Tuesday Aug 26, 2025
Hi All! Yes, the Wandering Italian and his co-pilot Kathy are off on another adventure! Yep, you read the title right. We will traverse thru 8 countries (Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal) for 18 days! We’ll visit some of our old favorites like Copenhagen, Lisbon and Bruges but will also visit over 10 new cities we’ve never been to before so that’s very exciting. And we’ll get to cruise thru the Kiel canal in Germany which is actually longer than the Panama Canal!
But one of the main reasons we chose this journey is sort of bittersweet. As you all know we love Regent Seven Seas cruise line (our favorite of them all) and the ship we’ll be on, the Navigator, is our favorite of their fleet. It was also the first Regent ship we sailed on so it’s a bit nostalgic for us. The bittersweet part is Regent is selling the ship and her last journey is in 2026 so this will most likely be our last journey on her (crying emoji!).
The good news for her is she will still sail the high seas but starting next year as a residence cruise ship. Yep, people will buy cabins and live on her year round. Heck, if the starting price wasn’t over a million dollars we’d consider it! Lol.
As you can see from the attached itinerary, we start in Oslo, Norway and work our way thru Northern Europe around to Barcelona, Spain. We’re hoping the very high temperatures (over 120 degrees in Spain!) as well as some of the wildfires due to the heat all subside before we get to that part of the itinerary. It’s 67 and sunny in Oslo today which is perfect!
So we flew out on Monday Aug 25th and had a VERY long (24 hour!) travel day stopping in London then Helsinki, Finland then finally to Oslo, Norway. As you know if you’ve followed along, we sometimes fly standby since Kathy works for American Airlines. We decided to fly standby to London but then used miles from London to Oslo.
They originally had 7 Business Class seats and 4 Premium Economy seats available a few days before our flight but when we got to the airport, there was only one Premium Economy seat left! So, me being the selfless gentleman that I am, I let Kathy take it and I got a Main Cabin extra seat. (I guess since she works for the airline and gets us all these free tickets, I shoulda done that, right? Lol.).
The good news is we had Business Class Seats on the last two flight segments and we also got to go to all the swanky airport lounges. The Finnair Platinum lounge in Helsinki was really impressive. They had made to order elk burgers! I wanted to try one but we didn’t have time. The other good news was that after that long day of travel, fortunately our hotel was right inside the airport so no Ubers or taxis! YAY!
We’ll board the ship on Wednesday Aug 27th. We can’t wait to board to see if some of our old favorite crew are there. (We were on her for 24 days last Fall). It’s always fun to reconnect with the crew you know!
We’re now 6 hours ahead of East coast time so I hope you all had a great Monday and that your Tuesday is starting off well! I’ll do another update after we board the ship tomorrow.
The Wandering Italian 