This was our first glimpse of Argentina from the window of our plane. After 13+ hours on the plane from Atlanta, we were excited to see Buenos Aires.
We arrived on Sunday morning, January 20th. Our schedule didn't work to find a chapel for church so I at least wanted to see the Buenos Aires Temple which I had calculated wasn't too far off from the main highway between the international airport and the central city of BA. A seasoned BA traveler on the plane recommended a car company to us which we saw quickly after finishing with customs and immigration. They located someone with excellent English who could read the addresses we needed. Our driver didn't speak any English, but after being given instructions, he took us straight to the temple which was only about 12-15 minutes from the airport. After a quick stop for pictures, we were on our way to the port.
It is a beautiful temple with about 6 spires. The angle of these photos doesn't show them all. We were thrilled it was so near to our travel route.
We saw glimpses of the outskirts of the city from the car. Many areas reminded me of parts of China with apartment buildings in need of maintenance and paint and laundry hanging out of the balconies and windows. We passed a nice park between the city and the port but these photos don't reflect it well.
Here we are with 2,000 plus of our new best friends, waiting our turn to check in and board the ship. It was our first time to cruise with Celebrity so we have no priority and weren't sure quite what to expect. It went pretty smoothly and in about 90 minutes, we were finding our room and exploring the ship.
We usually don't spend the money to upgrade to the balcony, but they had a special price, and we hoped it would allow us to see parts of Antarctica from the warmth of our own room. We decided on this particular cruise, it was worth the money to upgrade.
In port, this was the view from our balcony. It is definitely a working industrial port city.
Below they are loading supplies on our ship--probably tons of food and water.
We took selfies from our balcony as we passed the cranes and loading docks of the Buenos Aires port. We were surprised that the water was so brown but found out later that it is part of the Silver River which has lots of sediment from Brazil to the north.
Then we began exploring the ship and looking for good places for our walks. This ship, the Eclipse, doesn't have a deck that surrounds the entire ship like we are used to, but we finally figured out some options.
The ship's upper deck actually had green grass in several areas where lawn games were allowed. We had never seen that before.
All of these barges and/or oil tankers could be seen in areas not too far from the port.
The theatre was a beautiful venue. Most seats were very good. We attended shows every night and educational speakers during the daytime.
There were a lot of sea days on this cruise getting to and from Antarctica. They had three specialists who presented seminars to maximize our Antarctic experience. One was a scientist who started traveling there about 50 years ago in his twenties. He had a wealth of information but was a bit dry. We attended several of his seminars and he could be very informative if you could stay focused and not doze off. One young female naturalist was very excited to be coming to Antarctica for the first time and she knew a lot about the animals and birds we might see. However, she got so caught up in her quest to save the planet from global warming that we opted to skip many of her lectures. We couldn't handled the preaching.
Our favorite presenter was a man from Alaska who has been coming to Antarctica for 6 or 7 years. He was delightful, informative and very entertaining. He garnered a devoted following and you usually had to endure the presentation before his in order to get a seat in the theatre. He hosted a sunrise meeting in the big glass enclosed room above the bow of the ship where he would tell you what to see each day and how to maximize your experience. I got up several days before 5 a.m. to meet with his group, the Sunrise Club. He invited people to submit their favorite photographs and then he would put them on a disk to members of the group to share. His name was Mickey Live and he added so much to our cruise experience.
I got up about 3 a.m. on January 21st to watch a total eclipse of the moon. There were a few people on our side of the ship on the upper decks when I arrived. I watched for quite awhile as the serious photographers and star gazers used their fancy equipment to capture the moment. I took tons of photos with my phone but none even came close to capturing the awe of the celestial event. I checked back in the room before the eclipse became total and Steve decided to join me on deck. What a site that blood moon was! Some people call it a wolf moon.
Here's all the zoom and enlarging I was able to do to show some of the eclipse. It was inspiring to witness.
We had three days at sea prior to arriving in our first port. Here is Steve on the balcony at the beginning of the cruise.
As we continued to sail south, the weather got colder.
The evening meal in the main dining room was quite gourmet for us. Here is a liver pate I tried.
We really liked our waiter, Kristian from Croatia. He saved us the same table each night overlooking the beautiful lower dining room where guests had a set time for dining. We liked to eat early and requested Kristian each night. He was very good and it pleased him that we requested him each evening.
They allowed guests to take photos of the shows. The performers were so talented and the costumes almost were over the top.
The seas were sometimes quite rough and we wore our sea bands on those days. Walking wasn't easy but we pretty much kept to our commitment.
Sunsets were gorgeous. The moon rose majestically many evenings.
This is the view of the grand foyer from the glass elevator. The Eclipse is a beautiful ship.
Here is the dessert case at the latte café. Guests were charged for special coffees and desserts. However, we found out that the cookies were free. We sometimes stopped for a macaroon or oatmeal raisin--our favorites.
Below is a picture before or after one of MickeyLive's seminars.
Mickey used maps most every day to show us our itinerary and what to expect along the way.
Here is the ice cream counter. Vanilla, strawberry and chocolate were the staples. The other flavors changed each day. We had a taste of ice cream about once a day.
Sometimes we tasted the cakes too. They were all so beautiful. It's easy to see why we struggled to avoid at least tasting the desserts!
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