Sew Not My Day!: Day 4 Mediterranean Cruise - Still Barcelona & then the Ship

Day 4 Mediterranean Cruise - Still in Barcelona

Ruth Ann and I are early risers, so around 5, we saw the party stragglers walking home. And then saw some people heading off for work. That was Sunday morning. We weren't meeting up with Teresa and Ken until 9ish, so we walked down La Ramblas looking for a coffee. The lady at the hotel desk mentioned a place but we couldn't find anything local open, however we DID find a McDonalds! It had an elevator to get to it but we used the stairs down. The coffee was good and we shared the BEST croissant! It was super flakey and we made a mess.

We walked back and met up with the others. We checked out and walked down the alleyways to the seashore.

Me, thinking I was on a sidewalk, blocked policemen on motorbikes and since my hearing isn't the best, blocked them for a good awkward minute...

I rolled my suitcase along and through what I thought was rainwater and wondered where it fell from as there wasn't a gutter there. Um no.

Ken informed me that most likely some party-iers had peed on the wall of the building in an alley. ew. You had to be careful.

We found a staircase going down on the sidewalk and Ruth Ann and I ran down it to see the subway system that had made our room rumble in the night several times. We slept through most of them.

Oh, it's just a subway station. hm.

I took a pic of a sign adverting renting a bike would make you faster than a zombie and only afterwards noticed a homeless person sleeping in a bag on the opposite side of the alley. Whoops! Excuse me! Yes, I told him that. Ruth Ann has been picking on me about that ever since.

All the buildings were so close in the alleys with fantastic construction cropping up out of nowhere, that it all looked like a scene straight out of a James Bond movie.

A lot of mosaic stuff in shop windows!

We got to the ocean and it was beautiful! Palm trees everywhere.

Our cruise ship was about 5 miles down the coast

so we found a large enough taxi at the Columbus statue roundabout.

Below is NOT our taxi. We each had a suitcase and carry on AND 4 people.

So even though the taxis are in the order of being hired out, the ones in the cars were gracious enough to let us take the minivan a few cars back.

Teresa pointed out the hill behind where the Olympic village is and was, when the Olympics were there last. It wasn't far away but we didn't have time to explore it.

The minivan taxi got us quickly to the MSC Orchestra ship. We went through security to get onboard and the walkie talkies that I'd brought got confiscated. Yes, two run-ins with police/security in the same day! I got them back the next day after they researched them to make sure these kind were allowed. Apparently certain types are not. But for your info, the ones you can buy at Walmart are A-OK!

They didn't work so great anyway so if you were on the opposite end of the ship you couldn't understand the other person at all and there are only so many times, I'll say WHAT?! really loudly. Oh well. They got left in my bag for the rest of the trip. If you need any walkie talkies, I've got 'em!

We got onboard the ship and since we weren't able to go to our rooms immediately, we enjoyed some complimentary mimosas and then explored the ship where we got some food up in the buffet. mmm.. Lots of varieties at the buffet. Always pizza, burgers and fries for lunches and dinner with loads of other alternatives for meats, prepared a million different ways and in different nationalities.

Around 2:30ish, we were finally able to get unpacked in our cabins and then off to explore some more. We found the ultimate spot to see the ship head out of the port at the back end of deck 7 in the Shaker Lounge. We went there a lot over the course of the next week. The girls and myself got into the MSC app and got set up to message each other.

In our exploration, we found the Shanghai restaurant that had a lot of dishes that reminded me of a game we play with Maddy and Matthew. It includes Sashimi, Nigiri and Maki to name a few. We got to sample their sushi later that week.

And then the ship set sail.

Here was a our view. Perfect!

I think I was only on the outside deck a few times and got pics of Barcelona from the sea.

Beautiful!

The sea through our cabin's window was fascinating and a bit mesmerizing to watch.

After supper in the L'Ibiscus dining room, we found an ABBA tribute party going on so the girls and I hung around and sang along dancing from a balcony up above. He and Teresa got their picture professionally taken later by a the photographer who was always trying to pull us into photos after a 7 mile hike in Italy... NOT looking my best right now Thanks!