We had a great night's sleep last night at the Hilton Union Square hotel. Very quiet room as the mini-suites floor did not have many others on it. I forgot to mention in yesterday's post that ALL restaurants in San Francisco require you to show proof of vaccinations before you can dine. Up and at-em at 7am today. The hotel restaurant is not open yet due to covid but there was a place to get coffee and a couple of ham/egg/cheese sandwiches to take up to our room. Even the lobby bar remains closed. So today we transferred to the Fairmont Hotel as that is the hotel where Regent's world cruise gala cocktail party and dinner was to be held. The Gala was canceled however due to covid. Regent is paying for our hotel stay. At 10:30 I decided we had too much luggage for a taxi to take us up to the Fairmont. That hotel was just 6 blocks away so I decided to pull 2 of the bags those six blocks to the Fairmont. Well, I about killed myself as 4 of those blocks were up a steep hill. I was huffing, puffing, sweating, and hoping I did not have a heart attack. I made it however. When I got back to the Hilton I had to take another shower and change clothes as they were sweat wet. When dropping the two bags at the Fairmont I did go ahead and get checked-in. I told them we were traveling with Marcia Rector so asked we have rooms next to each other. They worked that out and said our rooms were ready. We left the Hilton in a taxi at 11am with the rest of our luggage. The Regent representatives showed up at 1pm so the three of us went down to get check-in with them. Since the gala dinner is canceled we are to go down at between 6 and 7pm to pick up our dinners and a bottle of wine and bring it back to our room to dine. I foresee this to be a big fiasco! Plus cold fish or beef.
Marcia had left her laptop in her old hotel so she and I took a taxi back this afternoon to pick it up. I went along as there is a liquor store across from her hotel. While she went in and got her laptop I went to the liquor store and got some Grey Goose vodka and chardonnay for tonight.
HOLY CRAP----NEWS FLASH
We just got an email from Regent saying our world cruise has basically turned into a 120 night Caribbean cruise. Regent is giving us three options: 1) Go on the whole cruise and they will give us 30% of our cruise fare back. 2) Shorten our cruise after one of the segments and get a pro-rated refund. OR 3) Cancel and get a full refund. I am cutting and pasting the new segments below.
- January 5, 2022: 18-night Panama Canal Voyage, San Francisco to Miami*
- January 23, 2022: 21-night Grand Caribbean Voyage, Roundtrip Miami
- February 13, 2022: 31-night Grand Caribbean Voyage, Roundtrip Miami
- March 16, 2022: 25-night Amazon Voyage, Roundtrip Miami
- April 10, 2022: 25-night Panama Canal Voyage, Miami to San Francisco.
There is going to be a lot of unhappy folks tomorrow when we board Mariner. As for us, we will be doing the full 120 night cruise. We always said we don't care where the ship goes as long as we are on it. Disappointed as we had never been to Japan and was looking forward to that. There will be a next time for it. So you can totally disregard the itinerary I posted at the beginning of this blog. I'll try to post the new one in a few days.
So it is now 9pm and we have been down to get our "gala" dinner box dinners and had a few martinis and vino. We are ready for happy hour!
Our good friend from Toronto, Marcia is next door to us so she came over for HH and dinner.
So plan now is to go down with our luggage at 8:45 tomorrow morning and grab an Uber to the pier. Regent will take us in a bus at 10:45 but we want to get there before all the other WC folks. Regent has planned 4 departure times for the people staying in the hotel and ours was to be the last departure. We will go early!!
Tomorrow will be an interesting day for sure so stay tuned. Of course most of you will already be in bed by the time I post this.
