This cruise came about as a replacement cruise for Bea and Nellie. I had originally booked us all on a Holy Land cruise with Jen for March. In the weeks before our Holy Land final payment due date, fighting broke out in the region. Rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip and one landed in Ashdod, which was one of the ports listed on our itinerary. As we watched the news and followed the reports, we decided it was not a good time to go to Isreal. Our cruise wasn't scheduled until March, but we didn't want to take a chance, it was January.
We looked for another cruise and since Jen had previously expressed interest in a cruise around the tip of South America, we looked at a Cape Horn, Santiago to Buenos Aires cruise. Bea and I have done that itinerary before, but Nellie and Jen hadn't. Bea was excited about going back to Ushuaia, at the bottom of the world, but the dates conflicted with Jen's schedule. We then looked at an Asia cruise, for just Bea, Nellie and I, but we were running out of time and my passport was at the passport office getting additional pages, I didn't think I had time to get the China visa in time for an end of January, or mid February Asia cruise.
Then we saw this 13 day Royal Caribbean cruise to Brazil. None of us had been to Brazil and since we always want to go someplace new on every cruise, we booked it and rushed to get our Brazilian Visa. All in all, we had quite a few mishaps along the way. I had to reschedule my flights when I couldn't get my visa in time for my scheduled departure date, Bea and Nellie had a difficult time getting to Buenos Aires and when they did, their luggage did not get there with them. We had booked a hotel in Buenos Aires we didn't get to use, but overall, as you will be able to see on this blog, we had a great time on the cruise.
The Royal Caribbean Radiance of the Seas is a beautiful ship, we loved it. The staff and crew were great, the food was good and the itinerary was better than we could have imagined. Bea and Nellie, with only a limited amount of clothing items for an entire 13 day cruise, still smiled every day, and enjoyed every minute of the cruise. That says a lot!
We all arrived to Buenos Aires on the day of the cruise, so you won't see Buenos Aires photos on this blog. We have been to Buenos Aires before and we did get to have lunch at El Mundo near one of the pedestrian streets in the city upon arrival thanks to our kind airport taxi driver who also joined us for lunch. Nellie and Bea were lucky to pick up a few clothing items before the start of the cruise in Buenos Aires as well. Argentina has great prices and we are sorry we missed the few days we had planned to stay there. But we had a really wonderful cruise.......so here we go....our first port of call is Montevideo, Uruguay.
