Thursday, September 29th - Venice, New York, Atlanta
We put our bags outside our suite at 11pm last night as instructed and Gael left a wake-up call for 7am. We're supposed to be in any of the public areas of the ship at 8:45a to hear our luggage group called for disembarkation.
We waited with Bill & Phyllis and our number was called right on time. We left the ship, picked up our three rollers on the pier and pulled them 100 yards or so to a waiting bus to take us to the Marco Polo Airport. It was about a thirty minute drive through the industrial side of Venice.
This put us at the airport at 9:30a, almost four hours before our flight. The Delta check-in lines didn't open until 10:05a so we sorta stood around until then. The check-in was very inefficient with people and carry-ons mobbed up around the five people working. Four were working non-Priority and only one working Priority (us). SWMBO was not pleased. But we got through it and then, shed of our three bags, we spent the next couple of hours in the Alitalia Sky Lounge with the Giffords (they are on our flight to JFK with then a relatively short connection to San Diego).
Boarding was crisp; I was disappointed that the airframe was a 767-300 instead of the expected 777, but it was comfortable enough. Both of us got some sleep on the nine-hour flight to JFK. And that's when the trouble started.
We landed with nary a bump and taxied to a remote area. They use "People Movers" to get you from the aircraft to the Passport Control/Customs area. The People Mover looks like an airplane without wings. It holds about 100 people and goes up and down to match the aircraft loading door. A major thunderstorm came up while we were deplaning. The PM driver would drive three feet, jerk to a stop, three more feet, jerk to a stop and so forth. We're sitting sideways and the motion (and relative heat) was nausea-inducing for SWMBO. I quickly cleared one of the pockets of my briefcase for her to use (just in case) but it wasn't necessary after all. But things quickly got worse..
We "de-bussed" to the waiting area for immigration control. This room is about 200' long and 20' feet wide with a 7' ceiling. It was very much like a tunnel (dimly lighted) and there were more than 1,000 people jammed into it. The A/C was clearly not capable of cooling that many people in that small a space. And some smelled better than others.
We stood, jammed together, for what seemed like hours but was only about 30 minutes as a functionary let people through in groups of 25; first non-US passports, then US passports, then non-US, etc. This "holding pen" was because of lack of room in the "real" immigration control area. When we finally were permitted to enter this welcoming sanctum, we became part of a 500 person (or so) rope queue (like waiting for a ride at Disney World; but not as much fun  ). The queue was ten levels deep, each about 100' long. There were four (count 'em: "four") agents working the twelve possible booths. I guess all these people arriving were a surprise. All in all, from the time we exited the plane until we exited customs baggage control it was 55 minutes of being herded like cattle with temps in the low 90s. No fun. We won't return to the US via JFK again; Gael not pleased.
We had about an hour to spare to catch our flight but Bill and Phyllis had much less. Once through Immigration/Customs everyone, of course, had to negotiate security. There was a single TSA worker there who largely ignored pleas for "we only have 10 minutes to make our flight" from those who either had a short connection or pretended to. Folks let Bill and Phyllis and few more move to the front of the line; some weren't happy about it. And then we watched Phyllis get hassled by the TSA dude operating the metal detector. She wore, as we've seen others do, clear plastic booties to avoid walking barefoot on the filthy floor. He refused to let her go through the machine with the booties on, and when she turned back to remove them, 3-5 people went through ahead of her, several having to make more than one trip (tick-tock). When last we saw them, they were hot-footing it to their gate; hope they made it!
We got through and spent the remaining hour before our connection in the Delta Sky Club. The airframe was a 737 to Atlanta but it's only a two-hour flight.
Friend Winston picked us up outside baggage claim and we were home in bed by 11p (not all of us, just Gael and me :). All in all, 22 hours of traveling today. I'm so glad the worst part was at the end; it took little away from the great overall enjoyment of our journey.
Epilogue:
We had a wonderful ten days touring the Greek isles. Of course, a tour like this gives one only a "tasting menu" of the ports of call, but it helps to define where you'd like to return some day.
We could not be happier with the Regent Seven Seas ship and on-board personnel. Whoever designed their training program is doing an excellent job. We really love the "all-inclusive" costing methodology. Gael will definitely sail with Regent again; I think I'm through with cruise ships.
The ground personnel (wearing Regent Seven Seas badges) were not nearly in the same league as the shipboard people, especially the ones at the Hotel in Athens. That experience set the wrong mood for the efficient image of Regent Seven Seas.
And then there was missing our first port of call, Delos. The ship had seventeen days for a refurbishing program and came up four hours short; four hours, not four days. You'd think they could have seen a four-hour delay coming sometime during the seventeen days and, I don't know, picked up the strokes a bit? This resulted in a sailing delay that forced the bypass of Delos. Regent's CEO will be receiving a letter; I'm hoping for a refund of part of the substantial cruise fee.
Thank you all for following along and for your kind comments. I used 3,303 online minutes on the ship; if I were paying for them it would have been more than $800. It turns out that, at our level with Regent, online wi-fi was complimentary. Whew!
I'll update this section as more news comes in to help close it all out.
Click  for yesterday ..
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