Going on my first cruise

[Beantown Express 2.0 6596]

I was just on a Celebrity cruise in the Caribbean from Xmas to New Years on the Reflection.  I was with my entire extended family which we have never done before so it was pretty fun.  The big negative was the dining room seemed understaffed due to either covid or cutbacks.  The waiters and staff were working their asses off but there just wasn't enough of them so service really sucked. I am looking forward to my July cruise in Iceland/Norway/ Belgium/Netherlands on NCL Primo with the wife and kid.  Never done NCL so hopefully it doesn't suck too bad.

[Viking 301]

Just disembarked from a 16 day South American and Antartica cruise on Princess. We're not cruisers but some friends were going and we like to party with them so why not? The first 2 days were a cluster fuck as the previous cruise didn't get to dock until 1pm which pushed our embarkation until late at night after waiting in a pretty barebones cruise terminal in Valparaiso, Chile. Felt bad for the old folks that were waiting for 10 hours in the terminal. Second day we went to another port just to refuel which took most of the day.

After that it was great. Saw a shitload of whales, spent 3 days scenic cruising Antartica, then 1 day in the Falklands, 1 day in Montevideo, Uruguay, and finally departing today in Buenos Aires which we'll stay at until we fly back on Friday.

 

 

Birders at the front of the ship.

Took land rovers over hilly terrain for an hour to get to the penguins. I'm gonna be honest, the land rover ride was as cool as seeing penguins.

 

Edited February 5, 2023 by Viking

[Texzilla58 4790]

When we lived in Denver our next door neighbor was some type of scientist who spent half the year in Antartica. The wife was a teacher and had summers off so she usually met him in New Zealand, Australia, Chile etc for a month long vacation before they returned. Wife and I surely irritated him with our constant questions about it. I’m well travelled but had never known anyone that had as much vacationed down there. He didn’t say a lot, maybe what you’d expect of someone that lived down there, or he was working on projects with old Nazis or aliens.