From Sea to Shining Sea

On Tuesday, January 17 Kevin and I flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Our flight left Colorado Springs at 1:30pm and we flew to Buenos Aires through Houston. We arrived in Buenos Aires around 10am Wednesday and went to the hotel. Unfortunately, we were not able to check in right away, so we went to the pool to wait for our room to be cleaned. We were at the pool until about 1:30 and then were able to go up to the room and shower. We went out around 3:30 and wandered over to the Recoleta, the neighborhood where Eva Peron is buried. Our main goal was to get food and we were certainly successful! The walk to the Recoleta was HOT so our first order of business was to order 2 cold beers. I tell you, beer never tasted so good! Then we order proveletta (baked block of provolone cheese) and topped it off with 2 incredible steaks! We were in heaven! We attempted to go over to the cemetery (from previous post) after dinner but something was happening and the cemetery was closed to the public. Instead we wandered over to the massive bookshop in an old theater. Unfortunately that mission was unsuccessful too - in that no new books were purchased. We were getting pretty tired so we stopped to get a nice bottle of Malbec and went back to the hotel to play cards - that didn't really happen either as we both fell asleep watching Evita instead.

Our incredible proveletta!

Our massive steaks! Simple, but delicious!

 The entrance to the Cemetery. We never did find out what was going on there. 

Thursday, January 19 - This was the day we had to work as well as leave the hotel. Unfortunately we had to check out of our room before we went to work, but we were able to store our luggage in the locker room by the pool. We had no problems getting on the ship this time (as opposed to last time we were in Buenos Aires) and we were on and off the ship in 2 hours. We went back to the hotel around 1pm, swam for about a half an hour and then showered in the locker rooms. We hung out in the lobby for an hour or so and then went to the airport around 3:30. This was the beginning of our 50 hour travel journey to Sydney (no, I didn't type that wrong...we actually traveled for 50 hours!). For some crazy reason, the company booked us from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chili; Santiago to New York City (with a 12 hour layover); New York City to Los Angeles; and finally Los Angeles to Sydney. Needless to say we were not looking forward to the journey.

Friday, January 20 - We arrived in New York City around 7am and were through customs and immigration by 8. I have a great friend from high school (Ryan) who lives in Brooklyn who graciously volunteered his couch to us for the day, so we hopped in a taxi and and hour later arrived at his Brooklyn apartment - the traffic was horrible! We went out to breakfast with Ryan and his roommate and then Ryan had to go to work :(. We stayed at the apartment and napped and showered before we had to go back to the airport. We left the apartment at 4 and got to the airport at 5 for our 6:30 flight (each taxi ride should have only been about 25 minutes but we hit rush hour each direction). We then traveled another 22 hours and arrived in Sydney on Sunday morning around 9:30am. It was a long 2 days of travel, but could have been much worse if it weren't for our lovely outing in the city!!

Unfortunately, I have become a horrible blogger and I forgot to take a picture with our lovely host for the day. I will try to do better!

Sunday, January 22 - We went straight to the hotel from the airport and fortunately we were able to check in right away. We went to the ship around noon and were done around 2. We went back to the hotel and then went out and did some shopping. We went to the Haymarket and the bookstore and then relaxed in the hotel for the rest of the evening.

It was such a beautiful day! 

TO BE CONTINUED....