One of the great things about the area where we live is the proximity to the Potomac River and everything it brings. The Potomac of course is split here – the lower tidal Potomac begins at Little Falls situated between north Arlington and the Palisades neighborhood above Georgetown in DC whereas piedmont Potomac ends there, heading towards the sea. Mason Neck State Park along with associated national wildlife refuge and other protected areas is a great way to explore tidal Potomac. It’s also less than an hour (could be 30 minutes, could be 55 minutes) from my house.
I’ve been here several times over the course of the past two or three decades. There’s one spot that’s great for “beach walking,” although the beach runs out after a few minutes fairly quickly. This stretch actually faces the bay towards Occoquan; one assumes one is facing Maryland but one is actually facing back towards Virginia!
In a few spots there are duck blinds on the bay. I’m not certain if they allow hunting here – presumably yes, but likely more on the other side in the wildlife refuge. The above photo is about half a dozen years old.
When tide comes in it can be a bit tricky.
Also from years past. Towards the end of Mason Neck there is a large amount of wetland. Closer in it is more wooded. In the past when I have been here there have been osprey along the water in the more wooded space. This time, out towards the wetlands.
In the past I had many photos of osprey and bald eagles in the distance. This time, thanks to the wonders of Apple’s latest technology, they were closer up.
Anyway, Mason Neck is situated such that there are a handful of relatively lengthy trails – a mile out, and a mile back – towards the end of the peninsula complimented by a border set of lengthy or lengthier trails that go into the woodlands towards the more inland bay. Usually when I head to Mason Neck I spend maybe an hour or two wandering towards the end of the peninsula along the wetlands and then I head for more mileage inland. There are enough trails to cover and not get bored for 3 or 4 hours of wandering at a decent pace if you cover every single one and I think alone I have done this and covered six or eight miles. This time I was there and stayed out along the end of the peninsula – further from the highway from the main park – and covered eight miles without heading towards the more inland woods. And I was at the park from about 11am to 3:30pm, including an hour sitting and snacking on cheese, French bread, and charcuterie.
I saw a ton of turtles of various sizes including these as well as smaller examples down to about an inch or two in length.
Off in the distance there was a rather large Great Blue Heron.
I wandered out into an open meadow area from one of the observation blinds. As the wildlife refuge has accumulated land some of the farmland is being allowed to slowly fall back into a wetland state. This more open property has a greater variety of wildlife than the state park itself.
Including this black snake. I took a photo of another that was perhaps six feet long. This one was about four feet.
This massive wasp nest was hanging in a tree off across the field.
Oh, large snails.
Past photo of one of these from long ago.
This photo is also from long ago. Here is a stretch near the visitor center where there are platforms for osprey to rest such as the post in the water on the left here. The platform was still there but there were not as many osprey around – they were further behind me, perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes walk. Through the woods on the right there are trails that lead to the end of the bay here that take about thirty minutes out and thirty minutes back and this is where in the past I have seen bald eagles nesting.
This time I came down to this point late in my stay and eventually needed to go home, so instead I walked straight into the woods a hundred yards to a viewing platform where I met a couple who were sitting on a bench having a picnic. The man asked me if I saw what looked like a school of fish in the distance, maybe 1,000 feet or further out.
I haven’t managed to upload a video of what I saw, but here is a screen capture.
Taken at near-full zoom on my iPhone. It was a flock of cormorants!
I stayed to chat with the couple a bit. They were enjoying smoked salmon from Wegmans with dill on brown bread and offered me some. They do say don’t take food from people you’ve just met, but it was good and I survived.
A great way to get a lot of steps in on a Saturday.
Next time, ask me about my picnic packing trips for hiking.
For the remainder of March, and early April thus far, adventures have been limited. Work has been somewhat exhausting with a lot of new priorities and some leadership change. End result, I have not had the opportunity to take Saturdays to head to the mountains for hiking. However, this past week there were a couple of day trips. My older child is headed to college in another year and a half and has started doing college tours.
Our first visit was to University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.
Fredericksburg is about 60 miles from home but at least to the old town portion it is definitely a world away – and sometimes it’s a journey getting there. I drove down with my older child and her mother (my ex-wife) after a pretty stressful morning at work. We left at 11am, and spring break traffic was in full bloom. So, I had this shell shocked look on my face. I think we made it about 35 miles at home when I decided we would be better off to stop for lunch at Waffle House and continue the journey after, a fortuitous decision as the southbound express lanes opened as we were dining! The 60 miles took two hours.
Mary Washington is a mix between old and new. Originally it started as a normal school – a school to train teachers – for women until 1972 when it was granted coeducational status shortly on the heels of University of Virginia (until then, all boys) receiving the same status in 1970. UMW was renamed as a university in 2004 when they began to offer a much wider range of degrees beyond teaching and standard liberal arts fare; it’s hard to believe that when I first moved here 30 years ago it was still known as a “good place to learn how to be a teacher.” There are still a number of buildings over 100 years old on campus; many of them have been modernized, some are still traditional as you can see above.
Many of the older classrooms still have chalkboards – something which if you’re my kid you have not seen in a classroom ever!
I’m the same hand the science building is brand new with all modern trappings and a ton of programs of study.
There is even temporary math nerd graffiti on windows and glass partitions.
UMW met all the checkmarks for our visit – and it had the nicest dormitory kitsches I have ever seen. The student population seems to reflect the same type of attitude as my offspring – a bit artistic and creative and not too much standard social flair and Greek life. They enjoyed the school because the outdoor spaces were quiet and it was not as chaotic as our 2400 student high school on a city campus.
After the tour we went off campus to enjoy a meal at a pizzeria. I haven’t spent any real time in Fredericksburg in a couple of decades and it has really modernized while maintaining the typical Virginia old town feel in town. There is a lot going on. Unfortunately I think a lot of it is to serve the upper middle class sprawl that is growing in the area. Translation – there is not much for college students to explore off campus.
Our next adventure took us south to Richmond on Friday.
This time I was provided with chauffeur service. My kids’ mother had driven down to Richmond the day before in an effort to get away overnight and do some bonding with both kids, so The Boss and I drove down Friday morning with the plan for The Boss to take my younger to an escape room while my older, my ex, and I tour Virginia Commonwealth University. Unlike Wednesday there was no traffic heading south. We left at 6:40 and by 7:30 we were in Fredericksburg. With a tour appointment for 10:00 we decided to stop for a leisurely breakfast. First Watch didn’t disappoint, but we were served and well fed by 8am and soon on our way to Richmond. The 90 mile drive took an hour and forty-five minutes – Wednesday’s 55 mile drive took two hours on the same highway!
Northbound wasn’t as lucky with a multi-car accident and a delay.
VCU started off their tour with the same type of marketing presentation and Q&A session as UMW, but here they presented a ton more material. It is literally ten times the size of UMW. VCU is of a similar age and similar type of history – originally it was the medical school for Hampden Sydney College from the 1830s eventually becoming a more professionally-oriented school in 1968 due to an act on the behalf of the Virginia General Assembly, and it has largely grown from there. Medical, Dental, Nursing, Pharmacy, and similar programs are on one campus; other programs are on the other campus (I would call it “the main campus,” the Monroe Park campus). VCU wraps Monroe Park on one side spilling out into the city and the fan district on the west.
VCU is set up differently than the college I attended. The classroom buildings are often largely classroom buildings – professor offices and so forth are often in the old brick row houses next to them. They only briefly took us through an academic building and as it is on a campus in the middle of the city it didn’t seem as welcoming to go wandering through without a purpose.
Like I said, it spills through the city a bit, but much of what you see above is actually university.
Several streets through the core are blocked off to vehicular traffic to create something called the “Ramsway” reflecting the Ram as the school’s mascot. The admissions counselor also explained that she was contractually obligated to use the term “Ramily” in describing the student body, faculty, and staff of the unversity. Kids kept groaning when I used this term over and over.
VCU prides itself on the variety of its student body and the variety of experiences available. If I had to compare UMW and VCU, I would say UMW is upper middle class diverse whereas VCU is truly diverse, as in state of Virginia diverse.
My older enjoyed spending time sitting under trees in Monroe Park waiting for The Boss and my younger to return. When I asked what they thought of VCU I was surprised to hear that they really liked it. It isn’t as “non-chaotic” as UMW but they also said they liked it because there was much more to do and it was much, much easier to get off campus to see things and do things. In my mind it also sees as if it has more things for college kids to do around the area – more cheap and free activities for instance.
None of this should really surprise me as my offspring haven’t exactly sat still for their lives. They go out and explore just as much as we do and we live in a walkable urban neighborhood with a lot to look at and a lot going on.
We eventually left The Offspring with their mother. They had the opportunity to try out the dining hall with three lunch passes. We took the opportunity to visit Jamaica House Restaurant for lunch and then stop for a cortado before heading back.
I enjoyed mine while strolling through the city.
As we were walking towards the parking garage I heard running behind us. It turned out to be The Offspring returning from lunch. My older decided she wanted some quiet time and to stop answering her mother’s questions so she joined us for the THREE HOUR drive home.
You gotta love a 12 lane interstate with six lanes stopped.
It was good to get out of town two days in one week. Would I have enjoyed taking two full days rather than shorter days? Maybe. But not with my ex-wife involved.
I spent most of last week in Las Vegas – all expenses paid. Well, most. I did spend a fair amount of gambling money. Was it worth it? It was fun.
I’ve been to Las Vegas seven times if you include the time (pictured above) I spent about 40 minutes there due to a canceled flight and a four hop flight across the United States on Southwest Airlines. Once for a wedding, once for a meeting, another time for a conference, twice with my ex-wife (once with friends from home and once with friends from the UK), and now a final time for another conference. The other six visits were more than 20 years ago. I’ve stayed in old Las Vegas (downtown, on Fremont Street), at Caesar’s (1980’s Las Vegas), off the strip at a generic hotel, and twice at the Luxor. This time I stayed at Mandalay Bay.
The Luxor is one of the first things you see when you land and leave the airport in Las Vegas. When it was brand new it was clean and shiny. Now it’s kind of dusty, but strangely inside it is clean and new, or at least new-ish. I spent a fair amount of time here as I was staying next door at Mandalay Bay and I felt it better to not be gambling in front of my colleagues.
This is a view of where I stayed – Mandalay Bay. I was actually here for a conference. Mandalay Bay has a fairly large conference center attached which is about 15 minutes walk (I should know, I did this walk about five times a day for five days) from the hotel tower.
I also did a fair amount of walking and running while in Vegas. I averaged about 16,000 steps a day last week including the weekends.
My view from the hotel included part of the airport and the Las Vegas Strip heading south. To the right, barely off camera, is this:
Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada! Found on my morning run. Some people told me I would not enjoy running in Las Vegas as there are homeless people around, but on my inspection there was less hassle than running at home especially running south in this direction. I took the photo above just at sunrise on my first morning in Vegas. Two days later I ran to the north.
Heading north from Mandalay Bay two miles takes you to Caesar’s Palace, past Paris and The Bellagio and much of that madness. Compared to 25 years ago development is much more dense on the central part of the strip. The area around Excalibur, The Luxor, and Mandalay Bay feels to be practically abandoned in comparison.
There have always been wide pedestrian walkways along Las Vegas Boulevard but now there is street level development in front of most of the hotels where in the past there were open areas. This doesn’t mean you can pull over on the street – the street in most places has a barrier between it and the walkway. You walk perhaps half a mile between major intersections and for most of them you take an escalator to cross above street level. In the old days they still had many of these escalators but now there seem to be double as many and you simply cannot get to the street if you desire to cross at street level instead. This appears to be done for the purpose of reducing traffic queues. It also helps you, if you’re up at 7a.m., get extra fitness in by running up and down the stairs in addition to running on the street.
The ironic thing is the night before – about six hours before actually – I walked 40 minutes from the Bellagio to Mandalay Bay but then decided I needed to head out for more exercise!
The Bellagio fountains, as seen in Ocean’s Eleven, were beautiful as always.
Beautifully lit up at night.
Walking past the Luxor we thought we saw bats.
On closer inspection we did!
Or maybe they were giant pieces of confetti? We have videos so I’m certain they are bats.
We had some social time while in Vegas in addition to the conference. We actually had been at The Bellagio to see Cirque du Soleil’s “O” show.
The theater at The Bellagio is massive and deep as well. The stage itself opens up to a large pool where the acrobats and dancers continually launch themselves over the course of the 100 minutes show. There are trapezes, huge swings, a boat which floats in the water, and water platforms.
In addition to this, on the last night of the conference the sponsors hired The Goo Goo Dolls to put on a performance!
The Goo Goo Dolls put on an amazing show.
So, about the travels.
I flew out Monday morning at 7am to make the most of my week. This means I woke up at 4:15am. I had lounge access at Reagan National Airport – a choice of two lounges really but I visited the same Centurion lounge we visited back on January 6 for Antarctica. I had used points to upgrade my employer-paid flight to domestic first class so I would arrive fairly fresh – and this worked as I had a full meal, good movies, and a relatively comfortable flight. My baggage did indeed come out first but it didn’t come out until maybe 45 minutes after I landed.
I checked into the hotel at 10am as they had a room ready for me and I was able to unpack and do some conference calls. This reminds me – I have to expense the early check-in (yes, there was a charge).
I had what I think is called a “Dream Room” at Mandalay Bay – more than comfortable enough for two people to spend several days but I was alone.
I did not get a chance to use the large soaking tub. I wouldn’t have skipped it if it had a whirlpool!
Then I had some free time before my co-workers and business partners all showed up so I took a lengthy walk. I planned this in advance because I figured I’d be juggling conference, free time, and my day job and fitness all week.
My walk that day took me as far as Aria. As this is an MGM hotel (along with MGM Grand, The Luxor, and Mandalay Bay, and a handful of others) I went inside and played blackjack poorly for a while. I would have loved to explore the property more but at that point I needed to head back.
At this point my schedule for the next few days started to be dominated by work. Some of the work was fun – we had a few good meals with our sponsor for instance, one being Mexican and one being sushi, and we had an excellent happy hour where we had three shot bourbon pours! Half of my daytime hours were spent working with my team back home, though. And Thursday before the concert? I took a family therapy call with my 9th grader via Zoom on the lawn outside the conference center!
All in all it was a nice break even though half my hours were work. On the way home, again, I was upgraded, and this time I tried out the Priority Plus lounge at the airport. So far I prefer American Airlines’ Admirals Club lounges the most, but I don’t have access to them except when traveling internationally AND upgraded.
I had the opportunity to look for lounges at St. Louis as well when our flight diverted due to an air traffic control outage.
I also had the opportunity to try out Bandana’s Barbeque when we spent the night in St. Louis. For the record there are better hotels than the Airport Marriott in St. Louis.
I’m happy to be back home where the dog is though. It will be good to be home for a couple of months now.
On the first weekend of March I officially kicked off my spring hiking season. It was exceptionally warm, and whereas I spent February acting as a hermit, as I normally do in January, I felt it was time to start getting outdoors again and leave the city. The problem is everybody else thought it was a great day to get out as well and Harper’s Ferry is one of the closest “outdoor places” to the DC Metro area.
Usually when I head out of town for a day to go hiking I start thinking about it on Tuesday and Wednesday. I try and figure out how much energy I will have on the weekend and how early I want to get up. Saturday is a better day to rise early and head out of town than Sunday not because the morning is easier (it’s actually easier on Sunday), but more because the return drive is easier. And that was the case.
I chose Harper’s Ferry because I did not want to make a full, long day of it. And because there are a handful of hiking opportunities where I do not have to plan ahead. The most popular hike from Harper’s Ferry is Maryland Heights – a hike I have never done as it’s steep and crowded but not long so it doesn’t seem as if it would be satisfying other than the view.
Amother popular hike is to walk across the trestle, shown above, as if you’re going to climb up the rocks to Maryland Heights and instead walk a mile or two down the C&O trail to the southeast and follow the Appalachian trail up a mountain to a similar viewpoint.
A third option is to walk up the mountain on the right – either walk straight out the Appalachian Trail to the south as far as your heart desires and then turn around and return, or to try and find Loudoun Heights and the overlook on the forested bluff on the right.
I tried to do this a few years back and failed. The map and phone show the trail to the overlook to be a mile up the mountain and then it shows a loop trail. As I was trying it before on a day where I was time-constrained (I think I had three hours to walk), I gave up before I reached a view, and as the trail kept heading downhill into dense trees I gave up.
So, for this particular adventure I did not rise early Saturday. I woke up at a reasonable hour, had a reasonable breakfast, did some reading and caught up on life a bit, and then sat down with the map to figure out where to hike. One thing I have now that I didn’t have the last time I was out there was the Avenza Maps app. It permits you to download topographical maps which then work offline making navigation easier even without the aid of a large printed map. Perusing the map I noticed a similar loop trail. So, while sitting at home drinking coffee around 11am I decided, hey, I’d better get going so I could have five hours to walk in daylight rather than three.
A little before 1pm I was parked in Harpers Ferry in the upper town walking down to the lower town. Lower town was a zoo; every suburbanite in the world came out here. Normally when i come down here I walk out over the trestle and back before continuing other adventures but this time I simply walked to the base of the bridge, stopped to watch a freight train go past, and then followed the AT up the ridge past a historic church and behind the Storer College campus. That in itself is a nice walk – rising several hundred feet from the valley floor and clinging to the side of a ridge overlooking the valley where the Shenandoah River cuts south isolating Harper’s Ferry from the wooded valley where the AT climbs the Loudoun Heights ridge.
If you ever walk this hike, from town it is perhaps a mile following the white blazes over the U.S. 340 bridge. Then as you leave the bridge there are steps down to pass under the bridge and then start switchbacking up the side of the Blue Ridge. More than a mile up the mountain you encounter one side of the former loop trail to the overlooks.
My first time past this sign I did not elect to go out the Loudoun Heights Trail. I kept going up the mountain to see if I could find the other side of the loop, following the park service’s map. Spoiler alert – it shows to be half a mile, measured and labeled, on the map, but I walked a mile and did not find it. I was acttually following behind someone else who appeared to do the same. He actually sought out the topmost point of the ridge by the looks of it and looked around and turned around to go back. I eventually turned back as well and followed the trail to Split Rock.
At the end I was nicely rewarded, nearly a mile and half down the mountain. The view shows Maryland Heights on the right and Harper’s Ferry at the end of the railroad trestle in the center. The Potomac goes off to the right forming the border between West Virginia and Maryland; the Shenandoah goes to the left headed southwest through the West Virginia panhandle to return to Virginia maybe 30 miles upstream.
At this point I had walked seven miles. Directly from the car it would have been about three miles.
The view of town from here is phenomenal. My car is parked beyond that bald spot on the top of the mountain.
This is the view from the other side at the top of the ridge in town. It was beautiful as the light was going down. Golden Hour had arrived and I caught some decent shots of the white birches in the valley contrasted with the gray on the hillsides.
Cutting back through town I walked across the former Storer College campus.
Storer was for many years an early HBCU but for the past several decades has been a training campus for the National Park Service instead.
So with life getting in the way I’ll miss some prime hiking opportunities but hopefully I can get some in this coming weekend – probably not anything significant though. Now I’m off enjoying the glamorous world of business travel.
And we continue with our January adventures…. As they rolled to a close! It’s time to catch up as now there have been more adventures.
So, Holland America has as an excursion option on disembarkation day the choice of having a private car and tour guide for eight hours – ending at the airport. For a solo person the car for two would be great. It’s likely a car the size of a Toyota Corolla I suspect. As we have six pieces of luggage with us (two checked each plus carry on) we realized we needed something bigger so we booked a “private minivan” which is supposedly large enough for three or four couples. I tell you, the van that picked us up this morning was big enough for about 12 people with 22 days of baggage but there was only ourselves in it.
Ours was listed as “Buenos Aires Private Touring – Full Day (Minivan) Ending at the Airport.” I suspect you’d want “Buenos Aires Private Touring – Full Day (Car) Ending at the Airport.” I’ll describe now how it worked for us. We think it was worth it and I’ll explain way, but also use this as an excuse to describe the experience.
The cruise port in Buenos Aires is pretty chaotic. So, from beginning to end.
As is the case for all disembarking passengers luggage goes out the night before by midnight. They haul your “checked bags” down, you bring down your carry-on. You have to carry your carry-on down in the morning to the cruise terminal shuttle and then carry it to the terminal. For these private touring transfers you are in the last group to disembark – at 8:30 for us. They give you enough tags for your bag and they call you when it’s time.
Upon arrival from the terminal you get off of the bus and go into the terminal and find your other luggage, which if like us would be Blue group C, a fairly small section towards the near end of the baggage claim area. Then you take your baggage (there are no carts) out through customs. At customs you must put everything through an X-ray machine (they will put it up for you but really didn’t help taking it down). In general there were not luggage trolleys available.
For us, this was a matter of maneuvering, between The Boss, myself, and my mother, one 76 pound rolling bag, one 65 pound rolling bag, one 40 pound rolling bag, a couple of fairly heavy duffel bags, a rolling carry on, a few shoulder bags and one backpack out through a fairly good sized building.
Then you spill out onto a wide covered apron near the street where a HAL person will direct you through a crowd to a corner of the building where there were numerous people carying signs with your name on them.
Pro tip – pack less than we did. Take advantage of the unlimited laundry offer.
So, we found our guide and he directed us across a dip in the concrete to a van that was luckily waiting on the best patch of curb available. The driver loaded our luggage and we were on our way.
Logistically, the way it works is on embarkation day the HAL excursion desk leaves you an envelope with a form for you to fill out regarding anything you may want to see on your private tour. In reality, our guide had a list of eight main areas he shows to everyone but if we had anything special we wanted to see it should go on the list. I was looking at something that wasn’t steak for lunch so I researched, and we wanted to see the Evita Peron Museum, so I researched that as well. Otherwise, he covered the five main areas we wanted to see including the cemetery and Plaza Mayo along with Recoleta and Palermo neighborhoods, We also added Ateneo Grand Splendid Bookstore which was also among our favorites.
So as I was saying, they picked us up and we were on our way. We spent the morning heading towards the central and then the more southern part of the close-in city and then after lunch we headed towards the northern part of the city. Finally, we went to the airport.
We stopped by Teatro Colon which unfortunately was closed except for the main hallway due to some electrical work being done. We could have done a tour here for forty five minutes in English but it would not have happened anyway.
One note – our guide, and most of the guides, are fully licensed and many of them have college degrees for being tour guides. With his badge our guide was able to visit most attractions without paying a fee, although we had to pay the international rate. he also seemed to know somebody on every single block. Martin was approached many times for the typical Argentinian kiss on the cheek greeting. Oh, but one other thing – even though he has free admission everywhere at attractions where they sell an electronic guide or otherwise he is often forbidden from providing his own commentary. More on this later.
We spent a bit of time in the square behind the theater talking about the buildings in the neighborhood including the palace of justice. Then, back into the van.
I snapped this photo of The Obelisk on our way to our next stop, Plaza Mayo. Santiago and Punta Arenas both had Plaza de Armas; Buenos Aires has the same thing, Plaza Mayo. Most Spanish colonial cities have something similar.
This heavily-touched-up photo I took of the pink house – their presidential mansion. It sits on Plaza Mayo along with the national bank and the cathedral and a number of other buildings.
This is the inside of the cathedral on the square. As it was Pope Francis’ seat when he was in Buenos Aires there is now a small Pope Francis museum attached apparently but we did not visit it. There is actually a bit to see here including The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the Independence. If anybody is curious I’ll look it up when I get around to reviewing my notes.
Back in the van. Let me tell you, it’s nice to only wait for two others climbing into a van. Martin wanted to take us to the San Telmo neighborhood but as we visited it yesterday we suggested moving on. Instead, he took us straight to the La Boca neighborhoodwhere we drove past the very famous soccer (futbol) stadium. Every building in La Boca seems to be painted in its colors. Here we got out of the van and went for a coffee in what I would call a “coffee speakeasy.”
This was my cafe cortado. Mmmm. Anyway, the entrance to the coffee shop was through a souvenir shop behind a painted door and up some stairs in the back. You would not know it was there.
La Boca is a neighborhood that was settled first by Spanish immigrants and later by Italian immigrants in the late 1800s. Along the port there there is a walking street, Caminito, leading to the small port where today many artists sell their wares.
Caminito is actually a combination between an outdoor market, walking street, and outdoor gallery.
Our guide Martin highlighting one of the artworks.
The back of a meat-selling restaurant.
After this part of the tour it was time to say goodbye to the South and head north. Along the way we passed the new port district along the eastern side of the district, much better than the cruise port neighborhood. It reminded me of the newer parts of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor district or some of the developments along the Chicago River in Chicago.
Martin insisted we stop at this – it was not on our radar at all. Two years ago, long time Cruise Critic readers will remember, around the time of one of the January Antarctic sailings there was a tornado that hit this part of Buenos Aires collapsing part of the roof in the cruise terminal. In addition to collapsing the cruise terminal it did some damage to this, Floralis Genérica. This has only been reopened for the past two weeks. Prior to 2023, it opened in the daytime and closed at night; now it is just… open, but hopefully it will soon return to its opening and closing status.
After the flower we visited Recoleta Cemetary where Evita and her family are entombed. Of course, our guide told us the story about this as well. She was not actually entombed there until years after her death of course and there are many many mausoleums that are more grand than hers. If anybody is interested, please let me know and I will share more photos.
And then finally we visited Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore.
This bookstore is great, obviously. It’s like a large Barnes and Noble if you speak Spanish. If not, then it’s just pretty. The English language section is on the ground floor on the left. There is a gift and merchandise section in the lobby. On the third (top) tier for a fee you can see an exhibit regarding the history of the museum and they will serve you snacks. Or you can pay for a coffee and sit on the stage.
I bought a dual-language cookbook here, it was on sale in the lobby. We also somewhere along here stopped for lunch.
I’m not going to say lunch was a mistake, but it certainly was an adventure. I think our guide’s intention was to take us to one of the market restaurants or somewhere similar, but prior to the day of the tour when we provided our list I gave him the name of Niño Gordo – “Fat Baby” in English. This had the potential to be a legendary lunch except for two factors – one, we had eaten ourselves to death on the few days prior and two, halfway through the meal the power went out!
Our guide was actually a young guy – in his mid-twenties, and perhaps when I assessed him as an adventurous recent college graduate in a cosmopolitan city I was wrong :-). We took him to an Asian – Argentine fusion spot. As you can see above, we were seated in a section that had low seats, near the floor, with light spilling in from the tabled area and from the bar area. We ordered several dishes to share including kimchi, an Argentine-Asian beef dish, and a fish dish. It was going great, but around the second course the power in the kitchen goes out and half the restaurant goes dark. Not long after that, the air conditioning above us starts dripping on us – because it was off and no longer blowing the condensation elsewhere. So, surprise.
We finished our lunch and then made our way to the airport. The airport is a bit crazy though. The key here that worked out well for us is with the private car or van our guide snagged us a luggage trolley, walked into the airport with us and showed us where our check-in counters are, and showed us where the security desk is.
One thing I’m going to note now –
EVEN WITH PRIORITY STATUS EZE IS A FOUR HOUR AIRPORT IN THE LATE AFTERNOON AND EVENING. UGH.
Delta’s check-in opens at five. American opens at six as does United (I think). Delta has fewer people staffing check-in but the same number of planes as American. American opened early. We arrived at 5pm and my mother got in line for check in right away whereas the two of us sat and had coffee for ninety minutes as we had several hours to wait. With priority our check-in was 20 minutes; my mother’s was 90 minutes. The security line was I think 50 minutes, passport control was 20 or 30 minutes. Okay, so maybe with priority it’s a three hour airport. However, as we arrived so early we had time to kill. We enjoyed a light meal at Le Pain Quiotidien along with some wine and beer prior to running the security and passport gauntlet. And then? The best thing ever. We visited the Admiral’s Club lounge where, after spending a hot summer day touring Buenos Aires, I was able to take a shower! We finally boarded for our 11:59pm flight and were happily able to sleep on the plane as well.
And all of the bags on the right (the four) made it on the plane to Miami. When we landed in Miami it was barely above freezing and there were gusty winds which slammed our plane to the ground twice. I figured we’d be in for the same at home but it was a more typical landing. Even so, brrrrr.
On approach the Potomac was full of ice. And then we spent the next week clearing snowcrete from our driveway and walks…. Back to normal.
Okay. Buenos Aires. We were in Buenos Aires on January 30 and 31. So, buckle up.
Before we left for South America Buenos Aires seemed as if it would take some logistics to handle. Instead, we learned it was similar to visiting New York City, London, Paris, Washington, Atlanta, or Montreal. Yes, there is traffic, but it is not crazy traffic. We thought it would not be easy to find places where it would be safe to walk around. We were wrong – much of the city, much of the center city, seems safe, safer than Santiago – and before we arrived in Santiago it seemed more approachable. So, arriving in Buenos Aires. Let me describe it to you.
When we planned our South America and Antarctica journey we had realized that one of us would be marathon training and mostly on a treadmill. As we planned to be out the evening we were in Buenos Aires (Friday the 30th), and as we had to fly home on Saturday night arriving on Sunday to be back at work on Monday, we decided Saturday would be a relatively easy day. It was. We slept in a bit, one of us spent the morning on the treadmill while the other got organized to fly home and walked some laps on deck, and we enjoyed some of the solitude of a ship in port for a while. Let me describe to you what this was like.
The view from the ship in Buenos Aires is lovely – not. It’s a view of a port and parking lots. At least unlike some other ports you don’t drive through huge stacks of containers to get to the cruise port. Instead, you come off the ship, you board a bus and drive past containers, and then you drive across parking lots for trucks and containers to get to the cruise port. It’s not a scenic cruise terminal. Two years ago the cruise terminal itself was struck by a storm during cruise season and nearly demolished – it has now been rebuilt which is pretty amazing.
Is it a nice terminal? I guess so? But it’s chaos outside. There is not much space for pickup; we attempted to get an Uber across the street but the terminal area has 3G signal rather than 4G or LTE so it’s hard to catch an Uber, and beyond about three blocks from the terminal it really is not a good part of town to walk as there is a tightly packed South American neighborhood-that-was-built-without-authority where as a tourist you do not want to pass. But beyond there, get about a mile or a mile and a half from the terminal, you are in a beautiful cosmopolitan city. Ignore the news about Buenos Aires’ currency catastrophe. Ignore the threats you hear; it’s like being in a Spanish-speaking Brooklyn in my opinion.
Similar to Montevideo we aimed to have a market lunch in Buenos Aires. This was another grill open to the bar in the middle of a market – this time it was Mercado de San Telmo and forgive me I do not have the name of the restaurant within the market. We actually brought my mother along for this. Afterwards we explored the neighborhood. Two blocks away there is an outdoor art market which we explored.
As was the case with a lot of other places we visited we saw street dancing in the park.
And then we enjoyed a wine tasting in a wine shop! This was another thing I specifically sought out and one of the reasons we visited San Telmo as there were another of wine merchants. We actually brought a couple of bottles home from here (no surprise really), one of which can be purchased locally here. Interestingly the shopkeeper used Google Translate to speak out his descriptions of the wines and play them back. Honestly I could have done without that.
We saw interesting sights on the streets in San Telmo. And then we moved on back to the ship for a short siesta before heading out for the evening.
As is the case with a lot of tourists we ended up at a tango show. Our destination, courtesy of a Holland America excursion, was the theater stage at Cafe de Los Angelitos.
At the theater we were offered a cafe or dessert. Still working off lunch we focused on the pavlova which seems to be the national dessert of Buenos Aires (yes, I know Buenos Aires is not a country, but with many places it seems like there’s Buenos Aires and then there is the rest of the country). This was followed by an hour tango show with a mix of modern and traditional tango dancing.
The dancing was spectacular.
As was the singing.
This was well worth it. I think I’d see tango once a week if I were spending a summer in Buenos Aires.
And then we were done. Back on the bus for a ride to a closed door restaurant.
Apparently Buenos Aires has a number of closed door restaurants – relatively small restaurants focused on serving privately. Basically they are the speakeasy of restaurants. Ours seated I think about 30 people, so two thirds of a tour bus. I didn’t take any pictures at the restaurant. I think I would have enjoyed it more if we had not had a large lunch. As it was, the wine was great, the appetizer was good, but the steak dinner was the same as the others we had in South America – and I don’t remember what my partner had (she does not eat beef). It made for a long day. I think if I were to plan it again I would have planned my own tango stop followed by a more avant garde dinner somewhere, maybe even modern sushi.
We were back on the ship around 11:00 in the evening, so very early by local standards, ready to sleep for eight hours before waking up to be off the ship at 9am. And more on that tomorrow.
Normally I would want to blog about my travels as they happened, but as I fell off the wagon a week prior to the end of our January journeys I’ve been occasionally playing catch up instead. I find that this has actually been an enjoyable pursuit. I was writing a lot on Cruise Critic about our journey much of which I was transferring here, but revisiting it later instead gives me a different perspective. I also find that, with the aid of modern photography, I still am able to remember details effectively. So we will see how this goes today.
Montevideo appears as a city on the sea, rising above the flatlands just a tiny bit.
Montevideo of course is the capital of Uruguay, a surprisingly impressive country on the eastern coast of South America. Uruguay feels to me a bit like Argentina with similar culture and similar gaucho lifestyle but a little more laid back. It is also a little cheaper than Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, which I will review later, seems to charge American or New York prices for anything that remotely resembles a luxury good. In other words, date night there is still a $200 proposition.
Our ship, the Oosterdam, chooses Montevideo to provision rather than Buenos Aires. My initial guess was Buenos Aires is avoided for this purpose because the Uruguayan currency is stable and HAL buys enough that transacting in U.S. dollars becomes unwieldy. The Argentine Peso is not a stable currency so individuals carry on a lot of transactions in dollars. In theory Argentines are to report larger dollar transactions and then be taxed on them in pesos, but in reality they do not and wait for a tax amnesty before depositing larger amounts of money in banks and using them in the official economy. Instead, they participate in an unofficial economy. Now, a cruise line cannot choose that approach, can they? They buy from local wholesalers and it is taxed and the government chooses what currency to use (always the peso, which is not stable).
But my secondary guess is because it’s more practical. The Port of Buenos Aires is a monster and they can get everything they need, or more, in Montevideo.
Also, about ten percent of the ship’s staff turned over that day. Our waiters from the Main Dining Room went home as a number of housekeeping staff, but not ours (we asked). The last port with a large crew turnover was Ushuaia I believe. They also provision in Ushuaia. What do these two ports have in common? It’s easy for trucks and buses to drive straight to the ship. In Buenos Aires everything is offloaded and switched to shuttles and the dock workers have their own thing going on of course.
Anyway, enough about that. Montevideo is nice because you can walk right off the ship and you’re in town. I wasn’t too sure about Montevideo before we joined the cruise. I wasn’t certain how well developed it would be as I have ended up in a number of places where there’s a nice downtown core but then there’s a vacant no-man’s-land or an unsafe-to-walk-area outside of the downtown core, but Montevideo wasn’t like this. You walk off the ship and you’re in town. The only challenge was there were two other ships in port that day so there were a total of six or seven thousand tourists flooding the streets. Fortunately we had a longer stay than either so the impact on us was spread out. I feel bad for the folks on the MSC cruise who had perhaps a six hour stop in Montevideo – in my mind barely long enough for a massive ship to empty out and then reload again (our ship, for the record, carried perhaps 35% the number of passengers, and it really does make a difference).
Our first stop was the Mercado del Puerto mainly for two reasons – to walk through and browse shops and find a hat but also to scope out to see if it works as a lunch stop. As you can see above there was at least one place that fit the bill. There were actually several, and this is where we began the practice of dining at the bar at a wood fired grill. Why didn’t we do this sooner in our voyage?
Our journey from this point took us through pedestrian streets lined with shops and cafes to multiple squares, some tree lined and some not.
Along the way we passed the Plaza De La Diversidad Sexual. The Plaza was dedicated more than two decades ago now with a monolith. The monolith features the following inscription: “Honrar la diversidad es honrar la vida: Montevideo por el respeto a todo género, identidad y orientación sexual” (Honoring diversity is honoring life: Montevideo for the respect of every gender, identity, and sexual orientation). On a random weekday afternoon it was a quiet and peaceful place just a block off busy streets where there were only a handful of people hanging around – mostly some boys riding their bicycles up and down the ramp.
We had vague plans to visit the leather factory off of Plaza Independcia (shown above), but the leather factory was a floor above ground level and more oriented towards tailoring to fit with 24 hour turn around than tourist browsing, so instead we took a wander back to the ship. I wasn’t permitted to wander the ocean front around the peninsula as this had resulted in a five mile walk for us in Punta del Este…
Like many South American cities there was a large classic theater, the above perhaps skewed a bit by me using the iPhone on fisheye mode.
This residence or business had some delightful sculptures climbing on the railings. And by the way the street scene was interesting to watch. We would not have happened upon this on an official tour.
We did actually make our way back to the market for lunch. As I said it was bar seating with food prep going on in front of us. Wine and beer here was the usual situation – nearly always they sell you the whole bottle of wine and they encourage you to order two beers at once by only providing liter beer bottles.
You can see the jamon serrano I ordered as well as tortilla de patata set for wait staff to slice off a quarter for anybody who requests. Reminds me that I should cook some up at home sometime soon; the challenge is it’s designed to be served room temperature at your leisure and I’m the only one who will have it that way so I make a plate full and serve off two slices and then it’s just me. But it’s oh so good.
This was the best beef I had enjoyed in two weeks at this point. There are about half a dozen of these places within the market as well as the fresh food stalls, tourist shops, and other artisanal shops. Also it didn’t seem to be air conditioned. I imagine it isn’t heated in the cooler months either. We were there around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. With Uruguay being the same longitude as us roughly as well as being two hours ahead of us this tells me the summer time hottest part of the day comes around 4 or 5pm in the afternoon, and the locals have lunch between 2 and 5, so I am thinking we timed things fairly well. It was warm to hot but not what I would say is Virginia hot, and it was fine inside in the shade.
Since our visit to Montevideo I have read additional travel reports regarding the city and the country and it all sounds fascinating – a great place to visit and base yourself for a week or two if not longer and travel around the Uruguayan countryside. Also, based on our experiences as well as these travel reports it almost sounds as if it is a better place to end a long haul flight than Buenos Aires. The airport is smaller and better run than the airports across the estuary in Buenos Aires. Between the two of us I think we both want to re-visit Montevideo and Punta del Esta as well as Buenos Aires. I know I would add on Argentine wine growing regions, the Argentina side of Patagonia and the Andes, and some hiking in the rain in Chilean Patagonia, but more on this when I write up Buenos Aires.
Eventually we made our way back to the ship. The night prior had been our final night in the main dining room. As our wait staff departed in Montevideo and we had a large lunch we opted to “stay in” and prepare for our travels home even though it was still two nights out. Also, it was our final night at sea.
Lovely skies. We packed up and prepared for two days in Buenos Aires.
Meanwhile at home a few days prior a thick layer of snowcrete had fallen which would plague us for half the month of February before it was no longer a nuisance…
Our first visit to Uruguay, and our second to last port stop before arriving in Buenos Aires, was Punte del Este.
Punte del Este appeared over the bow as we were both on the treadmill. Overcast skies with a marine layer which promised to burn off. Puerto Madryn was warm and Puerto Madryn was a beach town, but Punte del Este was more of a modern beach town in the style of a mini Miami Beach. This was also a port where we arrived relatively late – at 10am.
There are even cars from Miami here.
The way Punta del Este is set up is such that there is nowhere close to the walkable city for a full pier large enough to take even a small cruise ship and it does not look as if this will change. But once you navigate a 25 minute tender ride it is a great port for a walking tour. Both Lonely Planet and the ship had maps that included a decent map towards walking the peninsula. In theory you could walk the whole thing in about 90 minutes; we took three hours. It looked shorter on paper. Towards the end we learned we walked close to five miles – something which came back to haunt me the next day as a five mile walk impacts marathon training if that’s what you’re doing (I am not).
This tour took in sights such as:
La Mano de Punta del Este, the local answer to Washington’s “The Awakening” which is sadly now out in Maryland.
A funky modern art sculpture in a median. In the photo above it looks larger than it really is. Honestly, not necessarily worth the walk.
Our Lady of the Mercedes Benz church, or at least that’s what I call it. This is a nice looking church, a century old so I suppose it is old as far as Punte del Este is concerned, but otherwise not immensely notable, although it is across from the lighthouse in a very tony single family home residential neighborhood.
The first true tourist site we saw after leaving the port was this lighthouse, in the center of the peninsula rather than on the edge.
But the first interesting site we saw leaving the port were these smashed up cars. At first we thought there had been a rather significant accident right there and the city had merely pushed the vehicles aside, but in Uruguay and later Buenos Aires we realized that the local practice is to tow and deposit smashed cars next to the police station. There were probably a dozen or so here and we saw even more in Buenos Aires.
Punta del Este has a great shopping street with upscale brands as well as more common brands. Montevideo, the next day, turned out to be similar as well. Prices for every day, non-name-brand goods are reasonable, but prices for items sold on the global market for most of us were less expensive at home. I think, for instance, we saw Hoka shoes here on sale for about $250 USD whereas at home we would pay half that.
As it is a supposedly laid back beach town with some money we also saw a number of classic cars and jeeps.
This was merely parked on the street.
Another one, for example. This isn’t Santiago, or even Buenos Aires, where something such as this would get stolen pretty quickly.
We saw this beautiful early 1970s Ford pickup truck walking the promenade along the Atlantic from the point up to the hand.
But the upscale vehicle of choice seemed to be the Range Rover Velar. This example, and several others, had made the journey either via road (nine hours) or road and ferry (six hours) from Buenos Aires and were likely here for the summer.
We bought some wine here in Punta del Este. It didn’t turn out to be cheap, but we focused on upscale wines we could not get at home. It was more of a purchasing experience than a tasting experience though. And now it is sitting downstairs in the rack waiting out “Dry” February.
By this point in our travels, with Buenos Aires approaching, we neither wanted another plate of seafood nor did we want the culinary investment of a steak (spoiler alert – I ate three steaks over the following three days). Pizza seemed to be the meal of choice.
This time I was the one who enjoyed the very large local beer.
We visited our waiters Muis and Tri for the final time this evening and wished them well on their journeys home to Southeast Asia – a journey that involves four flights.
Now that I have been home for six days it’s time to catch up a bit. I figured I would spend some time chatting a bit about our vacation and travel philosophy, or rather why we do certain things that most people do but ignore other things. It makes sense to chat about this now as the next day after Puerto Madryn was a sea day.
We woke up on January 27 to fair seas and warm air – warm enough to sit in the sun but maybe not quite lay there as if you are at a beach. As we had had a bit of sun in Puerto Madryn this was fine with us anyway. And one of the things I enjoy most about cruising is watching the sea change as the weather changes. The nice thing about this north to south and then south back north again cruise is the weather, temperature, and sea conditions changed noticeably day to day.
Our philosophy when on vacation is to start the day early, often with the sun, and not stay out too late. This is mostly because we both like to get some fitness or reading in early in the morning before we go out and do things. We happened upon this approach during the covid shutdowns and have essentially stuck with them. So, January 27 was typical of this, but to a degree we made an exception – we went to the ship’s show that evening.
Oosterdam’s main stage production was a show called Move. As one of my fellow cruise passengers described it the only thread holding the story together was dancing. Fortunately these productions on ship only last 45 minutes. By the time you’re no longer impressed by the dancing and looking for something more substantial it’s time to get up and go to bed – or go to the casino.
Early in the cruise it felt like we would frequently have dinner every evening and then sit through a band set for forty-five minutes. Later in the cruise it felt like instead we would have dinner and then play in the casino a bit. We do typically call it a night before the ship does, but we have dinner later than most on the ship do – starting at 7:30pm – so our evenings are short.
Wait, we made a second exception. I think this was the night we stayed late at the casino – past 11pm. Or that may have been the night before as we were leaving Puerto Madryn.
Sea days are important on a cruise. It’s the down time you take to take a nap, organize your baggage to go home several days later, figure out how port transfers are going to work, or spend a couple hours walking in circles on the Promenade Deck working off the steak you ate the night before. It’s also good down time for wandering around the ship taking photographs of all of the artwork, to decide if you’re ever going to do something with them.
We always found the lady in the red dress as a way to find our cabin door. Turn towards the lady, walk left, and then walk right to the end.
When we have a sea day we wake up early (6:30 or 7am), have a sit-down breakfast, read or go to the treadmill or otherwise exercise (this is where I chose the promenade rather than the treadmill), skip lunch, play a board game (we played Carcassonne with my mother and her friend four times during this cruise), get organized (laundry, throwing out the detritus of paperwork collecting on the desk in the cabin), and attend a fancy dinner if available.
January 27 was also our final dressy night. We dressed in our finest and even had pictures taken.
We also learned that night that our waiter and assistant waiter were going home and we only had one more dinner with them. We’ve gotten to know them fairly well over the course of three weeks; we actually found our waiter better at organizing different cuisine for dietary preferences elsewhere in the ship than the Neptune Lounge concierge was.
There really was not much else to this day. Our last sea day disappeared before we even knew it. The next four days – five actually – would be spent relatively flat out.
So, in a few different places I’ve asked after port safety in Montevideo, especially around the port / Mercado area and in general the advice is “we were there a few days ago and it was fine but as usual in a big city…” etc.
In Buenos Aires of course the advice is different – do not walk from the port area. The recommendations are to get a taxi or Uber to where we are going or at least as far as Plaza General San Martin, but much of Buenos Aires is still safe for people who look like better targets than Julia and I. Generally, but not always, we’re not the first target, especially on a Holland America cruise. Until recently neither of us wore jewelry or watches worth stealing either.
One of the things I end up doing every time we travel is I try to figure out if it’s safe for myself or a marathon runner to run outside. There is a fun little assessment I do regarding local weather conditions, traffic assessment, and comfort level. You’d be surprised where people aren’t comfortable running outside! For instance, sometimes places like Avignon, France, are lousy places for runners even in the wee hours of the morning because everybody is calling out for you!
So far, Puerto Madryn was one of our favorite places anywhere we’ve traveled for running (with obvious exceptions like Boston and New York City). Puerto Madryn has La Rambla along the sea which continues in some form or another more than three miles out to the point and to the ecological center.
An obvious turn around point for most guests when they walk or run from the ship is Monumento Indio al Telhuelche on a point of land at the end of the main beach.
This is a monument to the labor movement of the indigenous peoples in Patagonia several decades ago. It also has a lovely view.
View from the ship from three miles away.
The view beyond. I would have loved to keep going, but there was plenty to do. We turned around and ran back the other direction where I stopped near the pier for a large beer while waiting for The Boss to double my mileage.
This was a prelude to some souvenir shopping followed by lunch at Náutico Bistró Del Mar.
This was officially Mariscos de Golfo Nuevo with Golfo Nuevo being the gulf around Puerto Madryn. I’m not totally certain all of it was directly from the gulf itself but it certainly seemed fresh, cooked as appropriate, and seasoned with lemons, onions, and vinaigrette appropriately.
Perfect as we were planning to attend the Cellar Master’s dinner yesterday evening, a lunch to share with papas fritas and more large beers.
Eventually after some shopping we returned to the ship. Our original plan was to run, have a beer, return to the ship, and then head back out, but Puerto Madryn is the type of place where when it’s summer you walk around casually as you are. We felt comfortable in our fitness wear in open-door souvenir shops as well as dining outside.
We returned in time for the tango sail away!
Last night we attended the Cellar Master’s dinner. This appears to be focused on wine but is also one of the best meals available on an Oosterdam cruise. Food and beverage staff spoke at length and we were introduced to the entire Pinnacle Grill team – although we’ve met them all at some point.
The menu was great. Somehow we had a mix-up and two of us had scallops instead ofthe foie gras but we were both fine with that especially after yesterday’s bonus lunch.
The Pumpkin Sage Cappuccino is a delightful cream of pumpkin soup paired with a flavor-forward Pinot noir to offset it’s sweet and spicy nature.
For us the warm lobster salad was the star of the show. If it were twice the size of us then it would be perfect for a meal on a day like yesterday. This was paired with a rosé which actually wasn’t the greatest in our opinion, but we do think we would have enjoyed it better as stand alone on a sunny summer day.
The filet with the beef tenderloin and grilled shrimp was the best beef I’ve had on the ship so far but the shrimp were even better. This was nicely paired with the same MTC Syrah I had with dinner a few nights ago!
Dessert was decidedly not a tuille BUT it was the perfect size! Not huge! And Graham’s Six Grapes was a perfect accompaniment.
We both enjoyed this meal better than the Konigstafel but I actually think that’s the point. Konigstafel is to display a variety of what the king wants, Cellar Masters is to share food to pair with wine in more of a best-of. We also dined by ourselves. We’re at the point on a 22 day voyage where we are happy to not socialize as much.
One complaint?
Often it seems as if HAL glasses have spots on them. They need rinse aid of some sort.
So, a few other things to talk about:
We’ve spent a fair amount of time playing table card games, mostly blackjack, and a little bit of craps. We haven’t lost a ton of money – essentially we are even aside from an hour where I played about twelve days ago where I lost several hundred dollars and stepped away from the casino for four days as a result. In the meantime, we’ve gotten to know the casino staff really well especially while playing craps.
Last night we decided to curtail our visits to the casino as we’re winding down the trip. We spent a couple hours with our casino staff friends and gambling buddies playing craps. It was actually the latest we’ve stayed “out” on this trip so far (we’ll likely stay “out” later on the last night when we go to a closed door restaurant). It was a lot of fun.
Yesterday I mentioned running in port. I’ve largely curtailed my treadmill activities although I may pay a visit tomorrow morning. Instead, I’ve been walking an hour or more on the promenade. I’ve had some interesting step totals –
Yesterday – 21,589 (Puerto Madryn)
Sunday – 11,468 (Sea Day)
Saturday – 16,519 (Falkland Islands)
Friday – 7,991 (Sea Day)
Thursday – 15,334 (Antarctica Day 4)
Wednesday – 16,212 (Antarctica Day 3)
Tuesday – 17,667 (Antarctica Day 2, with treadmill time)
Monday – 16,944 (Antarctica Day 1)
I had planned to do a number of yoga and pilates classes, but early in the cruise after my first class I couldn’t get motivated to attend because I didn’t enjoy the instructor’s style, so I never went back. I’ve practiced yoga on Carnival and Cunard cruises, the last time being back in 2017, but I haven’t found any on this or my past two cruises that I truly enjoyed. I almost think decent fitness classes were a casualty of the Covid era.
One thing they mentioned last night which I never would have known – HAL canceled their bottle stewards after Covid. They still have a sommelier around and they have one full time in Pinnacle Grill, but not so much visibly; they just have a beverage runner in the MDR, at least on this ship. You order through your waiter. I wonder if HAL pushed bottles of wine versus elite beverage package more prior to Covid. This, by the way, is one thing I like more about Cunard; HAL has a decent wine list and I think it’s better than our experience on Celebrity nearly four years ago now but you have to ask for it. Cunard is a little more forward with their wine list. And we enjoyed (again, this is four years ago, right before all of the cuts) Celebrity’s beverage service in Blu a bit better.
But again, especially in the dining room, Pinnacle Grill, and with food in general, HAL has surprised us. The variety of food and drink available is stellar. The MDR menu isn’t as generic as we had on our Celebrity Silhouette cruise a few years ago – and thus we didn’t dine in the main dining room. Here there are often more interesting dishes offered. When you get to know the system and get to know your dining room staff, things are really in your favor. And the Pinnacle Grill breakfast experience is top notch; to think we almost missed it because our goal had been to skip breakfast every day.
Now, speaking of the Lido Market buffet – we still haven’t returned for buffet dining, even though today is Cake Day (it’s hard to handle Cake Day after a few days of a lot of eating). We’ve learned that they do not have an Asian corner on this ship as they do on Noordam and Westerdam (someone please correct me if I’m missing something regarding info and availability this winter please).
Also, today, without eating breakfast, I was craving a typical sandwich, something like a club sandwich, so we ordered room service lunch. They warned us it would be a 45 minute wait; it was a ten minute wait and the sandwich was great.
