Monday September 1, 2025
Hi All! Happy September to everyone and Happy Labor Day to my friends from the USA! Hopefully you have the day off today (or you cheated and retired like me!).
Today we traversed the Kiel Canal in Germany. The Kiel Canal is a 61 mile long fresh water canal that links the North Sea to the Baltic Sea. It was constructed from 1887 to 1895 and widened from 1907 to 1914.
It’s one of the world’s most frequented artificial waterways with an average of 32,000 ships (90 daily) transporting approximately 100 million tons of goods! (And that’s not counting us after last night’s dinner!! Lol).
It’s a lot different than the Panama Canal (which we’ll be traversing this coming January!) in that the Kiel is longer (61 miles vs 51 miles), has fewer locks and does not charge tolls.
We’ve never done a river cruise but this gave us a little taste of it. We saw lots of bucolic farm land, swans swimming along side us, people waving at us, ferry boats crossing from small village to small village and lots of wind turbines! Very cool experience!
In the morning there was an enrichment speaker that discussed the topic of “The Hanseatic League”. The League started in the late 12th century and was a vast mercantile network of traders. It became the most powerful trading bloc in Europe. Visby, Sweden and Lubeck, Germany (where we were yesterday!) became the two main hubs of the League. But the 4 cities that laid down the rules and oversaw were Novgorod, Russia, London, Bruges, and Bergen, Norway. Great speaker and topic!
Around noon we went thru one of the locks and that was neat seeing the water level rise up to meet our ship to allow us to continue meandering down this narrow passageway. It was so peaceful and relaxing!
During the day we had lunch, took in the scenery and then went to the future cruise consultant who presented all the new cruises coming up with Regent. She also discussed the brand new Regent ship called the Prestige that starts sailing Dec 2026. The largest suite on that ship has almost 9,000 square feet at only $25,000 per night! What a steal! Lol.
We also went to listen to the speaker on the topic “Great True Spy Stories”. He talked about several spies but one of them was Ana Belen Montes who spied for Cuba for 16 years. She was a senior intelligence analyst at the US Defense Intelligence Agency. Her motivation was ideological since she opposed the US Policy toward Cuba. She was caught and served 20 years in prison.
Another was Kevin Mallory who was active duty military as well as worked in the CIA and DIA. Our speaker knew him well. In 2017, a Chinese Intelligence officer contacted him and paid him thousands of dollars to spy on the US. But he gets caught sending 3 Top Secret documents to China and is now serving life in prison.
After that we went to afternoon tea. They had all different kinds of cheesecake as well as a cart full of other sweet and savory items along with scones with clotted cream. Felt like the British Royalty and definitely kept the pinky finger up while sipping our “spot o tea”!
We then got cleaned up for the “Block Party”. In every Regent cruise they have a get together where you hang out in the hall and meet your neighbors in all the suites around you (aka your “block”). The Captain, some of his officers and the Cruise Director also go from floor to floor greeting everyone. It’s a fun way to meet the people staying around you and compare notes on everyone’s travels. We met some very nice “neighbors”!
It was a fun filled day! I’ll do another update later tonight. Hope everyone is having a safe and happy Monday!
The Wandering Italian 