Cruise - Day 1 - Barcelona

Over the last several years, our good friend Uncle Frank has shared many of his experiences with us about cruising the 7 seas.  Frank has been on too many cruises to count and some of his cruising tours last over a month.  Frank knows all the 'ins' and 'outs' of cruising and even which websites to use to get the best deals.  Jens and I love to travel but we have never had the desire to cruise until Jens' Parkinson's made traveling more difficult.  So with all the stories from Uncle Frank, we were able to put an idea forward and came to the conclusion that cruising would be the best solution to our situation.  Instead of struggling with walking from site to site, we would let the sites come to us - or rather, we would sail to them.  

Uncle Frank was right.  We were actually able to save quite a bit of money on a cruise using Franks recommended website.  The problem was - this website is based in the states and they sell cruise/flight packages to American and Canadian residents only.  We could have saved a lot of money booking a cruise with the website and then saved even more money using my company employee discount for the flight.  

If you watch the news, you know that anything can happen at anytime - meaning: airport strikes and natural disasters.  We knew for sure that we wanted a package deal because if one thing goes wrong, suddenly saving a bit of money could be very expensive.  So we needed to cover ourselves with a package deal.  That way the cruise company would have to bare the cost of baggage-handler strikes, airport strikes, a tsunami wave, volcano eruptions or anything else that cannot be planned for.  If we were to buy a separate cruise tour from one company and a separate flight ticket from another company and something goes wrong with just one of the companies, we would not be fully covered and we could actually loose a lot of money.  It's a slight chance that something like this could happen but it could so why take that risk of loosing $2000 for trying to save $ 400?

So we paid full price and we were very comfortable with that decision once we herd on the news later that week, that in Spain, there was a union strike just days before our departure plus in the same week Mt. Etna, an Italian volcano near by one of our destination points, was steaming and boiling away.  Flights could be canceled due to ash or harbors could be washed away due to erupting quakes.

Departure day was Friday the 13th and the week we were to sail was also the 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.  A lot of signs were trying to signal us not to go - we should have listened but I got too wrapped up in the excitement of it all.

I will do my best to keep the travel stories as short as possible, as I will be sending out 8 postings - one for each day of the cruise.  I will share with you the 5 to 10 best pictures of the day and then send a link so that if you are interested, and have time , you can view all six hundred-something photos and videos.

We got up at 4am to make a quick breakfast of bread rolls with cheese and jelly, sliced banana with kiwi yogurt and hot steamy coffee.  Then into a taxi and on to the airport. Thank goodness Norwegian Air finally got it together to add their company to the self check-in machines.  It went so smoothly as we were in good time and no people in line.

 

 Here is the sailing plan of destination, directions and ports we will be visiting.

We arrived 3 hours later in Terminal 2 at BCN airport. A 20 minute taxi ride took us to the huge port in the beautiful city of Barcelona.  We have been to the city a number of times before so we just went straight to the ship-port.  It was our first cruise and it was already confusing once we got out of the taxi.  It was clear that the check-in people and the security people were fairly new as well.  Nothing went smoothly after this point.

All that added stress for a Parkinson's patient (and me as well) is not good.  So the first thing we did was have a smoke in the cigar lounge to unwind.

I don't smoke but I was starving so we managed to find our way to the 14th deck to have a bite n' brew for lunch.  

 

The ship has left the port and now we are starting our first official cruise.  This is deck 15.  Not that it matters.  Maybe it was deck 12 or 37.  There were so many - too many.

Today is April 13 and it's my brother-in-law's birthday so I ordered a Piña Colada in honor of his birthday.  This one is for you, Robert.  Hope you had a great day.

The ship has a design that goes in and out - it's not flat all the way across.  Our cabin is at the beginning of the back section and it's the first room that is "out".  This means that our panoramic view is greater than the cabins are "in".   It's now about 8:30 in the evening or so and the sky is dark.  Are we headed for sea sickening weather?

Baked Alaska - is what this is supposed to be.  I never had it before but I could tell from what we had to eat already, that something was wrong and this was only our second meal.  It was our first dinner on board and our waiter seemed a bit upset when we showed up at 6:30.  "Are you sure you are supposed to be at this table", the waiter asked as if we just made the biggest mistake.  We flashed him our card that showed that a new time for us had been appointed.   "Tomorrow we eat at 6",  commanded the waiter, in his east European accent; one of the very few white guys working on the ship. We were surprised to see that many of the guest were half way through their meal.  We only showed up at 6:30 because we thought that, that was the right time to come to the dinning room.  It was a very confusing day for us.  My god - give us a break! We were up at 4 and traveled through 5 times zones - well.... if we went east to west that is.

When booking your cruise, you have to say weather you want the first seating or the second seating.  They didn't ask us and we didn't know to even say it to them (although that was one of Uncle Franks reminders to us).  But just by chance, when we made our booking, we were given the first seating which was perfect for us for when Jens has to take his medicine.  When our tickets arrived by mail, it showed that now we were assigned 2nd seating.  We called the cruise office in Copenhagen and they informed us that all was taken care of but be sure to mention it to the cruise office in Barcelona when you check-in.  Something told me that nothing was taken care of.  Something told me that the booking office just said all was in order but that was why they wanted us to "just be sure to mention it" when checking-in.  Naturally with all the confusion, we forgot and just assumed that it was all taken care of as that is what we were told.  It wasn't a big deal to make the change but it was not easy.  It involved going to many levels of the ship and talking to lots of people.  

First they said there was absolutely no space available in the first seating.  But after a little talking with the maître d', he did just happen to have space after all but it would be at a table with children.  Oh god! I have to eat all my meals with children?  "Sorry", said the maître d' - "no single tables and if you want 1st seating you have to sit with children."  He continued on with a wrinkled, troubled look on his face, "There are many children on this cruise this week."  I'm thinking:  Children?  Tsunami?  They are sort of the same thing but eventually all the water goes back out to sea.  I can still hear the screaming children in my head. "Well... if we have to eat with children, then we have to eat with children" I said and continued, "because my partner has to take his meds at 5 and 8 and then we have to be in bed by 10"  (2nd seating is at 9).  "Oh well why didn't you say so" asked the maître d'.  "I have a table for 2 - do you mind a table just for the 2 of you?" , he asked.  We promptly replied, "perfect!"

OK - so I get the feeling that the waiters are mega stressed.  George - we come to find out, is the name of our waiter - is taking the plates off of our table almost as soon as he puts them in front of us.  "They're about to start! They're about to start!",  he kept crying to the other helper waiter at our table.  Imagine - at a table for 2 and we have 2 waiters.  Pretty impressive but my radar is always set on high for things to bitch about.  On this ship it was easy to do.  We were disappointed that our table was so far away from the ship windows but maybe it didn't really matter because they drew the curtains. It was dark red velvet everywhere - the chairs, the carpet, the curtains, the wallpaper,  Hence - it was called the Red Velvet Dinning Room. And though the Barcelona sky was cloudy, there was still plenty of light to be enjoyed.  But the curtains were drawn and then suddenly the place when black - did we hit an ice-berg? Isn't that what happened on the Titanic - they hit an ice-berg and then the lights went out - right?   No.  Suddenly 50 waiters come parading down the double level dinning room stairs and fanned out across the room with Baked Alaska on fire.  It was a big Ooo and Aaah show and everybody applauded.  Jens thought it was a ridiculous display of bad taste.  But I knew it would give me some "sauce" for this blog.

After lunch we went back to our cabin to see if our bags had arrived.  They didn't and we knew it would be some time before the bags would show up in our room as this is what they had told us at the cruising office in Copenhagen and it also is mentioned in the ticket booklet.  This pix was taken after dinner and our bags had shown up while we were playing with the 'not-supposed-to-be-gooey' meringue on the Baked Alaska.  We were impressed with the size of the room and the fantastic balcony.  Because the ceiling was so low, the cabin appeared to be very small.  But it was actually very large with a full size sofa and a bathroom that was only a tad smaller that what we have at home.  Now if only the sun would shine so we could sit out and enjoy the balcony.

After dinner we found ourselves back in the Cigar Lounge for an after dinner toke.  We squeezed ourselves between 3 American women and a British bloke in a gray jacket suit with bright red socks.  Among several things, they just happened to be talking about the great theater shows every evening that start at 9:30. It was 9:10 and I said to Jens, " Hey, it's just about to start - why don't we give it a try?"  So I just blurted out to the women, "you just talked us into it - we are gonna go see the show."  They were so happy to have helped us with ship entertainment. 

It's a huge theater and we learned not to be early.  Oddly enough, it's the back rows that fill up first. There was plenty of space every night right up front and at the last minute.  But like I said - we were early and it was just enough time to send me over the edge. The pre-entertainment show was Bingo - in 5 very loud languages with heavy duty Italian accent - enna ter-ti-too-ah.  "What the hell did she just say?", I asked Jens.  It was N32.  And so it went for 20 minutes until curtain time.  N32 in Italian.  N32 in Spanish.  N32 in English.  N32 in German.  N32 in French.  Aya-six-ah-tina.  I16 in 5 languages.  Thank god someone finally called out BINGOAH!

Lots of dancing, great voices, wild costumes and colorful stage props entertain us for an hour or so just before being gently rocked to sleep.