Barcelona day Four & Five

A quick morning in Barcelona and then off to the ship   

Our last morning in Barcelona before our cruise was a fairly easy one. We rose early, packed up most of our stuff, stopped at Starbucks for our usual coffee and then off to see La Boqueria

one more time. What a disappointment! It was a ghost of the market it had been on our first visit on Friday. We understood that there would not be as many fish stalls as Friday but we fully expected everything else to be the same. But that was not the way it was, many stands were closed and others were just opening. So if you go to Barcelona, see La Boqueria towards the end of the week, not the beginning.

After our short visit, we walked back up Las Ramblas, took a few more pictures, went back to the hotel to finish packing before we grabbed a cab and headed down to the port to board Celebrity’s Century, our home for the next 11 nights.

This concludes our pre-cruise stay in Barcelona. I will add to this page when we return from the cruise as we will have almost another full day after our cruise.

Off the ship, 11 days later   

As promised 11 days later after being almost forcibly disembarked off Century we arrived back at the “Pink Palace” at 7:45 am. We hung around a little while to see if our buddy Dorothy would come back too so we could help her with her bags but she never arrived. So around 8:30 we headed off to try and get tickets to the tour of the Palau de Musica.

Alas, no luck. Every tour for that day was already sold out. Before they even opened in the morning. And we had to leave to early the next morning to make our flight home. So this tour is something we are going to have to save for our second visit to Barcelona and you can believe that we will be coming back.

After our “no luck” ticket search we decided to stop by the Barcelona Cathedral one more time. Mostly because the week before when we had been inside it was Sunday and since Mass was going on when we were there we could not walk around the entire church. It was very beautiful but I think Santa Maria Del Mar is Barcelona’s most beautiful church (La Sagrada Famila will be when it’s finally finished) and Malaga’s the best we have seen.

After the quick tour of the cathedral we went off to do some shopping for final souvenirs and then a  last walk up Las Ramblas and a quick swing through La Boqueria. That followed by a short visit to El Cortes Ingles to buy me some handkerchiefs to help me deal with the cold I developed about half way through the cruise. And by the time I am writing this (on the plane home from London) Kathleen has developed the same darn cold.

After the short excursion to the big department store it was time for lunch. And where better to eat it than to head back to La Rita. This time Kathleen had the same appetizer (the goat cheese salad) but I switched over to a fantastic mushroom ravioli. For an entree Kathleen had the duck I had tried on the first day and I had baby octopus and caramelized onions. And of course we finished up our Spanish epicurean adventure with another helping of the incredible Catalunyan dessert.

Then it was back to the Pink Palace where the last five of us Century cruisers (the two of us, Dorothy, Rod and Evelyn) spent the evening reliving the cruise in a very lively conversation. After a  few hours of that and a short walk back to the Placa de Catalunya it was off to bed, up in the morning, to the airport and as I write this we are about five hours from Seattle.  It was a great vacation and one that will keep us in great memories for quite a while. I hoped you enjoyed reading my Barcelona journal. If you are traveling there in the near future and have any questions you think I might have the answers to, please don’t hesitate to e-mail me.