April 18, 2019 – Barcelona, Spain
We arrived at 8 am as scheduled but had to wait for another ship to pull in to port. There were many cruise ships docked. I counted at least 5 and they were massive ships. This was a guarantee of a very congested Barcelona.
We are on our own today. The Captain gave us an extra hour because of the delay in port. All aboard is now 6:30 pm.
Our first stop is the Sagrada Familia or Church of the Holy Family. This would be about 2.8 mile walk.
Along the way we commented on how much Barcelona reminded us of Paris. Very clean, lots of shops, narrow streets, wide avenues.
The Arc De Triompf.
Construction of the Sagrada Familia church began in 1882 and the architect was Antoni Gaudi. It is hard to describe this church, still not finished, and the pictures do not do it justice.
There were many, many tour busses and hundreds of people on all sides of this church. A very long line to get inside. We asked about tickets. “you have to buy them online and we are sold out until Monday”. A reason to come back to Barcelona. This would be an all day event even without a line. Judging from the exterior there would be lots to see inside also.
Next stop was Gimenco’s for cigars. A nice and large humidor in the basement. Prices reasonable. I bought two boxes of Cubans that are made only for export to Spain.
We had lunch at “a restaurant”. We shared some Tapas. Food was very good. Some nice jazz was played on the speakers.
After lunch we decided to follow a tour I had on my iphone. The architectural highlights of Barcelona. Many but not all of the buildings were designed by Gaudi.
The Catalan Music Palace
We put on about 10 miles walking around Barcelona and decided it was time to head back. The shuttle meeting place was at the world trade center. We arrived at the shuttle about 5 pm and enjoyed the short ride back to the ship.
There was a sail away party in the Lido Pool area. We grabbed a drink and had dinner back in the Lido dining room.
Early night. Exhausted.…