Tom and Noel Cruise Aboard The New Seven Seas Explorer: Venice, Italy April 18 & 19, 2017

We were in Venice overnight and on the second day was the change over to a new cruise segment.

Our first day we had a tour to Murano Island and Burano Island. It was about a one hour boat ride to our first stop. We boarded the "water bus" directly from our ship which was nice. The weather was cold, windy and rainy so not a good day for pictures as the boat windows got very dirty. We visited one of the more famous glass factories and had a glass blowing demonstration as well as time to browse in their showroom (of course!). We then boarded our boat to go to Burano Island which is know for its lace making. We toured a small lace museum and had a lace making demonstration. We then had ninety minutes of free time so we decided to have lunch as it was too cold to spend much time outdoors. We ate pizza of course! We arrived back at our ship about 2:30 with plenty of time to get ready for afternoon trivia. We finished second again.

The second day was the start of a new segment with a turnover of about 700 passengers. It seems to be a much younger crowd than we normally have on Regent ships. We had to change rooms as we booked this segment separately from the first two, so we had to pack up most of our stuff so our stewardess could move our things. The ship arranged a half day tour for the passengers that were continuing on as they like to get us out of the way! We started with a ride in a small water taxi, it was very difficult for some people as you had to go down a couple of steps onto a bouncing boat and then duck down into a small cabin. We made it just fine but a couple of people really struggled. We went through some small canals and then arrived at the Guggenheim Art Museum. One of our tour guides had worked at the museum so she gave us a wonderful short tour and was able to explain some of the paintings extremely well. The museum was quite crowded, especially with school groups so we could not see all of it. After the museum we took a "traghetto" (sort of a large gondola) to cross the canal so we could walk to St Marks Square. We only had about ten minutes there as we had water taxis booked to take us back to the ship. We arrived back at the cruise terminal about 1:30 and had to wait in a long line for security as the new passengers were checking in. We waited in line about a half hour and when we got to where they look at your passport and ship card we had a very stern lady who did not want to let us on board as our ship cards ended on that date. We tried to explain that we were changing rooms and could not get our new cards until we were back on the ship. She did not want to hear our explanation or look at our documents and kept calling other officers over and showing them our cards and passports. One of them told us to go sit down on a bench and Tom said we were not going to sit down and asked them to get someone from Regent to come over (they were in the terminal checking in the new passengers). By this time we were holding up the whole line! They finally let us on after about 15 minutes. The funny thing was that at least four other people on our tour were also changing rooms and had "old cards", all of them went right through.

We had planned a nice dinner in the specialty restaurant "Chartreuse" with our trivia team, but Bob was not feeling well with a chest cold so it was just five of us. We were tired so we did not go to the show and were in bed by 10.