Day 9 - Barcelona - 20 April 2015

We arrived in Barcelona while eating a delicious breakfast.  It's a huge port and we go outside on deck as we sail in.  We go past massive cranes and containers.  The sun is shining.  Barcelona here we come!

The ship goes quite far into the port until we get to a bridge where we stop.  I took a photo of the cabin tv tuned into the ship's webcam.  As you can see, there is another cruise ship which is in front of ours.  It's not a great picture but you can see how nice it is to have the webcam  as you can see what is happening at the front of ship

TV showing the webcam above dressing table

As we get off the ship via another lovely gangway, we see someone being taken off on a stretcher and an ambulance waiting for them.  Oh dear, that's the end of some poor soul's holiday.

We are taken down a lift in the port terminal building and straight onto a shuttle bus.  I'm impressed, the bus has a lift and there are plenty of spaces inside for people using wheelchairs, hurray!  The bus doesn't take us far and leaves us near Las Rambla,

Near but not at Las Rambla.  So that means a bit of a walk  to it.  I'm always aware of distances as I worry about my chair running out of power so I don't really want to wear it out before we get to where we want to go.  

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Did I mention it was cold?  Well it was.  Not what I was expecting at all as it had been so sunny to begin with,  Mind you, it was just after 9am so I'm ignoring it, hoping it's just the early morning chill before it heats up,  Andy is wearing a vest top and I have a very thin t shirt, but at least I have sleeves,  Brrr!

Andy takes a few pictures of the sights

There are quite a few 'living' statues here.  Must be hot for them when the weather is hot.  They must be okay today though

La Rambla

La Rambla is popular with tourists and locals and is a tree lined pedestrianised mall.  It was pretty long and we seemed to going a fair distance without actually seeing anything much on it.  I was expecting lots of stalls but apart from the living statues, a few flower stalls and 100's of Spanish students, that was it.  I never saw anyone trying to get close to us. I was on the lookout for pickpockets!  But as we got further down we saw a huge food market that looked packed with people.  We saw fellow passengers from the ship who told us it was chaos in there and they nearly got knocked over.

We carried on even further and still it was more of the same.  We should have researched things more to see exactly where we wanted to go.  If I was walking I would have hopped on a bus and checked out different areas.  But as it was we stayed put and looked out for a cafe.

Eventually we found one.  Great it had wifi so we could catch up with facebook and delete emails

We found a beautiful square full of more students.  I bet it would be even more beautiful if the sun was shining and hot.  It kept coming out briefly but there were too many clouds.  Even Andy was cold!

We really wanted to sit outside for lunch in the heat and hoped if we walked back to cafes we'd seen earlier, the sun would come out.  But no, it was just as cold

Two statues

In the end we thought 'bugger it' let's go back  to the ship and put on warmer clothes and have lunch there.  At least we've paid for the food and it will be warmer.  

Sat waiting here for shuttle bus

View of back of ship from the bus

Guess what happened when we got back on the ship?  Yes, the sun came out and suddenly it was a beautiful hot afternoon.  Yay!  So we get up onto deck 18 for a great bit of sunbathing.  Someone fell asleep!

Nice views of the Lido deck

Colourful ferry passes by

Sunset from the balcony

Tonight is another black and white tie night.  It's also the Black and White theme where we wear only black and white.  We are just not in the mood for dressing up.  It's been a hot afternoon and we feel a bit 'blah'.  Also Andy forgot his black bow tie so we debate whether a red one will really matter.  In the end we decide to not bother. We can't go down to our normal dining room unless we dress up.  So we decide to go to the Horizon buffet which is having a Mediterranean theme as we think we can go casually dressed.

So Andy  is wearing shorts and flip flops and I've got my short leggings on and t shirt.  When we go up there we find that everybody else we see is very smartly dressed up.  Ha ha. Never mind, we slink about choosing our food and try and sit as far away from everybody else.  I know some people love dressing up into 'posh mode' but I'm not really into it.  I like nice clothes but I prefer casual really.

The only thing is, we miss our table mates from the dining room.  We really like catching up each night with what the other's have been up to during the day.  Ah well, tomorrow we will join them again.  

Tomorrow we arrive at Valencia, Spain.  Thanks for reading ...