Full day in BA followed by cruise

Well now,”that” was a fantastic day!

We started this morning by walking from the cruise terminal to the area
where we spent yesterday.
The distance was about 3 kilometres and after going through a sketchy i
ndustrial area we came out
at Plaza San Martin which is a beautiful park containing this country’s
memorial for the Falklands
(Malvinas) war. There is a massive rubber tree who’s limbs are so big
they are supported by
metal “U” brackets.

We had tickets for an english speaking tour at the Theatre Colon.
This opera house is ranked as the third best in the world and the
guide was really
good so we came away very impressed indeed.

After the tour ended we were walking the area of the city
called “Microcenter”
(where we have spent the last few days)and popped
nto a restaurant for a traditional
Argentinian meal of empanadas. Of course I made sure
there was wi-fi so I could text message
with the kids and get updated photos of Hannah! Mission
accomplished!! While walking Caro
had a misfortune and tripped and fell, however nothing
broken, just painful wrists and knees.
Thank goodness it wasn’t worse!

We next walked down to the area of the Presidential
Palace. It is a pinkish colour and is
located in an area of old buildings and beautiful parks.
Oh my!

We do love walking the streets here.

We caught a taxi back to the cruise port terminal
nd after being back on board we had some
quiet time before the safety class everyone has
to go through was completed.

We had just started our supper (and were speaking to the
couple in the next table-they
were from Utah) when Caro noticed that the ship was moving.
SHOOT! We wanted to watch
the cityscape as we sailed away so we wolfed down our meal .
Once outside on the promenade deck
we enjoyed watching Buenos Aries slowly disappear. I got a
great black and white photo.

We decided to watch a movie on the big screen outside in
midship at night under the stars.
The movie was Jurassic World; it was a very warm night-NO BUGS-
and a thoroughly wonderful
way to finish off our hectic day.

23,699 steps;15.6 kilometres

First full day in BA

I was so tired last night I was asleep by about 7:30  P.M.  Caro stayed up quite a bit more

We slept on top of the sheets with the window open and the air conditioning doing nothing really except providing some great white noise. We both slept wonderfully!

We started our usual walking and chose a nice looking restaurant for brunch. After being assured they accepted Mastercard we had a nice meal. It turns out our Mastercards did not work in their machine so we paid with our very limited supply of Argentinian pesos (we couldn't get any pesos at home due to a currency crises here but had got a cash advance from Mastercard yesterday).

After having no luck using my debit card in one bank to get cash from our chequing account we went to HSBC and got an employee to help us. We were able to take out the maximum amount which is 3000 pesos (27 pesos to the dollar). On top of that we were dinged almost 11% commissions etc. OUCH. We were told that this is the norm here.

We walked back to the Theatre Colon and purchased tickets with Mastercard for a tour in English tomorrow at 11 AM.

It is 2 PM and I decided to write this now as we are going to the ship soon and I don't know when I can upload again.

My cell phone shows that we walked 8.3 kilometres this morning (12654 steps)

Arrival in Argentina

Well that flight was long....for me (about 2 hours of crappy sleep) but for Caro she managed to get closer to six hours (lucky her!)

Arrival into the country went very smoothly and after picking up our luggage we grabbed a cab to the Air bnb. The apartment block guard gave us the keys and so up to the fifth floor we went. The apartment is "cozy" but will do for tonight. The air conditioning doesn't work very good and there is a gas odor so we have windows open for now ( was 28 degrees today)

We showered and made ourselves half presentable before starting to go walking in the area. We enjoyed an Argentinian lunch and then we must have wandered a couple of kilometres. This part of the city has some beautiful  old buildings. By about 6 we were bushed so decided to stay in the apartment for now

Houston on New Years Day

Lisa dropped us off at the airport at 5:10 this morning and by 0600  we were through American security and after a further two hour wait we were in the air for the almost four hour flight.

We are in the middle of a nine hour wait and because it is New Years Day there wasn't much to do in the city so we are staying in the airport killing time by wandering all the terminal buildings of this massive airport. We took the Skyway train from "our" terminal (E) to terminal A where we ate some Chinese food and then found the location where I am writing this.

 Caro has a  new selfie stick so now all we have to do is look at the camera correctly!

We should be able to use our lounge passes that come as a perk with our ATB mastercard. We get  three hour max time so I think we will go there about 5 this afternoon. It is 3:30  (Houston time) as I write this.

Caro slept on the plane but I didn't. Our ten-ish hour flight tonight will give us plenty of time for more cramped sleeping!

Final night of this trip

It's all over but the flying!!

Today was our last day to sight see so off we went on the secondary highways along the east coast road (which is essentially north of Dartmouth).On the way we got lost (google maps saved us again!) and missed getting on highways we wanted but found others that were very interesting. We stopped at a beach near Lawrencetown and watched people surfing (there was a surfing school truck there to teach people).

A short while later we passed by a very well known animal rescue place called "Hope for Wildlife". I regularly watch a TV show that is filmed there. We didn't go in however.

We drove through Dartmouth and over to Halifax before 1 P.M. and shortly after took the car back to Enterprise Car Rental, I took many photos of the car just in case they try to pin damage on us (there isn't any!).

I reset the trip odometer about 80 kms after we left Halifax two weeks ago and I see that we did just over 4000 kilometers. Gas averaged about $1.26/litre and the car used 6 l/100km.

We are tired but happy, and can honestly say that we have seen what we wanted to see.

Back in Halifax

We slept fantastic last night and after a nice breakfast we were on our way back to Lunenburg. We spent a good ninety minutes at the awesome museum on the waterfront. This museum was all about the fishing industry and included aquariums with fish from this part of the world.

We tagged along on a tour and got to listen to how fishing in the old days used to happen and the photo above is a fishing dorry and was a big part of the world of those fishermen.

We saw the sailboat we were on last night leave for a day tour so I got a photo of it under sail.

After eating homemade ice cream we drove all the historical downtown streets of this amazing town oogling all the neat houses. Oh my, but we love the old houses here!

We left Lunenburg by 2 P.M. and headed down the old highway like we have been doing a lot lately. Our ultimate target location was Peggy's Cove which was a couple of hours away on the slow back highways. On the way we came upon the location of the 20th anniversary remembrance of the SwissAir disaster. We stopped by for a few minutes and listened to some ministers/priests. There were family members there of deceased victims and the TV cameras were there too as it is big news. We did not stay long.

Peggy's Cove was busy but not too overwhelming. We snapped quite a few photos but 30 minutes there was enough.

 An hour drive later we were at the airport Quality Inn which is our home for two nights.

A wonderful day!

Bridgeview Nova Scotia

After accidentally deleting my first attempt at today's blog here goes attempt number two!

Our B+B companions (in the other bedroom) were a couple from Switzerland. They owned a steel tube manufacturing company and had a couple of factories around the world and owned homes in several locations. Very interesting to talk to. Caro and I had booked this B+B knowing we had share the bathroom (not something we normally do) but we won't be doing this again because Caro was still not well and it wasn't very comforting knowing the bathroom might be occupied when we needed it. Also we didn't have showers because it was inconvenient.

After a short while driving boring side roads we got on the main highway and were soon in Liverpool. Our first stop was the Queen Anne County museum which explained a lot of the local privateers story,especially in the time of the 1812 war. Very cool. Also there were 3 handkerchiefs that were pulled from the sea by a sailor searching for survivors of the Titanic

For some reason I can't rotate this image : (

From there we stumbled on to the Wile Carding Mill Museum which was an completely unexpected pleasure seeing how wool used to be made ready for use making products. It really was cool.

Next we were off to Bridgewater where we had booked a Days Inn for tonight. We were both exhausted and soon after our 2:30 check-in I was asleep. Ninety minutes later we drove over to Lunenburg. There is a reason this town is a UNESCO site. Oh boy, it is gorgeous.

We got to town about 5 and booked a 6:30 sunset cruise on a real sailboat, and while waiting for the tour we (actually me-as Caro is still unsure of how she would feel on the sailboat) ate fish and chips. The sail was awesome and I volunteered to help hoist the main sail. A sailor at last!!!!

It was dark as we drove to our hotel.  Tomorrow we are back to Lunenburg.