1958 was the year I was born and when I saw this sign above my head as I sat at the tiny table of the crammed eatery near my departure gate at Dulles International Airport, I knew it was going to be a good trip. You see, Don suggested we take a cruise to celebrate my 67th birthday this year but before you get all emotional about what a great guy he is (don’t get me wrong, he is a great guy) understand that this is his way of rationalizing an expensive undertaking so he could relive his 1972 Mediterranean Cruise on the USS JFK. As soon as the words, “Why don’t we take a Mediterranean cruise for your birthday next year?” left his mouth our 16 day tour of Spain, France & the Italian Riveria was already booked. A few days later I was telling my friend Kim about how this all went down and asked if she and her husband, Doug might consider coming along. This is why we were now awaiting their arrival so we could board the plane to Barcelona, Spain. Practically a full year of planning had gone into our itinerary with Kim & I partnering on excursion selections, accomodations, transportation and shipboard ammenities. I think the many years we spent working together gave us the ability to fully trust the others choices with a high level of confidence. We were not wrong.
Our arrival in Barcelona came after a smooth flight. We wouldn’t be able to check into our accomodations at the Hotel Indigo Plaza Espana for several hours yet but we were able to drop off our luggage & down some coffee before we set out on a hop on/hop off bus tour overview of the city. We planned 2 days in Barcelona before embarking on our cruise and to be honest, it wasn’t enough time.
The weather forecast for Barcelona called for showers. The bus tickets included earphones that you plugged into jacks on the bus which enabled you to listen to an audiotour of the sights you were passing by. The sound quality was awful, some of the jacks didn’t work, some of our earphone sets didn’t work (Don had one side & I had the other) but it was enough for you to get the gist of the prerecorded scripts. We hopped off on the famous Passeig de Gracia so we could walk by all the high end shops and get a better look at the spectacular Modernisme architecture.
The bus has 2 different routes: red & blue which lead you to different parts of the city. As we hopped back on the rain started in earnest and although there is a retracting roof on the double decker bus the heavy rains caused the seats nearest the open air windows to flood. The rain also caused a severe slow down of the already heavy traffic so the bus took an inordinately long amount of time to progress even a little. This is not to say there wasn’t entertainment. A large group that seemed to be an Italian family boarded the bus. They quickly began an argument with the bus driver about the route they were on. The stop they wanted had already been passed and they would have to negotiate a whole route to be able to get back to their stop. They were all smoking on the bus ( a no-no) with some opting for weed and some opting for tobacco. At this point our driver, who must have already been frustrated by the Italians, traffic & weather found a car parked in his bus stop. He proceeds to jump off the bus and begin screaming and searching the nearby shops for the driver of the car. This causes the Italians to vociferiously cheer him on from the underwater seats which they are now inhabiting. Once the driver returns and we are again under way, the Italians decide they would rather stand up on the upper deck than sit in the sodden seats which necessitates a lot of trips upstairs by the tour guide to enforce the “you must remain seated rule”. By the time the bus arrives at our hotel stop, it’s check in time for us!
As jet lag begins to hit pretty hard we opt to honor the Spanish tradition of la siesta. A tapas selection and cocktails would follow later that evening.
As a tribute to how delicious and visually appealing the tapas we ordered was we decided not to take any food porn photos. (Actually, we were starving by this time and didn’t stop for air let alone pictures. Even our resident cinematographer, Doug Palmer, didn’t get a shot in.) Rest assured that I did take a furlough from my no alchohol lifestyle so that I could appreciate the excellent wines produced by the various regions we visited during this trip. In fact, I would say that I appreciated them much more since abstaining for the past 3 years. Tomorrow would be a busy day as we had booked entrance to La Sagrada Familia & planned a visit to Museu de la Musica.
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