Cruise:Barcelona

September 8, 2000

The ship didn't arrive in Barcelona until noon so we had the morning free. We got up at 7:15 and had our last breakfast in the main dining room which was the anticipated (and worth it) huevos rancheros. We went back to the cabin and worked on packing (we expanded a lot with our shopping). Jill took off at 10:45 for bingo and cleaned up our pictures in the photo gallery. Bingo was an interesting ordeal with cut throat old ladies (jackpot was $2500) who didn't appreciate the newcomers for the jackpot round. The cruise director was a most annoying number caller (flirty Gertie is in cabin "30").. I hadn't realized that bingo was such a gambling game. I had assumed it was for fun but it's not. The church ladies really get mean over bingo. I didn't win anything with the one round of cards that I bought for $10. It was a good thing too. The people playing with 6+ cards would've lynched me winning with 1.

After docking we went ashore and easily found a taxi. Since it was 12:15 we headed straight for lunch. The taxi dropped us off at the start of Las Ramblas. We walked up the street and easily found Los Caracoles (a great place from our last trip to Spain 1 year ago) and Art Escudellers (hand painted ceramics and other art from Spain). The restaurant didn't open until 1 so we went and bought a couple of Talivera sangria pitchers before lunch.

Center of Gothic Quarter

At Los Caracoles we had salad, sangria, chiffarones (baby fried squid) and awesome seafood paella. After lunch (slightly buzzed) we contemplated just going back to the ship for a nap but after we didn't find an available taxi we wandered around the Gothic Quarter and enjoyed being back in Barcelona. We bought a leather briefcase for Jill and come Cuban cigars for Frank. We ended up at Bar Del Pi where we sat outside under an umbrella and drank 2 pitchers of sangria (small but strong) and watched people walking by.

Sangrias at Bar Del Pi

It was about time to meet Carrie and Scott so we walked back toward the cathedral. Jill fell asleep on the cathedral steps (leaning back, knees up) while Keith walked around. When we finally decided they were a no show we headed to Bar Irati (our favorite tapas place) and snacked on their outstanding tapas (see picture) and had a couple of beers before heading back to the ship for the last dinner.

Just about falling over

Steps of the Cathedral

Our favorite Tapas bar

The Tapas!!

Our last nights dinner was Alaskan King Crab legs that were already split down the side for easy access. We ate our dinner then asked for more. Our table ended up eating three whole extra plates of crab legs. We thought we could eat them all night! They were excellent like the lobster.

We met Scott and Carrie for a final hot tub dip then went to bed for our 4 hours of sleep since we had to be on a shuttle bus at 6am (for a 9:45 flight). We exchanged e-mail addresses and vowed to visit Scott and Carrie in Tucson, Az.

GOING HOMEÉ

The disembarking was horrible. We had left our suitcases outside our door at midnight the previous night meaning we had to keep out our shower gear and change of cloths for the morning. When we got off the ship we had to claim our luggage in the terminal. It would have been much easier just to bring our luggage down ourselves, although we are in the minority for that. Once we found our luggage we had to stuff our bathroom stuff in our suitcase and the cloths from the prior night. The porters were all busy with nervous older people so we just hauled our own luggage to the bus. We were bus no. 1 but the bus was full of people from buses 1-6 who couldn't understand the complex single digit numbering system (that's sarcasm).

The trip to the airport was short and we luckily got our luggage off the bus quickly and were one of the first couples to get checked in. Now it's 6:45am and we have three hours to wait in the Barcelona airport. We are tired and hungry and people are smoking everywhere. A true life saver was the Pan and Co (fast food sandwich shop, Spanish style) where we had french baguettes stuffed with meat/cheese. The lomo con queso (thinly sliced pork loin with cheese) really hit the spot. The flight to JFK was long and boring but uneventful. We arrived at JFK around noon on Saturday but had an agonizing 5 hour layover waiting for our next flight. To our horror there are no direct flights from JFK to Houston (only Newark) so we had to fly to Dallas, wait another 1 _ hours for our flight to Houston. We arrived about 11:30pm. It was a good thing the travel agency had sent a town car for us. I don't believe either of us could have driven home. We couldn't keep our eyes open. We got home and petted the dogs, took hot showers, and slept for what was left of the night, happy to finally be home.