Sailing to Ibiza

 



 

In an effort to shake the jet lag we made ourselves stay up until 11 pm last night. In spite of that we were both awake at 5:30. A bit overcast but not raining or cold so OK with us. We decided to have a morning of walking and seeing some sites before getting on the ship so we started out at 7:30 and walked 5 km to the Sagrado Familia – an exceptionally  ornate church that has been undergoing construction for many years and isn’t supposed to be finished for a while yet. It was a great walk along the Diagonal Mar, which is a wide pedestrian/bike friendly travelway with the tram and the cars running on the outsides of the road. We saw a very interesting gas station – right on the side of the road so all the vehicles do is sort of pull over and the attendant, taking his life in his hands, steps out and fills you up. We walked the 5 km back to the hotel then headed out on a short walk to the beach to watch the surfers.

 

Doug suggests that a distracted driving law is not needed in Spain. Spaniards must use one hand to hold the phone to their ear and the other to gesticulate wildly while talking. Result: no hand remains for the steering wheel so they cannot possibly drive while talking on their cell phones.

The bus picked us up at 1 pm for the short ride to the ship. The check in was quick and easy but we couldn’t get into our cabin until about 2:30.They did serve a buffet lunch so we were able to kill some time there. We discovered once we were on board that just as we had suspected, the decision had been made to not go to Egypt because of all the riots. This is too bad as one of the things Norma was looking forward to was the pyramids. Instead of this we are going to another port in Turkey. We need to find out what they do about the two excursions we had booked but there was such a line-up we decided to check it out tomorrow.

Got the bags unpacked and attended the life boat drill – a mandatory presentation. Had a lovely dinner in the Grand Dining room. One of the nice things about this cruise is that it is open seating with no assigned times so you can just go when you want. There also is no charge for coke so Doug is happy. In fact we have a small fridge in our room that is stocked for our use.

We stood on our verandah to watch Barcelona as we left. It has been a great day.