It is now early morning ,May 5, in Paris. We did arrive on time. We had about a 90 minute wait between flights but it went quickly as we had to transfer terminals and go through security and passport control as part of the process. Luckily there were no lines anywhere so the process went smoothly and quickly. The flight to Nice was 1 hour, 10 minutes and went smoothly.

In Nice we had our first pleasant surprise. I had expected to have a Regent representative there, which there were, two in fact. The pleasant young ladies quickly gathered us up, along with another couple from Atlanta who were on the same plane, and shepherded us to baggage claim and a porter gathered up our bags and prepared us for our transfer. Normally my experience has been that tour companies gather up many people arriving on multiple flights and board them collectively onto a bus for transfer, resulting in lots of waiting around for others to arrive. Regent does not do that. The young lady personally walked us out to a waiting high end Mercedes sedan/driver who would be taking us to our hotel! Needless to say we were impressed. Transfer time was about 40 minutes.

Because of our room selection for this cruise we receive a free pre-cruise hotel stay as part of the price.  We normally come a day early anyway when traveling internationally so this worked out well. Regent uses the upscale Fairmont- Monte Carlo hotel so we expected nice accommodations.

We arrived around noon giving rise to the next potential “early arrival” problem one often encounters when traveling- your room is not ready and you must figure out how and where you can hang out for 1-3 hours waiting for it! Fingers crossed, I started the check-in process with a smile and the friendliest “Bon Jour” I could muster. I filled out the paperwork and was about to ask if perhaps our room might be available when the clerk said “your room is available”  Alleluia! I had heard that Regent was a big customer of theirs so maybe that worked in our favor. Our day was complete!

A three hour nap, followed by a rejuvenating shower and a light meal in the hotel lounge completed our day. Our travel colleagues got caught up with canceled flights and will not be arriving until later this evening.