Mediterranean cruise and European adventure - Day 4 - Barcelona

Barcelona and Embarkation

Saturday morning we got up and ate breakfast in the hotel again. Then we finished packing and checked out before waiting in the lobby for our tour to pick us up. I had arranged for Barcelona Day Tours to take us on a half day tour before dropping us off at the port to board the ship. They picked us up around 9 AM and we began the tour. First we drove past a block of historical houses that were originally part of an architectural competition. One of the houses was designed by Gaudi and is called Casa Batllo. (Gaudi didn’t win, by the way.) The house is really neat with it’s skull shaped balconies and dragon scale roof. From there we drove on to one of Gaudi’s other houses in the city La Padrera. Once again, it was not well-received in it’s time. It’s large windows and organic flowing design apparently made people think it looked like a quarry.



From there we drove onward to La Sagrada Familia. This tour didn’t go inside, but we did walk around a bit and see the two completed facades and got a couple of photos from a distance. We got back in the van and continued to Park Guell. This was a large expansive park that was originally intended to be a subdivision. But people didn’t buy any of the parcels of land there for various reasons so Gaudi was the only person who lived there and ultimately, after his death, it became a park. It was really beautiful and there weren’t too many people there as they limit the number of visitors the are allowed in the park at any one time.






We spent probably about an hour total there at the park before proceeding onward to Montjuic, a “mountain” there in Barcelona. Coming from Colorado, we would not really call it a mountain but it was certainly a higher hill. We stopped there to take in a view of the city before driving past the site of the Olympic games in 1992.

By this point, we were all feeling ready to get on the ship. I would have been perfectly happy to skip everything past Park Guell, but I can see where some people might want to see the view from Montjuic and see the Olympic sites (even though there’s not much to see, honestly.) We arrived at the port slightly after 1 PM and we were hungry and ready for the ship! The security line wasn’t long, but we did have to wait to check-in. At check-in they gave Emmaline her bracelet for the kid’s club, which was a new thing (usually that’s a separate line). The lady there didn’t seem super with-it otherwise. I had to ask for a Navigator and then she asked me what that was. Someone else told her what to do.

Then we had a fairly long line to get on board the ship. Usually we are early to port and we are in one of the first boarding groups and we get right on. While it was open boarding (meaning, they weren’t calling boarding numbers any longer and anyone could just board) we had to wait quite awhile for families in front of us to be announced. I would have thought that it would be easy to walk right on at 1:30 PM. We did skip the embarkation photo because that was quite a long line.

Once onboard, Roger and Emmaline took our luggage directly to the room (since rooms become available at 1:30) and I went to see if I could get a reservation for Palo brunch because I wasn’t able to get a reservation in advance. With only one sea day, there were limited spots, but I was hopeful that some reservations were held back (usually they are). Much to my surprise, they were all booked up so I put my name on the wait list. I guess since we boarded late, others had snatched them all up.

I went down to the room to meet up again with Roger and Emmaline and apparently they had just opened the rooms because Emmaline and Roger were just then going in to the stateroom area. I’m so glad I got to go in with them because Heather, our amazing travel agent (who is a great friend we met on our Alaskan cruise two years ago), had ordered a special room decoration just for Emmaline to celebrate her birthday. Even though she doesn’t turn 10 until we get home, we celebrated her birthday onboard and it was so fun to see the room all decorated. She was so excited by the decorations. I’m so glad we met Heather; she is a treasure.

We dropped our stuff off and then went up to deck 9 to Cabanas to each lunch. Lunch was still quite busy at that time, but we loaded up our plates and had a nice lunch. After lunch we unpacked and organized our things in the room until 3 PM, at which point Emmaline and I went to the Promenade Lounge for a meet up with others in our Facebook cruise group. Roger stayed in the room to have a rest and then start some laundry (which was quite busy already). At the meet, Emmaline met up with a friend she had been emailing with from our Facebook group prior to the cruise. They became fast friends in real life and asked to go to the kid’s club together so off they went.

After about an hour at the meet and greet, I returned to the room to finish organizing a bit before the muster drill at 4:30. Emmaline returned around the same time when they closed the club for muster. After the muster drill, we made our way up to deck 9 for the Sail Away party. I stayed for a little bit (until they played the “When You Wish Upon A Star” horn) before going back to the room to finish unpacking and organizing. Emmaline hung out at the party with her friend and another new one she met that day in the club. The three girls danced until around 5:45 when the party ended and she came back to the room. At 6 PM it was time for dinner. Normally we have late seating, but since we had seen all the shows and late seating is even later in Europe (8:30) we decided to go for early dining. Ultimately I think it was the right call this time around.

We were pleased to find we had the server we had requested, Jay from Jamaica, who had been our server on our cruise on the Magic last March. He had a new assistant server that we didn’t like quite as well, unfortunately, but Jay was still great. We were surprised to find that we had no tablemates and were seated alone at a table for three. We’ve not had this happen before and it was a little bit of a bummer because Emmaline didn’t have a friend at dinner, but ultimately it did make our meals a little faster, I think.



After dinner we did a little shopping in the stores and met a few characters dressed in their Spanish outfits in the atrium. I took some lovely photos of the sunset before we all turned in to get a good night’s sleep for our full day of touring the next day.



Click here for Day 5.