THE REGATTA!

COUNTRY COUNT: 45

    I've made it to my new home on the Regatta! We flew overnight to Turkey on a ten hour flight last Monday. We went straight to the hotel because the ship wouldn't arrive until the next day. It was surprisingly a really nice hotel and the view from my window was the harbor. Unfortunately we didn't have anytime to spend wandering around Istanbul so I
didn't get to see too much of it. The second day we were meeting the ship but the cast on board wasn't disembarking until the next day. We arrived at the cruise terminal around 11:30am and found out another ship was pretty much parked in our parking space and didn't plan on leaving until 5pm that evening! The Regatta decided to drop anchor and tender the guests into shore. That's when they send the lifeboats out as shuttles so no one is stuck on board. They didn't begin this process until around 3pm. Meanwhile we had been cleared through security and handed over our passports to the port agent until it was time for us to board. We sat in the cruise terminal for four hours with nothing to do, nothing to eat and nowhere to go. Now, when I say terminal you may be thinking of a nice
airport or bus station but this was just an empty room with some chairs where we got to watch all the guests from the four other ships docked there coming and going. There was a duty free shop inside but if you've ever shopped there you know you need your passport or ID to purchase anything. I was starving for four hours while a Toblerone was staring me in the face the whole time. They finally told us we could jump in a tender heading back to the ship around 3:30pm. We walked outside but we didn't know where to go because all you could see on either side of the dock were giant cruise ships. Where could our tenders
possibly be docking? They pulled up directly underneath the Celebrity Equinox, a MASSIVE ship. We even passed beneath the ropes that kept them tied to the dock!
The Celebrity ship did not like that but we were not about to sit around wasting anymore time. 

  We finally made it to the Regatta and I immediately felt like I had been there before. It is an exact replica of the Nautica. They were built to be sister ships and they are completely identical. So even though I have never been on this ship before, I already know where
everything is! My room is in the same place and it even has the same number. The one big difference is on the Nautica, I had an office. On Regatta the place where my office used to be is a bathroom. I cannot tell you how many times have started walking into that bathroom since I've been on board. The next thing that came over me was the feeling that I had never left. My vacation went by so fast that it seemed like I had just jumped from one ship to the next.

  Now we are on board getting settled into our new (old) home but we are rehearsing our shows everyday. This means we get to watch all the ports go by out the window but we can't actually get off the ship and see anything. I'm hoping in the next couple of days when we aren't tendering anymore I may actually be able to put my feet on the ground again. As soon as I actually go somewhere and see something I promise to tell you all about it!

View from the hotel

Tendering under the Equinox

Tendering under the ropes!

Full moon on the first night!