Catch Up Montevideo to Buenos Aires

(11:35)

I did manage to watch “The Interpreter” which I thought was alright, but not great. I’m not sure exactly what I didn’t like about it, but I think that it could have been better. I didn’t end up playing in the black jack tournament. I didn’t really know how it would work and I chickened out. There were too many hotshots, and I couldn’t take the pressure. I ended up watching people play for a while.

I struck out at Bingo and then headed up to the room, where I fell asleep quite quickly, and slept for two hours. I was completely passed out and didn’t move much because when I woke up I had lines all over my arm and shoulder. I haven’t had that in a while, so that was worth it.

I showered and got ready for dinner. We went down to one of my Dad’s friends’ room and had some drinks. I drank one of my 970ml beers, and it was worth the 84 cents that it cost. Actually, it was worth far more, but that’s all it cost.

Dinner was uneventful. I tried lychee for the first time, and it wasn’t too bad. I couldn’t believe that I ordered the cauliflower soup, but it tasted alright. I put up with cauliflower but I don’t usually enjoy it. I had the rack of lamb, and found it a little too salty. I did have a delicious chocolate napoleon for dessert.

After dinner, everyone headed up to the show, but I wasn’t interested so I watched people play craps. This guy lost a thousand bucks so that was kinda fun in a sickening way.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

This was one of the first days that my Dad was able to sleep in, but he got up at 7:00 anyway. The blinds were whipped open and, sadly, I was also up at 7:00. I didn’t get out of bed until 8:30 though.

I took a quick shower and as I was scanning the activities list, my Dad came back from breakfast. I decided that we should head upstairs to participate in the “Wordgames” activity. I figured that it would be a cinch, and I wanted to win some prizes.

When we got there they were already on question 6, and we found out that it wasn’t even close to a word game except that words were used to create trivia questions. We didn’t win since we missed the first 5 questions, and neither of us are tremendous trivia players anyway.

After that, I went to the spa and had fruit and yogurt for breakfast. I ate some of the best yogurt of my life. It was from The Netherlands and was 100% organic. It was vanilla flavoured and was made with real vanilla beans with the grains in it. There was only 5 grams of fat but had 667 calories (150gram container). It must have had a lot of organic cane sugar, but it was worth it.

I headed back up to the room with my Dad and we called some of his friends to see if we could get together for Bridge or Monopoly. We decided that we’d head to Bingo at 11:30, so I’m putting in some time before I head up to the Cosmos to play.

(Pause)

At Bingo my Dad won again, and took an $88 prize. I was close a few times, but didn’t have any luck. After Bingo we decided to play Bridge, and then we were kicked out because a tournament was starting. We all had lunch and decided that we would head up to the Cosmos to watch the talent show, and then play in the final Bingo of the cruise. It was for $1000 top prize.

The talent show started off badly, but really wasn’t that terrible. Bingo was a wash, but it was fun. I was one number away a couple of times.

When Bingo was over we got ready to go for dinner. Since we were arriving at Montevideo, Uruguay at 8pm, we thought that we would have an early dinner and then go out for a while. We were all dressed and ready to go at 6:00, but one of the other dentists wanted to go to the late sitting instead. We had 2.5 hours to kill so we decided to play some scrabble and some cards and we headed down to the card room.

As we played our shipped docked. The harbour was very narrow and the ship had to really be careful on its approach. It’s amazing that despite how large the ship is how easily it is for it to navigate tight situations. I guess ship technology has advanced much like everything else.

We had dinner and then I headed to bed. I wasn’t interested in going to the nightclub even though the singers, dancers, and orchestra were going to be there.

Friday, February 17, 2006

The next morning our excursion was a city tour and then a visit to a winery. We were up at 7:00 in order to get ready and have breakfast. We had read that there was no food provided on the trip, so we ordered sandwiches and cookies from room service. Just as we were about to leave for breakfast, the food arrived and we took a few minutes to pack everything up.

I rushed to the café to have breakfast and then zipped down to the theatre to meet the other people on our excursion and to catch our bus. This time we were on time and we boarded our bus without incident.

The city of Montevideo, Uruguay has a population of 1.5 million which is half the population of the entire country. Uruguay is neutral and does not have a large military, but instead spends its money on social programs. The country has public health care, and public education programs. Frommer’s Guide states that it is a progressive country that is an example for its South American neighbours.

The city was quite beautiful. Our tour guide, of course, only showed us the positives, but the city really was extraordinary. The streets are clean and very safe. The buildings are very European and the people seem prosperous, happy, and attractive.

We traveled around throughout the city and saw an assortment of buildings and monuments. It was a very hot day, so we didn’t do a lot of wandering around. After a three hour bus we headed to the Juanico Winery for a wine sampling.

There isn’t much to say about the winery. I learned a few things about wine and had 8 glasses in about 45 minutes. Everyone was nicely toasted considering we started before noon and hadn’t had any lunch. My Dad and I bought a couple of bottles to bring home.

We staggered back to the bus and then drove back into the city. I listened to my iPod and looked out the window while everyone else slept. The city is by no means perfect, and there seems to be a lot of poverty as in any city.

We did a bit of shopping after our bus tour. There was a lot of leather and jewelry, but nothing that I had to have. We headed back to the ship by 3:00 and just as we boarded the ship, I remembered that the Spelling Bee started at 3:30.

We went to the spelling bee and had fun. We got caught on a few words (facetious and myrrh). We were marked wrong on the word exuberant, but as I type it now, I realize that we were correct. It didn’t matter since we were tied with the other team and we all got a deck of cards for a prize.

We stuck around for Rock and Roll Name That Tune, and we got completely smoked. We earned a whopping 14 out of 40 and finished in last out of three teams. After that, I headed to bed for a nap.

I woke up at 6:15 and headed to the gym. My workout was super terrible and I felt really terrible after only 10 minutes. I decided that I had better stop and when I got back to the room, I decided that I was very dehydrated. I drank a ton of water and felt much better. I took a shower and then got my tuxedo on for dinner.

We went over to the Olympic for dinner again, and had a wonderful meal with extraordinary service. It was a great time and a nice way to wind up the cruise. I headed to bed after eating and crashed.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Our room attendant woke us up at 8:05. I guess she wanted us up and out of bed, but used the excuse of giving us back our passports. We couldn’t get back to sleep after that so we woke up and started getting ready for the day.

I decided that I would start packing, since we are to have our bags ready outside our rooms by 11pm. I hauled all the laundry out of the closet and sorted through it, trying to find something clean enough to wear today. I did, luckily.

I put the bag on my bed and started dumping my clothes into it. I stuffed everything in and was just about finished when an alarm began to sound. We couldn’t figure out what it was, and why it was going off. I opened the door to see if it was ship wide, but it was confined to our room. I rushed to get the attendant, and he came in and took down the smoke alarm and took the battery out. We couldn’t understand why the smoke alarm was going off, but after the attendant left, I realized that it was the stench of my clothes that had started it.

Dad and I headed to breakfast shortly after that and I began typing this entry. We arrived overnight in Buenos Aires and are planning to spend the day shopping and going to the art gallery.

7:30pm

It was a very busy day. Buenos Aires is an exciting city with a lot going on. It’s Saturday and the streets are not overcrowded with people, but things are quite busy. It is very hot today (mid 30s and high humidity).

We caught a shuttle bus to downtown and went into a store called Silvia Y Mario and looked at incredibly leather jackets, and cashmere sweaters. The goods are of very high quality and are very reasonably priced. My Dad’s friends and I all bought a lot of stuff for ourselves and for gifts.

Afterwards we walked down Florida Street which is a pedestrian street with lots of shopping. People would come up to you and try to give you brochures to get you to shop in their stores. It was quite overwhelming at first, but you get used to not making eye contact fairly quickly.

We stopped and had lunch which was very inexpensive and it was nice to sit outside and watch all the people go by. When we finished our meal, we walked to the art gallery. It was a long walk but it was very nice to wander through the streets experiencing the city outside of a tour bus. The streets are very clean and well policed, and we felt very comfortable window shopping and enjoying the sights.

The art gallery was very nice. There were lots of the Greats (Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, etc) as well as more of the modern famous (Pollock, Rothko, Kline, etc). There was an entire floor devoted to Argentine artists, but since I wasn’t familiar with them or their art history, it wasn’t as interesting. I’m sure that it is much the same thing when it comes to Canadian Art and artists at the National Gallery; it’s good art but you need to know the stories.

We were exhausted after being out in the hot sun since early in the morning and we caught a cab back to the ship. We arrived without incident, boarded and headed back to our room. I was then presented with the problem of what to do: nap or pack.

I decided that I should probably take a shower and stay up to finish up a few things and to get packed before dinner. I felt better after showering and my Dad and I watched Barcelona and Bettis on ESPN while we packed. We have tons of space and regret not having bought more stuff since things are so inexpensive here.

We are heading off to dinner shortly and then probably to bed. We depart at 7am tomorrow morning and then go on a tour of the city. We catch our flight to Toronto at 6:30pm and so we have to get there by 4:00. We arrive home at 6:05 on Monday morning and then it’s back to reality.