signatures and Prime & booked for their own events. We could not get into P7 or Signatures on my Birthday. I wonder of it is because there is a group.

Pat, I will be really interested in hearing your reports of how often you are able to get into Prime 7 and Signatures; I found on our last cruise I just needed to ask and was able to get in a few extra times. Same question for excursions; with what they are charging us for included excursions, I am interested to hear your experience with getting good excursions.

Marc

Fred and Pat, I am slow catching up to this thread, and happy to know that we will see you onboard again! It has been a long time. Here's hoping your Misha is recovering well.

Cute pin!

So cute he is singing away!

The pin is darling! Good job, Ngaire and all.

I noticed a peculiarity in our itinerary, both as shown on the Regent website and in the final docs that we received a few days ago, regarding Monte Carlo and Portofino.

The itinerary indicates that we will tender at Monte Carlo, but not at Portofino. That seems exactly the reverse of what it should be.

On the official Port of Monaco website, Mariner is listed as docking at La Digue and is the only ship in port that day.

Further, everything I can find regarding Portofino states that all ships must anchor and tender there.

It appears that the little anchor symbols on the Regent itinerary are simply in error.

Has anyone sought clarification of this question from Regent?

Ate at P7 and Sig several times by asking M'D
- but was just ONE sharing. Cruise was MC to Rio last year.

Fred, I am catching up on this thread after being away, and I have not looked at the docs carefully yet, but I'm glad for your heads up on docking versus anchoring. I was hoping we would dock at Monaco and hope your info is correct. It never seemed right to me that we would anchor there. But for Portofino anchoring seems exactly correct. So ... my bet is that you are correct about the switched symbols on the itinerary. Hoping you are correct.

OMG I soooo love this pin and sooooo sad to be missing this trip. Maybe Ngaire will save us one since we were originally booked.

21 more days before we fly out, can't wait.

Okay, 10 days now to lift-off. Anybody to add to the roll call?

We leave on Oct 29, DFW-Heathrow-Venice. I am so very ready to get onboard the Mariner.

Niki and Scott will joining Ngaire's crew on this cruise. 743 I think.

Looking forward to it. Leaving in a week.

We'll have the pleasure of joining you on this cruise too. Our son, Christoph and daughter-law, Charlotte will be comng also. We leave next Sunday. It will be great to see you again, Priscilla! We'll be going through Heathrow too. Tampa-JFK-Heathrow-Venice. Will be a long day!

Barbara, what great news that we will get to see you again! With our long travel days to Venice, we all will be ready to relax on the Mariner.

And Niki and Scott, we look forward to meeting you. This should be a wonderful cruise.

Hey Niki and Scott! We sure thought thought about you guys several times on MARINER as we had some of our NILE 2 group onboard. I know you'll have a great time on GONDOLA!

Kim (& Alice)

Hi Kim,

Enjoyed your pictures and posts. We are going to be stopping at some of the same ports. Would have been fun to see you, Alice, Mike, and Val.

Looking forward to our cruise - just a few days away.

Scott

BON VOYAGE ALL YOU GONDOLIERS. Hope its a wonderful and amazing cruise. We will think about you everyday and wish we were there with you. Ngaire sent us a pin though, so we are honorary Gondoliers.