October 3, 2016

This morning the Barcelona, Spain, temperature was 20 C with overcast skies and a light wind. 

We started the Italy, Greece, Turkey & Malta cruise with an “official” disembarkation from the previous cruise, since we are staying on the same ship.

We met in Deck 4’s Quasar Lounge with Vedrana and the passengers continuing on the next cruise.  We had to officially “leave” the ship, so the group of continuing passengers lined up to “end” the voyage and surrender the old Seapass (ID) cards. Then as the line continued, we were issued our new Seapass card and had a photo taken, as we “boarded” the ship without even leaving it.  We were officially on the new cruise.  With our new Seapass cards, we went to the exit booth right beside the others to have the card scanned, then, off we went to walk to the Christopher Columbus statue at the foot of the shopping street, La Rambla.  It took about 25 minutes to walk there.

As we approached the Columbus Monument, to the late 15th century explorer  Christopher Columbus, we passed late 19th century buildings the old port of Barcelona building, the Catalona Naval building and the Advana Building were nearby as well as the Gobierro Militer building.

Then the avenue called La Rambla, or Las Ramblas, could be seen. It is primarily a pedestrian boulevard about 1.2 kilometers long.  Originally, a creek ran along the route where monasteries, convents and a university hugged the banks.  By 1766 the creek had dried up, the city walls were demolished and the old buildings were razed. A new avenue was designed with many wealthy families building great houses along the route.  Each of the five sections of La Rambla was named after one of the old buildings and now the boulevard sometimes is referred to as Las Ramblas, for the five old buildings and their situation along the street.   The northern end has a large square with the Canaletes fountain as its attraction.  La Rambla has one lane of traffic on either side of a 50 meter wide centre walkway and two way bicycle lanes.  There are hotels, restaurants, souvenir stands and kiosks, some selling tickets to Flamenco dance shows. 

 About the middle section, at the site of the former Saint Joseph convent on La Rambla, is now the Mercat de la Boqueria on the west side. Nearby at Pla de la Boqueria, there are flower selling stalls along the boulevard north of it.   At the southeast corner is a building with a dragon hanging onto the corner of the building and other unusual decorations.  

 After Canaletes Square, to the north, runs a shopping street, Passeig de Gracia. There are apartments, cafés, restaurants and brand name high end stores along its length on ground level of the buildings as well as stores like H & M and Guess.  Along the way are some Antoni Gaudi designed buildings.  Casa Batlló is the first apartment building. The residence of a wealthy family, Gaudi was hired to renovate the building and he created of his unique fantasy designs made from glass and stone that bend and curve as a wave.  The building’s floors and inner courtyard contain 5,000 square metres.  Pillars on the first two floors are made of Montjuic stone. The windows are opened and closed on a counterweight system.  Including the other two building in the street block, also Gaudi designs - Casa Amatller and Casa Lleo-Morera the street is known as the "Block of Discord".

A few streets further north is Gaudi’s Casa Milà “La Pedrera” which, since 1984, has been a UNESCO Cultural World Heritage site.  The façade of La Pedrera, originally completed in 1910, has recently been restored. The building is about seven storeys high and has on observation platform on the roof, from where people can view the city. These buildings were on the bus tour that we took on our first day in Barcelona, but we could not appreciate the structures, as the bus passed by them too quickly.

We reversed our route to find the 600-year-old Gothic-style Metropolitan Cathedral Basilica of Barcelona.  As we walked back toward the waterfront 12 blocks away, we noted that streets had ramps on the right of the road that led to parkades under the streets and perhaps surrounding buildings.

Cathedral of Barcelona is also known as Cathedral of the Holy Cross and St. Eulalia. The crypt of St. Eulalia is located in the Cathedral. The Cathedral opens onto a large square.  There are also cloisters attached to the cathedral.  Inside there are at least 18 chapels along the sides of the main area of the building.  Manyof them  hold large silver religious sculptures.  As we were in the cloisters, watching the white geese by the pond, the church bells chimed noon.  After walking around the inside of the church, we walked outside along its exterior and heard a street musician playing a lovely melody on a classical guitar.  At the back of the church was the intersection of two streets – Carrer de Bisbe and Carrer de la Pietat.  Not far away was an arched enclosed bridge about 8 meters over the street spanning two 17th century buildings.  We gradually made our way toward La Rambla and passed Enrique Tomas, Pernileria and Xarcuterie, where the shop displayed about five jambons (pig legs) of different prices.  It is a delicacy to shave cured meat from aged jambons.  The longer it is aged the higher the price.  We decided to rest in a local café, el Floret, where we ordered café de leche and a croissant for under two Euros each.  As we left the café we saw two policemen mounted on white horses, walking down the street into Placa Reial.

Placa Reial, a picturesque square with street lamps designed by Gaudi, on the site where the Cupuchin monastery once stood on La Rambla. There is a beautiful fountain at its center.  We returned to La Ramlbla on a side street that came out near the Oriental Hotel., just a couple of blocks from the Columbus Monument. On the side of the Columbus monument, away from the water, is where the Santa Monica convent once stood.  Nearby is the Wax Museum and Erotica Museum. We saw at least five street performers in this first block, with props and themselves painted in one colour and standing still or posing for tourist pictures.  When not moving, you think that they are statues.

We walked back to the ship taking about half an hour.  The terminal was busy with people arriving for the cruise.  Just inside the terminal was the pre-boarding security check, just like at airport security.  We spotted Brian and Brendene, our hosts, while they were completing the boarding health questionnaire.  We could skip through the check-in lines since we already had our new Seapass cards for the cruise.

We entered the ship on Deck 4 and were presented with a choice of champagne or mimosas.  Then we climbed up to Deck 14 to the Oceanview Café for the buffet lunch.  On our way back to our stateroom, we stopped on Deck 5 at the Café al Bacio for frappés .  We have the same stateroom as on the previous cruise, so we did not need to move our belongings to another stateroom.  We checked the documents in our room and the excursion tickets and had to get tickets printed for one of the excursions.  Then it was time for the mandatory Lifeboat Drill which seems to take forever waiting for all the passengers to get to their meeting stations.  In reality, it takes about 35 minutes.  After the Lifeboat Drill, we met Brian and Brendene, as they returned to their stateroom and chatted with them for a few minutes. 

Soon the captain’s daily announcement was broadcast with the information that some loading needed to be completed and it would take about 20 minutes, so sail away would be 15 minutes late at about 5:15 p.m.  Larry went to watch the sail away and looked down at the little bit of goods still to be loaded and noticed that a dock worker was in the water trying to salvage a pallet of something that had fallen in the water between the dock and the ship.  The ship did not leave its berth until after 5:45.

Our dinner seating time was 6 so we went to find our new table.  There were three tables for the group, but the six person table assigned to Ursula and Reiner had four empty seats. Carol, Flo, Sue and Suanne sat at a four person table and we sat with Brian, Brendene, Pat and Frank, again.  Brendene spoke to the Maitre d’ to arrange that we just have two tables of six.

Tonight for the appetizer we selected Roasted red beets and Thai spring roll.  We both chose the seared salmon with potatoes and vegetables and for dessert we picked Dulce de Leche crème brule.

After dinner the house band, Front Row was playing dance music in the Grand Foyer.  The line up for the Guest Relations desk was still 20 people long even though a staff of five was assisting people.  It had not seemed to change in length since the Life boat drill ended around 4:30.

The theater entertainment was the MacDonald brothers, from Scotland playing guitar, violin, accordion and some Celtic flutes.  They were crowd pleasers last night.  We told Brian and Brendene not to miss them.

Today we walked 10.26 miles.