Deb's Blog

Entrance to St.  Mark’s Square from Grand Canal: Doge’s Palace: St. Mark’s Basilica: St. Mark’s Clocktower: Church of San Giacomo di Rialto: (Oldest church in Venice, consecrated in 421, with a 15th century clock tower, known for being inaccurate.) Venetian Dining: Dinner at Ostaria A La Campana: Dinner at Trattoria…

Our hotel, Casa do Barão–a Rick Steves recommend—is in an 18th century building, in a quiet neighborhood, in downtown Lisbon. It’s absolutely charming, with a homey lived-in feel. The highlight was the fantastic cook who whipped up a gorgeous egg-potato-tomato-cheese tortilla for breakfast every morning. In addition there was the…

Elephant seals, that is. LOTS of them. They were HUMONGOUS! A male can weigh over 8,000 pounds and reach a length of 16 feet! Occasionally two males will confront each other to determine who is the alpha male: They move like a slug: We also saw sea birds and more…

A long, early morning hike to a Gentoo penguin rookery. Penguins making a baby chick: The penguin waddle:

Our ship, the Viking Octantis, is parked in sea ice in Wilhelmina Bay. Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the ocean surface, unlike icebergs which are chunks of ice shelves or glaciers that fall into the ocean. With the permission from our Captain, the Expedition Team tested the depth…

Today was our first landing. We rode the zodiac to Damoy Point research station, built in 1973 for British scientific personnel. It was last occupied in 1993, and is now a Historic Monument. Viking Expedition Team members had landed at the site long before we arrived. They had carved out…

Today we arrived in Antarctica (11-26-24). We were booked for an afternoon zodiac cruise, so we spent the morning on the deck, enjoying the gorgeous weather and marveling at the gigantic icebergs. Then we put on all our layers, including a heavy-duty waterproof jacket and boots, and went down to…

Our first sighting of Antarctica. Joe braved getting this shot in 40 knot winds from the ship’s bow. Absolutely stunning!

What a BLAST!! There were only 5 of us in the zodiac this morning. So DD, our guide from South Africa, went FAST towards the glacier. We were lucky to see the glacier calving—when ice chunks fall off into the sea. DD guided our zodiac into a narrow cave to…