Thanks, everyone for sharing the 'poop' with all of us! Loving your reports!

Outstanding reports and photos, thanks everyone!

Dena

Could this be them? We can pretend it is ;)

Yes, thanks for the latest scoop of poop. Great pix and sounds "verrryyyy interesting...but not stupid.." (for all former Laugh-in fans)

Just goes to show that LCT people have a groovy time wherever they go! Thanks for taking us along and I love 'Turdly' You all look marvelous!

Here is a shot of it blown up a bit and the sun is shining on her. I am not at all familar with the ship so I have no idea if this is it, lol.

YES, THAT IS THE HANSEATIC ON THE WEB CAM GREAT SPOTTING.

Just about to return to the ship and sending a few final emails. Wanted to let those on the Explorer II know that Ken and I got to go on board today and tour the ship. Regent jumped through hoops to get me onboard today as I was not aware we would be in port together. I thought I had checked but somehow I missed this joint port of call.

The cabins are small as we all knew but the ship does have a nice feel. Not glamous but very english with oriental carpets, two very nice bars, a huge library with 3 computers (email only not internet) and both the dining room and the la verandah are nicely appointed. We ate a quick lunch and it was excellent. They bring on a Regent chef, this time Quinn from the Mariner to be sure the food is as close to Regent standards as they can get. Philipino crew as they are also hired from Vships where Regent gets their staff.

Felt very comfortable on board. The parkas and backpack they give out are great and you get to keep those.

Okay off to the ship will try to send some emails remember to translate a z to a y!!!!

OFF TO PENGUINS AND ICEBERGS

An

Everyone, so glad you're having a wonderful time and thank for taking the time to post.

Ngaire, thanks for the fabulous pictures!!!

Have fun with the penguins and icebergs!!!

Nancy

Thank you for the fabulous reporting. Please keep it coming!!

WOW! This is truly fascinating. Like Maria says, please keep it coming!!!

WOW! Awesome reports and photos - thanks so much for sharing. Enjoy!

This is all so great!! Love the photos!

How do they handle the 'adult beverages' at dinner?? Wine by the bottle, glass, for the table, separate checks, no one imbibes?? I guess there aren't too many ports where you can amble around town and pick up a bottle or two of the local plonk and pay corkage...

Ngaire and Ken, thanks for checking out our 'digs' for ICE next year!

I wonder if the musical entertainment on board is an om-pah-pah band?

That was my first thought too. I thought we were seeing TUSHies on the Minnow.

Great pictures and I'm hanging on every word of seamail...z or y...doesn't matter.

lol. That's the boat for the Americans! Thank goodness they've had TUSH training on the SS Minnow....! :)

Incredible & breathtaking photos, Ken. That bird with purple beak has beautiful markings. Ngaire, you & Peggy look so fabulous in your Antarctic ensembles! And, so great that you got to go on board the Explorer II. It all looks so ....sigh....magical. Can't wait for more emails now enroute to So. Georgia, I believe.

Just got two more SCOOPS of POOP. The first one is from Peggy, I think; the second from Leslie:

Today we tendered in to Stanley, Falkland Islands
with a plan to spend a good part of the day at the Globe Tavern. Unfortunately, we discovered there were three other cruise ships here today--two mega-ships from NCL and HAL and the Regent
chartered ship Explorer II. The place was so
crowded we couldn't even get in some of the
shops or the Tavern so we just came back to the
ship. The one little main street in Stanley
reminded me of being in St. Thomas because
of the shopping crowds but without the good
weather. It was windy, cloudy and in the 40's
here today. We had a great lunch with Brad and
Leslie and wlll spend the afternoon reading--it
could be worse... Tonight we're eating in the
alternate restaurant called Ethno with Fred, Pat
Leslie and Brad. The menu tonight is Falkland
Island cuisine which will be a first for us. I'm
going to try Ptarmigan (a bird) as an appetiser
and then go for the Rack of Lamb with Eggplant
as the entree. Dessert is Whiskey Trifle. Sounds
like fun to me. Tomorrow is a sea day so we'll
probably have some more great lectures.


i'm glad Ken was able to post pictures - they must have found an interet cafe here in Stanley - the USB port on the reception terminal wouldn't read his disk. it is frustrating to not be able to read everyone's comments - also, I'm betting Fred has sent some funny comments to Karen to post about the 'cultural divide'. This morning at
breakfast he was talking about doing an installment on the battle of the boot room. You
gotta see it to believe it....let us know if anyone has any questions and we'll try to answer them.

And another from Fred.

Hi, Karen - I have a few minutes before the evening briefing; so I will add another short message about birds, etc. By the way, since we cannot read the LCT boards, if someone has any special question about the trip, they can send a message directly to any of us who are posting or you could forward the messages to us. Here is the latest little installment in our saga:


Tuesday, Jan. 23, at sea enroute to South Georgia -

In my earlier installments, I talked about the wonderful wildlife on New Island. I forgot to mention that there were lots of albatross babies, which are all fuzzy white and nearly as adorable as the penguin babies, although much bigger than the little penguins.

On our hike in the afternoon across Carcass Island, we saw, in addition to the Magellanic penguins, a lot of geese and ducks. Finally, we saw several huge birds devouring some recently deceased critter. I think that they were giant vultures (or maybe personal injury lawyers - it's easy to get those two species confused).

Now, on to South Georgia and the King penguins...

If anyone has any particular question or comment, they can send me an email directly. My email address on the ship is: 468847@vip.ms-hanseatic.com .

Think good thoughts about penguins. Cheers, Fred

Oh my gosh that comment had me laughing out loud it was so funny!!! :app:

To all sending us Poop Scoop it is just wonderful - thanks much and keep it up!!!

We definitely need a picture of the Battle of the Boot Room!

With Fred's humor, they can win any battle! ....

And I'm missing this!!! <img border="0" alt="[bang]" title="" src="graemlins/banghead.gif" />

We're getting quite a pile of poop here...keep it coming...let's fill a room with it.

I'm with Betty - pics of the Battle of the Boot Room!!

This is not sounding like a cruise I would want to be on - but the Seamail is priceless. Enjoying every word and photo.

This may be the stampede to the Boot Room.....

Beth: VERY GOOD!!!!!

I now wish we had done this trip this year. Sounds wonderful. Thanks for keeping us informed.

LOVE it all! but Fred ALWAYS makes me LOL! re: "personal injury lawyers etc!!" Someday, I would love to meet him, but I'm sure I'd be "tongue-tied" from sheer intimidation!

MORE reports always appreciated!

.
No you wouldn't - you'd be totally smitten like the rest of us are. We adore Fred (and Pat too)

Only a lawyer is allowed to make lawyer jokes like that. :D Love the seamail! Karen & Denise - send everybody there our regards and how much we appreciate their posts!

Masaki

Kathy us Georgia girls think alike (about being tongue-tied when meeting Fred)! :rolleyes: ;)
I dropped him a short email yesterday to say thanks to everyone for all the great Sea Mail and was blushing as I hit the Send button! :)

It is wonderful reading all the Poop Scoop! This is making us eagerly anticipate our "ICE" expedition next year.

Cheers, Pam

Karen-Are you going to bring any of the boots home with you to add to your collection? Thatnks for all the "straight poop!"

OH????????

This is from Fred regarding my question about 'adult beverages' and 'nightlife'...

Hi, Suzanne -

Here are the answers to your questions. You can cut and paste them to post if you want to do so.

The booze is handled very easily. In our group, we simply all agreed that we would order and pay for our own beverages at meals. Thus, Pat & I order our bottle of wine at dinner and share it. It is not expected that we will share it will our tablemates, who usually order their own wine by the glass or bottle. This way, no one is uncomfortable.

The "nightlife" is modest. After dinner, there are usually a few people in the Observation Lounge for an after-dinner drink. There is a piano player in that lounge. That's about it. This is not in any sense a party boat.

Oops, just noticed that in today's daily program,
they list both "Dance music with the
Odessey Band in the Explorer Lounge" and "After
dinner piano music with Michael Banasik in the
Observation Lounge" So there are two party
venues!!

Cheers, Fred

And another message from Fred:

This crazy email system:

A couple of people have tried to send me a copy of
the whole thread, either as an attachment or as a
cut and paste into a message. Neither worked.
We are finding that this system, which sends and
receives messages in batches via the Iridium
satellite system, does not handle large emails or
emails with attachments. The long messages
simply shut down my system until I can manage to
delete them without opening them.

Therefore, unless one of the POOPers discovers
a way to send or receive large emails, it would
be safer to keep messages relatively short, a few
paragraphs of text only. Leslie discovered, to her
enormous frustration (hmm, how do you say
"§#*%" in German??) that if one is typing a new
outgoing message and it gets too long, it simply
disappears! Cheers, Fred

Here's the latest from Leslie -

january 24 - sea day
We have beautiful weather and calm seas as we
are sailing towards South Georgia. The temps are
in the 40's and the sun is shining. imagine Peggy's surprse when she went out on deck and every deck chair by the pool was filled with Germans sunning in their red parkas! So even in the Southern Ocean close to the Antarctic
Convergence it apepars to be necessary to stake
out your deck chair in the morgan!

Toay we had 2 lectures - this morning was on
seabirds and this afternoon on South Georgia,
which looks to be teeming with birds, penguins,
fur and elephant seals, Our lecturer regaled us
with how awful the weather usually is so we
are hopeful the current weather trend prevails. In fact, calm seas and sunshine where we are right now was decribed as a once in 10 year
phenomenon in their sailing experience.

The rest of the day has been taken up with
napping, playing cards and eating. There was an
incredible seafood buffet lunch today - all you can eat crab legs, marinated mussels, oysters on the half shell from the Falkland Islands, and many other tempting delicacies, accompanied by
complementary aquavit. We are teaching the LCT
gang to play 'pooch'. There aren't really any
organized activities onboard except for the
lectures, but I do believe there was 'gymnastics'
in the Explorer Lounge this morning. Achtung!

Last night Brad & I enoyed the 'ethno' restaurant
with Fred & Pat and Peggy & Jerry, which was
cuisine of the Falkland Islands. There were 13
items on the menu - you are served all of them in
a tasting menu. My favorites were the peanut
soup, green mussels, snow crab with aioli and
rack of lamb. The least favorite for all was the
'Earl Gray shake', an apperitif glass filled with a concoction of tea, thickened honey and lemon.

I am loving these posts, thank you all! And for our "interpreters"! This is great.

Aquavit!? Can certainly be deadly, especially when complimentary! The peanut soup, mussels, snow crab, rack of lamb.....just sound so yummy!

Those Germans elbowing for the boots and red-parka'd chair hogging...doesn't sit well with me. Grrrrrr... Stake your claim, oh POOPers!

Leslie....I'm surprised the Germans were wearing their parkas! You know they usually sunbath au natural! ;)

The tales from the Poopers continue to fascinate those of us on dry land. I empathize with you about the Germans. We were in Majorca for a much needed sun break a few years ago and found the pool chairs were taken very early in the am by the German guests. I finally decided we would bring books and towels when we went down to breakfast although we did not enjoy doing that. My husband enjoyed the other part of the experience: all the topless German women!

Cheers, Pam