Barcelona Day #1

The time zone shift of 9 hours ahead of Santa Cruz time pays a toll on the body, especially after a flight from Miami to Barcelona in which it is nearly impossible to sleep in an upright position with your knees banged by the person in front of you reclining their seat. I was thankful for the effects of red wine that was copiously provided by the American Airlines crew.

 We arrived in Barcelona at about 10 am (their time) and after exiting the plane, we passed through Immigration rather easily. The airport was not very crowded. I was amazed that we did not have to go through Customs to declare any items, or to worry about plants or animals.

We were met at the luggage carousel by a Viking Cruise representative and after collecting our luggage, we were transported to the Renaissance Hotel on Pau Claris. There are four Renaissance Hotels in Barcelona so it is important to remember which one you are staying at to avoid later confusion. We were a bit early for room checkin so we placed our luggage with the bellhop and had a brief meeting with the Viking representatives who gave us a street map and told us when to place our luggage for ship's pick-up on Sunday morning. We found our travel partners, Bonnie and Earl, and after Earl found an ATM to extract some Euros, we set out to explore our locale.

 The hotel is centrally placed near the Las Ramblas district, a tourist trap for sure, and close to the main shopping area that is like Sax Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive. However, along this street, we found some great examples of Gaudi architecture.

We decided to get off the main street as we were not in the market for glitzy things and found ourselves on a pedestrian walkway called Rambla de Catalunya. This is a pleasant area and we stopped at a street side cafe to sample some Tapas and Sangria. Only later did we read some reviews that said avoid the offerings on the Rambla. However, it was not bad, and the dishes were interesting.

One was suspicious to me for body parts that I have seen during my General Surgical operations and I avoided ingesting it. It was called Callos a la madridenya, and I found out later it was tripe…yikes.

 However, Earl and Bonnie being from the South were in “pig heaven” so to speak and gobbled it up. Earline and I concentrated on a meatball dish and grilled provolone cheese.

 We decided we needed a brief nap before further exploration of the city and agreed to meet at 4 pm. Arising in a fog that cleared rapidly, we set off on a street walk of exploration. Going down Pau Claris, our goal was to strike out to see large pictures contained in the street map we were given.


We had already decided for our first walk that we were incapable of comprehending the subway and surface transportation system at this point in time.

 We did locate several points of interest on the map and were pleasantly surprised by our walking path that took us through quaint areas reminiscent of Venice streets. We found the old Palace of Musica, walked to the Arc de  Triomf, and found the Palacio de la Justice on a palisade that was readying itself for Earth Day the next day. The Arc was built as the main gateway entrance to the 1888 Barcelona World Fair.

Strange building with eyeballs

Palace of Music

Palacio de la Musica Catalonia

Palacio de la Musica Inside

Quaint alleys

Arc de Triumf

Interesting street lamps

Place of Justice

Puppeteers

 Walking through the arch, we saw two puppeteers putting on a great show.

With slaked throats, we decided to stop to try a Cava Sangria that is supposed to be popular in Barcelona. It appears to be Champagne based with perhaps Grenadine for sweetening. It went down easily.

Cava Sangria

 We started back to the hotel and purchased some wine for later use and were amazed at the number of appellations near Barcelona. The wine store owner took the time to educate us about some local wines that we wanted to try. Next door was a craft brew place and of course Earline had to try out a dark, breakfast stout.

We then ate some only passable paella at a place reminiscent of a fast food store and returned to the hotel to crash for the evening. Nine hours time difference continues to extract a toll. :)

T-Minus 6 Days Until Departure

The Viking Star

Well the time for departure for our Viking Star cruise of the Western Mediterranean is approaching. We had such a great experience on the Viking River Cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest that we decided to take the new Viking Star small ocean cruise boat to see how the company does with this type of travel. The Viking Star has the inaugural cruise last year and was voted the best new cruise ship. Here is a review from Cruise Critic .

You can read my river cruise blog here is you want to learn about the Viking River Cruise experience. Remember to go to the oldest posts first and read it backward to get the proper sequence.
Viking River Cruise - Amsterdam to Budapest

This itinerary seems ideal for us as I have never visited any of the places. Since this is probably classified as a "repositioning" trip, my only concerns are the short amount of time in various ports and there seems to be different ports listed on our trip than in the new 2016 Western Mediterranean cruise in their brochure. See the two maps below for the difference. I must say that I would have liked the second itinerary better but since you need to book so far in advance, you really don't have a choice when they change the trip after the fact.

Our planned trip


New advertised trip


Earline has been packing and unpacking and repacking for nearly a month as she watches weather reports on the trip. I just go with the flow. I like that dinner is "casual elegance" and that there are no tuxedo nights. In addition, Viking provides unlimited wine and beer with lunch and dinner and also provides at least one free shore excursion trip at each port. Other cruise lines pad their tab with these extra excursion costs.

Viking arranged our flights and hotels and a nice package with clear directions is mailed to you several weeks before departure. We planned for a pre-trip extension to explore Barcelona and to adjust to the time change before the cruise and we also arranged for three days in Iceland at the end of the cruise. Viking made the arrangements and it included all transportation and 5 star hotels. We were pleased with their arrangements in Amsterdam before the river cruise.

There is not much to do except have rain gear, clothing suitable for the Santa Cruz weather that seems to be very similar, and to arrange a "Park and Fly" so that we don't have to fight rush hour traffic on the morning of departure.

I'll try to post things of interest as we experience them for you vicarious readers. For those who have already been to some of these places, please leave comments that we can consider to make our trip more fruitful.