THE REGENT SEVEN SEAS EXPLORER IS WONDERFUL

These long travel itineraries generally draw the most readers. Many will not get to Dubai or take a cruise on Regent Seven Seas. Living vicariously provides sufficient satisfaction for some, as they've now been to the top of the Burj Khalifa and visited the largest mall in the world. On the other hand, it's still best to live vicariously through your own life.

After an up and down Dubai stop, which included highlights like the tallest building in the world and low lights like food poisoning, we headed off to the port in seven buses, first passing the Queen Elizabeth II. If you keep up with these things, the city of Long Beach in 1967 bought the Queen Mary, which was converted into a museum, restaurants and hotel. It was closed in 2020 and might never be again re-used. The Queen Elizabeth II entered service in 1969, was retired in 2008, and acquired by Dubai World, which had plans for a 500-room hotel. It was opened to visitors in 2018 as the new QEII Heritage Exhibition and Hotel. Accor of France purchased the ship this year, and plans to have 447 rooms, 9 restaurants and 60,000 square feet of outdoor event space., keeping the ship in Dubai

We boarded the Regent Seven Seas Explorer, and if there is a Heaven, this certainly is one possible scenario. Check-in was flawless, and in consideration of all the visa and vaccination protocols, quick. Started with a champagne greeting and lunch.

Ended meal with Glenmorangie on rocks at 3PM, then wandered to our room to see if it was ready. Only one of five bags was there, but not a concern, for we saw all of them unloaded into our bus. The cabin is something else. King size bed, bathroom with shower and bath, huge walk-in closet with loads of drawer space, a kind of living room with large TV screen and a lanai that was double, if not triple, the size of other cruises ships.

The ship was scheduled to depart at 5PM, so we went up to the observation room and ordered glasses of Glenmorangie, Glenlivet and Glenfiddich to compare them.

The direction of the Explorer shifted, so we went back to our room to see the Dubai skyline fade away.

For our first night on the Explorer we selected the French Chartreuse, probably the best restaurant on the ship.

An excellent meal, where the best dish was a mushroom truffles confit soup, with the entrés being lamb and foie gras/truffes filet. We had finished lunch at 3PM, and began dinner at 6:30, so the full enjoyment was compromised by supersatiation.

Then for breakfast this morning, the usual.

The ship docked in Bahrain just as we finished breakfast. As this stop was only because we couldn't go to Qatar, we were the first Regent to visit the country. A marching band greeted us.

All tours were taken so we will just spend the day on the ship. Dinner tonight is at Prime7, a steakhouse.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for...

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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