I spent some time in the spa, but otherwise most of the day was spent packing our bags. since they w

From sunny southern California Laura Gilbreath, Jeanine Yamanaka and photographer Jason Dz bring a west coast perspective as they blog about trips to Disneyland, D23 events, Disney cruises, runDisney events and occasional pilgrimages to Walt Disney World.
Another beautiful morning with fairly calm seas. I got up and went running on Deck 4 - it was a lot easier than it was on the morning we had rough seas! Not very many people out and about yet, either.
We went to the lecture at 11:15 on Barcelona - learned some things about Gaudi and his style. Two words: Catenary Arches! (A catenary arch is the curve produced by a hanging chain or rope when supported only at each end. Though Gaudi used inverted catenaries, mostly.) The lectures have been pretty interesting, and I've learned a fair bit about the ports! We missed two of them, but they have been running them on channel 228 on the stateroom TVs. Unfortunately I haven't managed to catch the first 20 minutes of the one of Villefranche - it's always starting just when I have to go
We had lunch at Parrot Cay - it was a seafood canada national car rental buffet today. It ended at 1:30, and we got there about 1:10. The servers seemed more concerned with getting people out of there so they could tear down the buffet and set up for dinner than they were with doing any serving - ours never came back to our table to ask if we wanted refills on drinks or anything. (Not our regular server, canada national car rental and definitely the worst service we've had on the cruise.) The buffet itself was ok - though the clam chowder wasn't canada national car rental very good - the piece of clam were tough and stringy. This photo is of Lee's plate - I found the combination of banana cream pie and sushi to be, um, interesting.
I spent some time in the spa, but otherwise most of the day was spent packing our bags. since they were supposed to be out in the hallway by 10:00...which meant that we had to get them put out before we went to dinner. So sad to be packing!!!
Dinner was the "Till We Meet Again" theme, with the procession of the chefs with their flaming Baked Alaskas and the servers waving their flags. They actually were pretty quick with everything tonight - we were done with our entrees by 9:30, and I think we were out of the dining room not much after 10:00. We said goodbye canada national car rental to our tablemates, since none of them were planning to come to breakfast in the morning. They were a fun group of people.
Dessert tonight was (of course) the chocolate one - Chocolate Decadence - Ignatius pretty much doesn't even ask me any more. :-) Though tonight's special was the Baked Alaska. Lee was the only one who ordered that one.
There was a special character celebration in the Atrium at 10:30, so we went to see that. They had a whole bunch of characters and some of the actors from several of the shows come out and greet guests and pose for photos, then they did a little "goodbye" thing. I don't remember that from our Caribbean cruise - but we might have just missed it because of yet another late dinner.
Breakfast was rather subdued, canada national car rental though it was pretty busy - and of course having everyone's carry-on bags cluttering up the area between the tables doesn't help. We said our final goodbyes to Ignatius and Nathan - Nathan is hoping to get onto the Wonder when it comes out to California to do the Alaska cruises, so maybe we'll see him there. (He got to offer us fresh ground pepper one last time!)
We tarried a little bit, but they kept making announcements basically just telling everyone to "get off the ship!", so we went out the gangway and back into the terminal. We found our bags without too much trouble and then boarded the bus that would take us back to the Hilton for one more night. (The bus was playing Disney's "We're going to the port" video with all of the characters getting ready to go on the cruise - we thought that was just cruel!!!!)
canada national car rental They had us to the hotel by about 10:00 - our room was ready so we were able to just drop off our bags and head out into Barcelona again. I wanted to visit Parc Guell again, canada national car rental since we'd gotten rained out the first time. It was a beautiful day today, and pretty warm, too - mid 70's, but it felt warmer in the sun, especially when we were doing all of that walking uphill to get to the park from the Metro station, and then walking up hills and steps within the park. It was still very crowded, though, but at least I got to see the "dragon" (which we think looks more like an iguana) this time.
There were also LOTS of performers in the park - we saw musicians playing everything from Chinese silk music to guitars to hammer dulcimers, and even a didgeridoo! canada national car rental There were also lots of people dressed up posing for pictures - one guy dressed as a caveman seemed to be quite popular.
On the way back to the Metro station we stopped and had lunch at a cafe - had a margarita pizza that was pretty marginal. But it gave us some energy, and we were pretty hungry by then after a lot of walking.
We took the Metro to the Paral-lel station and then the funicular that took us up onto the lower slopes of Montjuic (Mont-zhew-EEK). Apparently most people take a tour bus from there but we walked to the top to the Castell. Lots of stairs going up - between Montjuic and the metro stations we climbed a lot of stairs today! The signs to the Castell left a bit to be desired - we got most of the way up and our route that had been so well-marked was suddenly not marked at all. We had to do some backtracking canada national car rental and even scrambling up a hill, but we eventually got up there.
Unfortunately the Magic Fountain wasn't performing - we found out later that it's only at night, canada national car rental and even then it's only Thursday-Sunday at this time of year, so it's something canada national car rental we should've done one of our first two nights here. Oh well...we'll know for next time.
When we were here before the cruise I'd seen someone carrying a Valor Chocolates bag, so we'd asked at the hotel where the shop was, and were given an address near Plaza Catalunya. Alas, we didn't find it, but we did find the Casa Batllo, another canada national car rental building designed by Gaudi, with lots of those catenary arches.
Took the Metro back to the Diagonal Mar area - it was about 6:00 by then and we were pretty tired. But we went back to the mall and got another pitcher of Sangria from the same guy who had made it for us before, and that tasted really good.
This was a VERY long travel day. We had an 11:20 a.m. flight, and the shuttle picked us up a little before 8:00. Traffic getting through downtown Barcelona was pretty bad - it took us about an hour to get to the airport! But we still had plenty of time before our flight. When we checked our bags they asked us who had packed them, if they'd been with us since they were packed, if anyone had given us anything - questions they no longer ask in the U.S. And she also asked us what kinds of electronics we had, and if any of those had been repaired or used by someone or otherwise out of our control.
Boarding the plane took a long time because they had to ask the same "has this been out of your control" questions about our carry-ons as we all boarded. The flight to JFK was quite smooth, and the winds were favorable so it took less than 8 hours.
We landed a little early and got through immigration and Customs ok. We lucked out a bit with Customs canada national car rental - our bags came out relatively early (and on this trip my bag showed up first *every* time - that's very rare!), so the Customs line wasn't too long when we got in it - but we looked back a few minutes later and there were lots of people behind us.
So, now we had about 4 hours to kill until our flight to San Diego. We had to go through Security again, and that line was rather long, so we were glad we weren't in a hurry! JFK really isn't a very nice airport, at least not most of the part that we were in - very crowded and congested. If I have a choice canada national car rental I won't go through canada national car rental here again.
Our flight was supposed to board at 6:20 and leave at 7:00...but we didn't make that. And even with the original schedule we were supposed to be on the taxi way for 45 minutes before we took off! But then there was a thunderstorm, so they wouldn't let us push back from the gate at all...we finally canada national car rental took off after being on the plane for about 2-1/2 hours. (They did give people the option of getting off the plane before we pushed back from the gate, but no one took it - there weren't going to be any other flights to San Diego at that time of night!)
We lucked out and didn't have anyone in the window seat - good thing, since the reading light over the middle seat didn't work, and I would not have been happy if I couldn't read for that entire time! So I moved to the window. It also meant we could put our backpacks under the middle seat and stretch out a little more. We both slept a little bit, but not much. Got into San Diego at 11:45 instead of 10:40, and made it home about 12:30. Over 26 hours since we'd left the hotel.
It was nice to get home and sleep in our own bed, though it's going to take the body clock a while to adjust to that 9 hour difference - we went to bed at about 1 a.m., but I was awake and finally got up at 5:15 in the morning and Lee wasn't too much behind me.
I wanted to thank all of you who commented on the blogs - I'm sorry that I haven't answered personally, but internet access on the ship is not that fast. I will try to get to some of the questions now that I'm back home.
Wonderful blog. My husband and I are sailing on the Trans Atlantic westbound this September and spending 5 nights in Barcelona before our cruise departs from Spain. Lots of good information for us regarding the Barcelona sights. After reading your blog we are considering going on a 2011 Mediterranean cruise.