Day 108 - Saturday April 15

Barcelona photos
position at 7:45am: N41 28.38 latitude E2 43.49 longitude
(about 28 miles E of Barcelona, Spain)
temperature: 58F, 100% humidity, cloudy
distance since FLL: 34,613 miles
There was a huge, stunning, full moon late last night. It was just beautiful, but it was too cold out to really pause and enjoy. It was chilly on deck early this morning, about 55F with a slight breeze as Clay did his walk. Since Singapore, there has been another early walker on deck each morning. It turns out he lives only about 40 miles from us. Small world, huh?
So, here it is 8am and we are treading water about 25 miles from Barcelona. While grateful to have the morning off, we think Barcelona is an amazing city and hate to miss the morning there. There is not a lot open in the afternoons here as in most of the Med and that is all the time we will have here. Since we have been here before and only have from noon to 4pm or so available here, we plan to just take the Metro up to Parc Guell which we did not have time for last visit and maybe walk back downhill. We have learned that we will not be docking in the usual cruise ship berths at the foot of La Rambla. We will be docked somewhere out from town and they will offer a shuttle bus every 1/2 hour. The other bad news is that it is expected to rain here today and this evening. 60% chance. So, if it is raining when we arrive, a walk in the park and through town will seem a very bad idea. In that case, we may have to buy Bus Turistic tickets and ride around looking out the windows. Don't know what it will mean for this evening's Special Event plans if there is rain. Since most of it is inside, presumably they will just nix the walk through cobblestoned streets and bus us.
So, it is off for a late weekend breakfast in Compass Rose. Clay finally tried the Bircher Muesli. Not as expected. We had seen people get big, heaping bowls of some very hardy-looking fruits, nuts, grains, etc. But, Clay got a little appetizer-sized bowl. Good thing he also ordered toast. Then he ate some cookies. Debbie had her usual Swedish pancakes double order, but raspberries are back and she had those too. We attended a very weak enrichment lecture at 10:30am til arrival on the Art & Architecture of Antoni Gaudi. We should have just put on raincoats for the sail in.
We received an invitation to dinner tomorrow evening, Easter Sunday, from Jamie & Dana Logan. More later.
We are docked on the starboardside at Moll Adossat at Terminal Building A. It is not as bad as the Capt. had described it. We are in the usual cruise ship docking areas. We can see the World Trade Center and the Columbus Statue from here, but of course it is farther than you can walk. Like the Casino yesterday in Monaco, it looked like you could throw a stone and hit it but it would take you a half-hour or more to get from one place to the other. You can't get there from here. It is still under 60 degrees. There is some light drizzle and low clouds. But, we will still try for plan A and see how far we get with it. It is just after 11:30am and Jamie has announced that the ship is cleared. We better get going then.
It was 12:15pm before we walked out of the cabin. The sun was just starting to peek out, so we left the heavy coats on the ship. By the time we got off the shuttle bus we were stripping out of windbreakers and getting out sunglasses. It topped out at about 70 degrees F today, a little warmer than the 66 predicted. It was a beautiful day. All the Europeans that were not in Herculaneum or Rome were here today! The shuttle bus did not take us to the Columbus Monument as Roger had announced or the Maritime Museum as the Shuttle Bus sign said, but instead at the foot of the Moll Barcelona directly in front of the World Trade Center or at the foot of Placa de les Drassanes. This was a block or 2 from the places previously stated so we just hit the bricks and went up La Rambla a block or 2 to the Drassanes Metro stop. We took it to Lesseps and walked the well-signed 1300 uphill walk to the Parc Guell entrance. We could not have gotten lost, we only needed to follow the throngs. The Metro cost 1.20 Euro pp each way. We stopped on our way to the park at a couple of little tiendas and put together a picnic for lunch. Sandwiches, weird cheetos/bugles type things and a Coke for Debbie and a Barcelona brewed San Miguel for Bob, or Clay. In the tienda closest to the park entrance they had an amazing automatic bread cutter for making the sandwiches. That thing shot those little loaves out an about 40mph. Debbie was standing next to a box picking our chips whena loaf fired out and slammed into a towel hanging on the side to cushion it and she just about jumped out of her skin. The she just stood there laughing in amazement as the woman fed the loaves in one side and the fired out the other. They were richochetingout of the plastic bin and into a door and under the coolers, etc. It wasagas. How many sandwiches would you be making a day to need this kind of slicing throughput? The sandwiches we bought here were excellent, much better than the ones down the block and the people working here were much friendly too. If anyone reading this is thinking of doing this, wait until you are in front of the Guell moziac on the park wall before going into the closest tienda on your left facing uphill! Excellent place and be sure to hang around to see them cut bread!
We spent about an hour fighting the crowds for space in the Parc Guell before giving it up. It was crazy. This was clearly one of the only places that was open on the Saturday afternoon before Easter Sunday. It was packed with people. We walked back down to the Metro and went into a patisseria and bought a big hazelnut meringue thing. They had a huge pile in the window when we went up, but we were afraid it would not travel well. So, we stopped and the shop was still open on the way back down. They had only a few left but we got one to eat later for Easter. We added it to the bag Debbie was carrying by this time with our jackets, and the book and T-shirts we had purchased and our water bottle. We walked into the Metro station just as the train arrived. Perfect. We only rode a few stops this time and got off at Catalunya to stroll La Rambla. Hah! It was even more packed than Parc Guell. But, we fought our way down and it has been done for future reference. We also made a quick pass down a couple of the aisles in the Mercat Boqueria. That was great. Debbie got another rose gelato cone there. Clay got none! Along La Rambla, there were lots of flowers for sale and sadly, lots of baby bunnies. We made our way to the place where the bus dropped us earlier at about 4:35pm. A bus was sitting there but the light was against us and we could not cross. The bus pulled away. We started to walk to the benches in the center of the placa when Debbie realized the bus had been caught at the stoplight on the other side. We humped it over there and Debbie ran across the street while we had the light to make sure he would let us board here. He did open the door and told her "rapido." The man in the front seat told her she must be living right. She is glad that someone noticed. Debbie wheezed and gasped and coughed through the 5 minute ride to the ship. (So, much for her plans with the new gym schedule!) We got back to the cabin about 5pm so had plenty of time to shower and dress up for the Informal Voyagers of the World Special Event tonight. It is actually time to go now. More later.
We were on bus 5 to the Special Event. We had a tour guide with us and he talked quite a bit as we drove to the Casa Llotja de Mar, which is a former Accademy of Fine Arts. According to the guide, Picasso, Miro, Dali and Gaudi had all studied here at one time. Now, the building is the Chamber of Commerce. It still has some statues in the courtyard that were done by students when it was a school. The building was of architectural interest because it had a neo-classical side and the architect had just added it to the big Gothic hall that previously existed on the site. The guide said this was because it had been a monastery and was therefore sacred, but he may have been joking. Anyway, it was a beautiful and very impressive large, high-ceilinged room with a beautiful ceiling. The tables were set for us in groups of 10. Our bus was assigned tables 13, 14 and 15. The guide told us to find our tables and be seated. We were greeted at the entrance with glasses of cava. This is the Catalunyan version of champagne and when it is good, we like it better than champagne. This was very good. They had some buffet tables set up with cold and hot appetizers, a skewer buffet and a Tapas buffet. They brought these around to serve at the table as well. The main meal was served at the table. Soup was impressively done. They brought everyone a bowl containing tiny croutons and truffle paste topped with a poached egg, then they came around with a big pitcher and poured in hot potato and truffle soup. It was a fancy touch. The entree was farm chicken stuffed with apple and sweet onions. The final course was fruit salad with peach mousse. The menus were big sheets of paper cut out to be the shape of an artist's palette. It was complete with the thumb hole and blotches of color. Then, it was rolled and tied with a ribbon with a used paintbrush. Very arty to reflect the former use of the hall we were in. (Anyway, the short story is that the paper is far to large to scan and post. Sorry.) They served water, red and white wine and more cava. (This was a beautiful setting and it was well decorated and handled, but the food was not really very good.) Then it was time to walk. We walked a few blocks through narrow, winding alleys to the church of Santa Maria del Mar. Everyone had raved that this was the most beautiful church in Barcelona and it may have been. It was open to the public and each bus group went in together staggered to separate us. The guide spoke some about it outside and then walked through from front to back. We exited out a door behind the altar. It was a really lovely church and very open and airy. A couple more blocks and we arrived at the Picasso Museum just as it was starting to get dark. Again, we were led in in small groups. We used the restrooms there and then waited our turn to go through. This was really the highlight of the evening. The Picasso Museum has recently expanded from 2 palazzos to 3 palazzos and it really makes a difference. Our guide took us through about 8-10 rooms and spoke in each about the art we were viewing and the artist's progression from child artist to adult to superstar to old man making ceramics. It was very interesting. In rooms 15/16, there was a group of paintings that Picasso did experimenting with deconstructing and reviewing an old masterpiece named Las Minenas. This was absolutely the most amazing collection in the museum. It was fascinating to see what he was trying to do over and over again. It was fantastic. This room alone was worth the trip to Barcelona. Congratulations to the Museu Picasso! Then it was time to visit the Museum Gift Shop and go have our desserts. We did buy 2 clearance priced T-shirts at 5 Euros each. Dessert was down the hall in the last building of the three connecting palazzos. We entered to offered trays of mimosas, bellinis and orange juice. This was followed by offered trays of mandarin oranges covered in chocolate on a wafer, chocolate balls and what they called brownies and weren't, but the menu described as plum cake of orange and chocolate with plum jam. Then, a coffee bar. There was another bar at the end of the room. We each went there to have a glass of water. Too much wine and cava in too short a time! The menu advertised that we would be served banana ice cream with crumbles and toffee sauce, cones of maracuya mousse and raspberry mousse. These never made an appearance and we scoured the room and the offerings pretty well because Clay was desperate for his daily ice cream fix by now. No ice cream! We were outside walking back to the bus by 9:50pm and just in time. As the bus doors were opening to us, the skies which had been flashing with lightening opened up and poured. The last people to board were wet. Don't know how they handled the people leaving in later buses. It was not raining on the side of the terminal building where they let us out. But,when we walked out the other side there were Voyager staff waiting with umbrellas and a good thing. It was just blasting gale force winds and sideways pouring rain. Debbie just about got carried away by the wind in her umbrella and Clay's and many other's umbrellas just collapsed or turned inside out!
We got back to our cabin to find a surprise. A tiny, duck-shaped wicker basket. It had 4 chocolate eggs and 1 marzipan egg and one dark green dyed hard boiled real egg. The candies were all from the basket provider which had a big sticker on the botton of the basket. It was Schluckwerder and the label was in German and said it was made in Deutschland. We assume the real green-dyed egg was not an original part of the basket but that it was added here on the ship. Also, we had 2 pink placemats on the bed. They are our invitation to an "International Food Court" that is to be served by the crew representing 30 nations and will be held on crew deck 3 including a tour of the back of the house. This event is to be held on Sunday, April 23rd at 6:45pm. The other surprise was that Clay had eaten his half of the giant meringue we picked up at the patisseria before we left for the evening and had rewrapped the store's paper around Debbie's half and put it on the bedside table for her. She did not want to ruin her appetite before dinner, but wanted to have it to eat in case she was still hungry after dinner. She was still hungry after dinner. Surprise! The wrapped meringue was gone from the night table and from the cabin. We even checked the refrigerator. Gone! We suppose that Mishiel threw it away, or she ate it, but in any event it was gone. Anyway, Debbie missed her Easter treat. The ship left on time right at 11pm. So, evidently everyone got back on time today. Jamie is still joking about being late in Monaco and holding up the ship. He was also joking about it on the next Voyager Today on TV. There was a day with a black screen on Voyager Today's channel 4. Jamie joked with the people he interviewed that he had stood them up because he was caught in traffic in Monaco. We were in it on the bus back that day and can confirm that it was pretty much creeping gridlock. Anyway, now Jamie has stories to tell. He was the last to board the bus and stood in the rear door stairwell. Someone told him that he could come up and have a seat. He replied that the Captain said he had to stay in the hole! This should be good for Jamie-stories for years to come.
Sorry this is so late, but Debbie was too depressed about that dark green, hard-boiled egg and missing meringue to write last night!
Barcelona photos