Today we transition to the Hilton Hotel and officially start the Viking Expedition Cruise Package.
After all of the walking for the last two days, yesterday afternoon we decided not to do a lot this morning other than walk to the Hilton Hotel, which is about a 17 minute walk from our current hotel. We needed to do a little repacking of our suitcases, just to get everything back into place after having lived out of them for two days now.
The plan we developed yesterday was to just get ready and head over to the Hilton after we checked out at the 747 Buenos Aires at 11:00 AM. We were trying to figure out if we needed to go earlier to try and get there before the group of travelers coming in today, the official day passengers arrive through Viking. We wanted to arrive at the Hilton before they all got there from their morning flight arrivals at the airport. We had done well to get to our hotel by 10:45 AM from our flight, and that should be faster than anyone coming to the Hilton through Viking transfers on a bus from the airport. Out thought was that it might just take longer with all of the people going through Immigration and claiming their luggage and then trying to get everyone coordinated and onto buses in large groups.
However, if we went too early and we might not be able to check in anyway unless rooms are already available. We will just have to go and see what happens, at least we will be there and can check in with the Viking reception folks to see what the arrangements are for tomorrow for our charter flight to Ushuaia.
I slept in until about 6:45 AM and got up and worked on the blog posts for yesterday and for this morning. Stephanie slept in until about 8:00 AM. We both got ready to go to breakfast and headed downstairs to the restaurant area. There was only one other couple there this morning for the entire time we ate.
They served the same items as yesterday, maybe a couple of the breads were different. However, the scrambled eggs were still very runny, but at least a little warmer than yesterday, but not by much. We ate enough to get full, but we decided breakfast here was more of a convenience than it was anything else, certainly not that good
After eating, we headed back upstairs to the room and repacked our suitcases, trying to put all of our dirty clothes on the side away from the clean clothes. That side is where we mostly have “stuff” packed, not any clothing. We will ask today when we check into the Hilton and see the Viking Representative whether we need to worry about the weight of our suitcases for tomorrow’s charter flight to Ushuaia. We are not worried about total weight, we have not added anything to increase the total weight from when we left Sunday, but we may not have it distributed evenly between the two suitcases, and we might need to weigh them with our luggage scale if we need to insure both are less than 50 pounds.
Everything was packed at about 9:20 AM, and now we just had to wait until it was time to head to the Hilton Hotel. We may just leave about 10:30 AM just to keep from having to wait around here so long, plus it will be cooler outside for the walk the earlier we go.
We were ready and so went ahead and took everything downstairs to check out right at 10:30 AM. There was another guest at the front desk so we had to wait a few minutes for them to finish. Our bill was printed out and the total charge for the two nights was ARS $35,717, the charges were in pesos and that is what was charged to our Costco Citi Visa card. At first I was confused when the attendant handed me the hotel charges receipt, which was two separate printed sheets. At the bottom of the first sheet was the amount $785.00 for charges that were all listed out in Spanish. In my mind, all I could see was that It looked like the total charge was in US dollars, so I asked, and then almost immediately realized that in Argentina, they use the same dollar sign ($) as in the USA, but it is for their pesos. That first receipt was only for the city tax, which is collected separately.
In the end, as I had already seen, the Visa receipt was for $35,717 and that was correct and was the total charged. We did a rough calculation using the exchange rate from Visa we got the other day, 322 pesos to the US dollar, and that made the total charge for the two nights stay total roughly US $110.00, not bad. As a side note, the actual charge we later saw on our phone app for CitiCard Visa was $107.25, even better, and meaning the exchange rate was now 333 pesos to the US Dollar. It is just confusing……
With the check-out complete we headed out the door and headed in the direction of the Hilton Hotel, about a 15 minute walk away. The sidewalks are fairly good here, so it was not a difficult walk, we only had to avoid a few pot holes from utility work. As we got closer to the waterfront, it was all downhill to the river, making it even easier. The only area that was difficult was right near the hotel where there were some large cobblestone pavers that were not very smooth for rolling our suitcases over.
Once we arrived at the hotel we saw that the lobby was full of people, many with suitcases, just sitting in chairs all over the lobby. It took us a few minutes to find the Viking Desk, it was tucked away near the back of the lobby. Another couple was checking in before us, and then it was our turn. We found out that this was just for the instructions and check-in for the charter flight tomorrow morning. We were assigned a 6:20 AM flight, so everything revolved around that. We have to be in the lobby at 4:05 AM in the morning to get on a bus to ride to the airport. They are having a take away breakfast available in the lobby for everyone starting at 3:00 AM.
We were first assigned an incorrect bus time of 5:20 AM, and Stephanie asked why there was such a big gap in the times we needed to be in the lobby for breakfast, the bus time and the flight time. As it turned out, because we were almost the first people checking in, that their sheets with the flight numbers did not have the correct bus times. We were then assigned to our correct bus meeting time, 4:05 AM, and our color designation of Blue for our flight, which we already knew was supposed to depart at 6:20 AM from our Itinerary. They gave us blue ribbons to tie onto our suitcases to designate our luggage for our specific charter flight.
We collected our paperwork and then asked where we needed to go for check-in for the hotel. That was being done in an adjacent room, so we headed in that direction. We found the check-in area, and there were two different lines, both fairly full of people that had just gotten off of a large bus arriving from the airport. We had hoped to beat them here, but we did not.
We were not sure which line to get into, so Stephanie asked at one line while I kept our place in the other line. The one she was at was for hotel check-in, my line was another version of what we had just done, getting the charter flight and bus times. The setup in this large area was right next to the covered outside drive where buses could drop off passengers and not clog the normal lobby arrival.
We waited about 15 minutes before we could check-in, which was not really the check-in to get our room, it was just to sign in and give them a credit card for any additional charges we may incur while we are staying here. This enables us to do check-out tomorrow morning without seeing a person, we just drop off our electronic keys in a box. There won’t be any staff working the front desk when we need to depart tomorrow morning, at least not enough for everyone to get checked out quickly. [On an added Side Note, we did not now this meant placing an authorization for $60.00 on our Visa until we were on the ship, and we could not tell if it was an erroneous charge at that time, so we had to go to guest services on the ship to enquire about it.]
The lady checking us in was telling everyone that the rooms would not be ready until 3:00 PM, but there was a waiting area set up on the fifth floor for Viking passengers. Luckily, we did not need to now go over to the other line, it was just as long as this line had been since everyone ahead of us in this line was now over there.
We decided to go to the waiting area on the fifth floor to wait for our room. My camera bag and Stephanie’s backpack are just too heavy to go out and do a lot of walking. There were quite a lot of people already in the waiting room, and we thought it was just too crowded, and we did not want to wait sitting at a large table and have to converse with people we did not know. There was juice, coffee, water and some pastries set up to eat. Most of the people that had arrived this morning were on day of check-in flights, not coming in early like us. We could see how tired everyone was, we knew the feeling.
At Lunch
We took some seats at a small table in the main area near the elevators, and went through our departure paperwork. There were a few forms to fill out, and we just wanted to make sure we knew our schedule. After a bit, we decided to go out to the waterfront and find somewhere to eat lunch. There are many restaurants there, and we found one called the Italica Pizza Bar. We sat outside, it was cloudy and breezy, and actually felt nice without the hot sun shining.
Lunch Beverages
We ordered a beer each while we looked over the menu. Stephanie used Google Translate to scan the menu items and translate them to English, which really helped. Stephanie ordered a small individual size white sauce Pizza and I ordered a Classic Hamburger with fries.
Our waitress brought out five small slices of what appeared to be pizza, and we thought that was Stephanie’s order. I told her to go ahead and eat, it was obvious this “pizza” was already prepared and just heated up, but still not very warm. A little later, my hamburger arrived, and then, they brought out Stephanie’s real pizza, which was cooked to order and very large. We had been confused because our server had said “four slices” to indicate the size, and what was brought out earlier was five really small slices of something, which we now figured out was just bread.
Our Food and The Real Pizza
Of course, like many European restaurants, there is a set up fee for the bread and/or table that is automatically added to the bill. We had a good laugh over that. Both meals were good, my hamburger was tasty, but like most places, cooked well done. We had one more beer while we were eating, but we could see what looked like rain on the horizon. A little bit later, it started to sprinkle a little, and they had already retracted their overhead awnings most of the way because of the wind.
We paid our check and headed back to the Hilton, but it never really rained, but we did not want to get wet, we had no raincoats or umbrellas with us.
Lobby At The Hilton
We decided to see if our room was ready even though it was only 1:45 PM, so we got into line at the check-in desk. We were pleasantly surprised that our room was ready and we got our key. After checking out the room, we went back downstairs to the other Viking check-in area where we had temporarily checked our large suitcases into their secured area.
We brought everything up to the room and relaxed a bit. We decided to head out now that we did not have the heavy backpacks, and walk up to an area that appeared to be on the waterfront. There was also a Carrefour Express grocery store on the way, and we wanted some bottled water for tonight.
We were about out of pesos, so we went to the concierge desk to ask about money changing, and we were given a flyer for a company that is a money exchange business, not one of the street vendors, but a real company. The Hilton did not exchange money themselves. We headed there first to get $30 US dollars exchanged. The rate was just as good as we got the other day, but we knew the rate had risen from our credit card exchange rate differences. It was then reduced a little because we were only exchanging $30, but it was still better than the credit card rate.
We walked along the riverfront and we discovered that we could not get to the waterfront, there were several yacht clubs and other facilities that we could not enter, so we headed back to the hotel, stopping by the Carrefour Express for our supplies on the way back.
We took those to the room and relaxed, trying to pick out our clothes for tomorrow since we have to put our large suitcases outside our door tonight before 8:00 PM for them to be collected and taken directly to the airplane, and then to the ship in Ushuaia. It is difficult because of the liquid limits on carry-on luggage, which is still being followed even though it is a charter flight.
Hilton Pool Deck
We then headed up to the rooftop where the pool is located at the Hilton and sat outside for a while. It was about 6:30 PM, and we knew we needed some dinner and then get back to prepare our suitcases for the 8:00 PM deadline.
Stephanie had picked out a couple of places while we were at the pool area, so we headed out to find them to look at their menus. One was Italian and one was Mexican. We looked at the menus for both and decided on Mexican since we had already had Italian one night.
We headed into the Lupita Mexican Bar, and ordered our food. It was a mistake to eat there, the food was expensive and very disappointing. We just need to realize we only need to eat Mexican Food in the USA, other countries just don’t prepare it the same way we like. It was a disappointing meal to end our time in Buenos Aires, but that happens.
We went back to the hotel and showered and then repacked our bags before setting them out about 7:45 PM. We relaxed with some wine and I finished this post. We headed to bed about 8:45 PM, we have a 2:45 AM wake up call set as well as phone alarms to get up and be ready for our early departure tomorrow morning.