Bucket List Trip

 Because we didn’t have a lot of photo trip opportunities in 2026 we decided to do a couple of trips we’ve been wanting to do for a long time .  The first one was Galapagos.

The winter is the rainy season in Galapagos which seems like something you might want to avoid.  However, in this case this is exactly when you want to go.  There are many choices in cruise companies and sizes of ships, but in our case we decided to go with a line we had gone on a couple of times before, Silver Seas.  Silver Origin is the ship they had built specifically for Galapagos cruising.  On the larger side for this cruise, the ship holds 100 people max which seemed reasonable to us.  

We also decided this would be a good year for family trips.  Our youngest and his wife agreed to go with us on this one.  An Alaska cruise in the summer will host our other son, his wife, and our grandson.

We began out journey by flying into Quito via Atlanta for a late evening arrival.  We were staying at the JW Marriott for two evenings as part of the trip.  I’m sure the cruise line wanted to make sure everyone arrived on time since there was only one plane leaving on Saturday.  

Our only full day in Quito, the hotel flagged down a car that obviously works with the hotel to take their guests around the city.  Our first stop was at a Basilica del Voto Nacional.  Next we went to one of the larger statutes in South America Virgen de El Panecillo.  And finally we stopped at Basilica and Convent of San Francisco.









Silver Seas had arranged a tour of Quito at night finished by a chocolate tasting.  However, they had not let us know that this was available so we had already made dinner plans at Tributo, a restaurant dedicated to using the entire cow in its offerings.  They also offered aged dairy cow steaks as a way of using cows that might otherwise have a useless end of their lives.  It was very delicious.


Tomorrow: Off to the islands

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