Buenos Aires Tour and Starting Our Cruise

We were willing to start over again with Buenos Aires the next day, but the Emperador Hotel kept the hits coming.  When we came down to breakfast, we were told there were no tables and we would have to wait.  This was even though there were two huge, empty tables marked "reserved" and plenty of tables in the bar area.  I basically said the Spanish equivalent of, you're kidding right? The lady said, no, and we would have to wait.  The rest of the family settled in the lobby chairs, but the girls started the "I'm hungry" routine, so I marched back into the buffet area, got them each a yogurt, took two spoons off the "reserved" table, because there was no cutlery anywhere else and walked back to the lobby.  A couple minutes after that, the hostess told us we could sit in the bar area and they would have cutlery and coffee brought to us over there.  Deep breaths.  To top it off, the breakfast wasn't very good.

I had shown the girls the "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" clip from the Evita movie in the hopes of getting them excited for the city tour.  Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side.  It was overcast as we started out.  Jeff tried to lighten the mood by pointing out that the China Shipping truck we kept stopping at lights with was probably a front for Bruce Wayne to ship his Batman gear in.  Vivian thought this was hilarious, and that kept them entertained for a while.

We paused at the metal flower sculpture that some people were trying to make the symbol for Buenos Aires.  Apparently it opens and closes over the course of the day.

Buenos Aires calls itself the "Paris of South America", and you can see the European influence in the architecture and parks layout.

There were wealthy people who built grand houses in the city, but most of those have now become embassies, like this one.

Our first off the bus stop was Recoleta Cemetery, another venture in expensive real estate.  People don't need to be buried above ground in BA like they do in, for example, New Orleans, but the rich locals liked the idea of fancy tombs, so this is the result.  I did want the girls to see it though, because it's such a unique type of cemetery.

Unfortunately, it was cold and windy, and you could tell the rain was about to start.  Jeff got in pictures of some of the more interesting tombs and then made a dash for the bus with his camera.

Our course, since I had gotten the girls interested in Eva Peron, they wanted to see her grave, and, of course, there was a line.  We waited it out for a few minutes, but then the rain began in earnest, and we gave up and ran for the bus.  I Googled it for the girls.  It's a plaque on a wall, not worth getting soaked for.

After that, we continued our drive around BA.  Vivian was excited to discover that one of the main roads is 9 of July road, named after Argentina's independence day.

There were a few other people on the road as well.

We were trying to get to Plaza de Mayo, which is BA's main square.  That's where the "Pink Palace" and Metropolitan Cathedral are located.

I tried to get a picture of the girls in front of the palace, but it was cold and windy, and they were not being cooperative.  Part of the group walked on to see the Metropolitan Cathedral, but we took the girls back to the bus.  It's a good thing we did, because the skies opened up again.

And it kept raining for our tour of La Boca neighborhood.

We stopped here for a while, so that people could go souvenir shopping, but by that point, we were just ready to get on the cruise.  Luckily, that was the next stop and the embarkation process was fairly painless.  The only thing that took a little extra time was paying the "corkage fee" for our bottles of wine.  From our point of view, the best thing about BA is that you can buy a good bottle of Malbec for $4.  Add the corkage fee of $15 to that, and it's still cheaper than any bottle of wine you can buy on the ship.  Plus, there's no limit to how many you can bring on board.  You just have to pay for them.

We found our room, dropped off our carry on bags, and then set out to explore the ship.  We were too late to see the kids club, but we found lots of Christmas trees and eventually made our way up to the top deck where the girls got a smoothie to celebrate.

We had some time before sailaway, and our suitcases showed up quickly, so I started unpacking while the girls watched a movie.  I was thrilled to be able to find the perfect spot for our Christmas stockings.

Because of the bad weather, they moved the top deck sail away party to one of the inside lounges.  We decided we preferred to watch from the balcony.

It was a tight harbor to maneuver in, but we had little boats helping us, and we made it out okay.

Once we were out in open water, we went to one of the bars in the atrium to listen to music and have a pre-dinner drink.

The land portion of our great adventure was done, and now we were exploring by water!