Cruise to Venice, Day 5

On Tuesday, we left Buenos Aries, our home for most of the last three months, aboard MSC Cruise Lines' Lirica. The Lirica can accommodate 1560 passengers and half as many crew, and her maiden voyage was in 2003.

Don't get me wrong, I consider myself privileged to be able to embark on an adventure like this with Brenda, one that will sail us across the Atlantic over twenty-five days. However, there is a BUT: so far, the ports of call have been very uninspiring, and the onboard activities have been, shall we say, lacking.

Our first two stops, in Paranagua and Itajai, Brazil, had us wondering why they even bothered. The towns were uninteresting with literally nothing of historical, natural, or architectural value to see. Our third stop, in Santos, on Sunday, dropped us off three kms from downtown. We walked into Centro through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods in 34-degree temperatures, only to find everything, except a small tavern on the town square, shut down.

After enjoying a couple of the local brews, we Ubered back to the ship.

This cruise has been a bit of a whistle stop ride so far. There were already passengers on board when we embarked, and every port saw some passengers getting off and new passengers embarking. We suspect this will stop when we leave our next port, Rio de Janeiro,

The entertainment, thus far, has been geared to the Brazilian passengers who make up the majority of the people on board. Once we leave Rio, we're hoping this will change and there will be a few more things of interest to us.

All that negativity aside, the food has been very good, and there are actually more vegan and vegetarian options on this vessel than on the Celebrity cruise we recently took.

The staff has been fantastic, and our cabin is more than adequate, although we do kinda miss the balcony we had on Celebrity.

Twenty days to go, three more stops in Brazil, and we're hopeful things will only improve from here.Read more