We both slept a good 12 hours last night so all is well from a sleep standpoint. Sunny and cool this morning in Lisbon. A fairly elegant breakfast buffet was included in our hotel package and we started to meet some fellow passengers. In “it’s a small world” category we entered the elevator with another couple who happened to be born and raised in Indiana, went to Indiana University and currently living in Bloomington, IN.

Breakfast chatter around the table indicated fellow passengers are experienced travelers, many of whom had also signed up for the 2020 cruise that had been canceled. They also are fond of sailing with Regent.

The breakfast buffet did NOT include the famous Portuguese pastry called “pastel de nata”, an egg custard tart topped with cinnamon. These desserts were created by monks before the 18th century. It turns out the monks and  nuns used egg whites to starch religious habit clothing, leaving a lot of unused egg yolks, and so the egg custard was born!  I was first exposed to these marvelous pastries on earlier trips to Portugal and now I will go out of the way to make sure I get one whenever we are in Portugal. After breakfast I went to the front desk to ask if there was a nearby location where I could get my “fix”. I was in luck as there was a pastry/coffee shop about a block from the hotel. Yvonne joined me for the walk and I happily walked back to the hotel with a couple of these tasty tarts to have later as a mid-morning snack.

We are scheduled to leave for the ship at 1:15 PM so I am using the time to work on this blog.

Regent did a nice job of organizing the transfer to our ship. We were given color coded ribbons (to match our bus departure) to tie on our luggage.  When called we pointed out our assembled bags which were promptly loaded on the bus with us. It was about a 20 minute ride to the harbor but a local guide was on the bus who told us what we were seeing along the way. At the pier we answered questions regarding Covid, then proceeded to the ship where we received our room keys. Cruise ships have eliminated the mandatory safely drill but we were asked to go to our assigned “muster stations” to learn where it was. One of the staff was there to check us off the list. Everyone is required to do so. We were then escorted to our rooms where we dropped off our hand luggage before heading to the pool deck where food was still being served to grab a quick snack. By the time we returned to our room our luggage was there and we quickly unpacked and hung clothes in our spacious closet. There were also plenty of drawers to store other clothing items.

By this time it was cocktail hour and we proceeded to the observation lounge where we had agreed to meet the young Indiana couple that we had met earlier. The ship left promptly at 6PM as the sun set over Lisbon. The Indiana couple agreed to have dinner with us and we chose the main dining room, the Compass Rose, for our first meal aboard. Dinner conversation revolved around discussions about our lives in Indiana and beyond. They retired to Bloomington, IN, home of Indiana University but both had been born and spent their adult lives in Indiana.

We attended the 9:30 short evening performance that highlighted some of the entertainment that would be featured during this cruise. After that we were ready for bed as the bodies were still adjusting to the local time zone.

Tomorrow we will be in the southern city of Portimao in the popular Algarve region of Portugal.