Sunday, January 25 - Santos, Brazil

 Today is Sunday, which means it's champagne and caviar day at Compass Rose.  I like it because its just a small portion of black and orange caviar with the toppings.  Just one bite each, really.  Then I went on to a breakfast of 1/2 order Eggs Benedict with berries and a piece of bacon.  Perfect.

We've been to Santos before and did the sites.  There was also an 8-hour tour into Sao Paolo, but that's just too much.  There was a shuttle to a local shopping mall, so that was what we decided to do.  First, you have to get a shuttle for the 15-minute ride to the terminal.  Once again, there are 3 other large ships in port (2 MSC and a Costa) so the terminal was a madhouse.  It seemed that the other ships were having a turnaround day as most everyone had carry-on luggage with them.  It took forever to get the shuttle bus to us and then getting out of the terminal area was gridlock also.  The cruise ships are mixed in with the cargo ships, so it isn't terribly passenger-friendly.  

The mall was just opening up as we got there at 11:00 and only about half of the stores were open, which isn't surprising on a Sunday.  We heard that some of the rest would open around 3 pm.  We only went to get cough drops anyway and the pharmacy was open, so it worked out fine for us.  It's a very nice mall, although their air conditioning left something to be desired.

This was at the entry.  Not sure what it's supposed to represent, but it was striking, and maybe a little R-rated also.

And this play area was connected to the R-rated sculpture.

There were all the usual mall stores:  shoes, clothes, cosmetics, etc.  And a large food court with American brands like McDonalds, Burger King, Subway as well as other types of food.  The prices seemed very reasonable again.

The chicken sandwich meals were around $7 and a big Mac was $6.

We saw a woman walking her little frou-frou dog in the mall and couldn't believe it when he lifted his leg on the garbage receptacle and she just stood there looking the other way.  What??

After a little wandering around, we caught the shuttle back to the terminal.  It was not quite as busy this time, although still very crowded.  As we were waiting to get into the parking area, we passed a sign advertising MSC Cruises 7-night cruise for R$595 which is US$100!  I think it must have meant per night, but that's not what it looked like.  Then later as we went through the security scanner, a man in front of us from another ship had 3 huge shopping bags of food with him.  We could see dozens of individual bags of chips.  Maybe that $100 doesn't include your food.  😆

Rain came on very strong after lunch and didn't let up.  It did help cool down the temperature.

Roger didn't make it to Trivia, but the 4 of us still got 13/15.  These were very easy questions, so we still only got one point.  We decided to have room service and play on our computers while sort of watching the Commanders play in the NFC championship game. 

On our sail out I got a few more photos.

Santos has a nice skyline, even if it's a gray day.

Behind the tug boat are 3 auto ferries that had to wait for us to pass.  This is a very busy port - the largest in Brazil so it's also chaotic.

This is only a small section of skyline.

We were able to join the sibling Zoom call again tonight.  I'm amazed at how good the wifi is.  I have no problem with my laptop and only occasionally have trouble getting a good signal on my phone in our cabin.  Ships sure have come a long way.