We felt sad, slightly, to be sat on our balcony eating breakfast and simultaneously waving to people we knew who were saying goodbye to Sojourn. Ten days from now we will be one of those sadly, but let's not wish time away?
Before 09:00 we hit the streets of Barcelona and headed up Las Ramblas straight to the Cathederal, right in the centre of the Gothic area of the city. With tight alleyways, car traffic is much reduced and it is a pleasure to wander around the many squares and courtyards, and indeed the magnificent Cathederal and its many chapels.
Because Barcelona is the phone-crime city of the world, we've eschewed TomTom today in favour of old-fashioned methods, a good check that our faculties remain intact for when all the electrons run dry! We wander around the crazy little alleys and pathways loving the fabulous buildings that date, in some cases, back to C14, including what's left of the old city wall, mostly long gone as Barcelona expanded. Exhausting our appetite for matters ancient, we refocus on 1901+ by relocating to the southern end of Passeig de Gràcia.
We break for elevenses right by the Apple Store (!) and head North identifying all the amazing architecture the city is so famous for. In almost every block is a magnificent house designed to let its owner show off how wealthy he was, crafted by the architects of the time, the most famous of which is Gaudi.
Heading further we find examples from Urpi, Puig i Cadafaich and Deomenech i Montaner too, all household names obviously, including a frogfountain (photo on FB, of course) before deviating East to walk around the Gaudi designed Sagrada Fimilia, still under construction well over a century after it's inception. Indeed there's even talk it will be completed during 2026, but I wouldn't hold your breath! On a previous visit we scaled the heights to one if it's colourfully decorated acorns, so on this occasion decided not to, and continued on after lunch to find a new area we'd been told about. Here is the museum of design, sadly closed on Mondays, a gherkin quite a bit bigger than ours, and most curiously, right next to the new Opera House of Catalonia, an open-air flea-market of huge proportions complete with mirrored ceilings and crazy angled walkways.
Continuing the previously unexplored part of the City we went to the Arc de Triomf, which looks quite like its French counterpart in some respects, although nowhere near as large. Continuing down this avenue we end up in a lovely park which also houses a zoo, but time prevented us from exploringnfurther. And we turned back along the coastline towards home again.
Back aboard we attended the regulation fire drill with all the 350 new people who have arrived today, this time observing three couples failed to show, two of these nonchalantly turning up halfway through like it didn't matter, but I have all your numbers, you'll get chucked out of our lifeboat if necessary! The other pair will have been given a severe ticking off and made to do it right away or get thrown off ... since Concordia there's no-one who gets let off this important drill.
Immediately after, it is time to leave and out of nowhere an enormous tug appeared. The wind has picked up and we are pinned to the quay, unable to pull ourselves off. We've seen this before, both times on QE2 and famously in Bergen we had to wait until a tug came from elsewhere (Tromso I recall) to pull us off, delaying our departure for 6 hours. The muscular tug soon has us in its grasp like a leading man, and we are politely swung around the harbour and faced the right way to sail out gracefully into the wind.
On returning to dress for dinner, we are amazed to find our refrigerator has worked its way out of the fitting under our bar, and all our coffee crockery is smashed on the bar floor, even though our wine glasses are intact and nothing elsewhere is disturbed at all, the tug's vibrations mush have hit a specific frequency and clearly caused selective mayhem!
We manage to wangle a table in Restaurant Two tonight at short notice and although a few things are not perfect, it's mostly a fabulous dinner, and the wine is excellent. Afterwards we head down to the night club (yes you did just read that) but only to find the new Cruise Director Sophie, whom we know from past experience, and have a quick catch-up before admitting we are actually getting old and need to retire!
Comments
Post a Comment