We boarded the Viking Sea on Tuesday, getting ready to sail toward Stockholm. A potent rain and windstorm was forecast for that night. Sounded better to have that occur while we were still in port, with hopes that the evil weather genies will get this out of their system.

And the weather did deliver as promised. It was kind of strange to wake up during the night and feel the boat moving. Who knew a boat could move around so much while still berthed in a cruise port? When we got up on Wednesday morning, the seas were roiling and the rain was coming down in buckets. We wondered if our planned excursion would be cancelled. Alternatively, we wondered if we should cancel our participation in said excursion. But I got it in my head that even a drippy wet excursion can be interesting, and the rain just becomes part of it.

So off we went on a visit to Sitges, a seaside resort town about 30 minutes south of Barcelona. The weather broke about the time we left the boat.  We walked through lots of puddles and the surf was really high, but amazingly we got through the whole day without rain hitting us.

Sitges was founded in 200BC, so it is a seaside resort with some staying power. It is today considered an affluent suburb of Barcelona. You can live by the sea and get to the city for only 1€.

It’s a busy little town with winding, hilly, narrow streets, with cobblestones and art nouveau houses. There are no particular sights, but just the lingering impression of a bustling seaside town. People going about their business, that sort of thing. Many of the apartments and houses are shuttered at this time of year, but it was described as a party mecca in the summer. From our perspective, that probably means it would be a lot less appealing than we found it.

 

The primary impression Sitges leaves—besides that thundering sea, which shrouded us in sea spray whenever we were within a block of it—was the tile and iron work we could see everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on the ship, we sailed out of Barcelona about 6:30pm. After dinner, we attended the Captain’s welcome reception and got an overview of upcoming entertainment possibilities. The boat was moving around quite a bit, which wasn’t ideal since none of us has our sea legs yet. 

We awoke during the night to the ship swooping and rolling pretty significantly. Went on all night. Let’s just say there are a lot of stashes of seasick bags all over the ship today that weren’t there yesterday.

We are sailing all day Thursday, arriving in Cadiz Friday morning, 618 nautical miles from Barcelona.

Lucky people that we are, we were in Barcelona just a little over a year ago and had visited a number of the city’s primary sights—the biggies like Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia and the Picasso Museum and walking La Rambla. We visited both La Boqueria and Santa Catarina markets and the other two big churches, the Cathedral of Barcelona and the Church of Santa Maria del Mar.

For this visit, even though rather brief at only 2 days, we thought we might see a couple more Gaudi sights, maybe revisit a few favorite places.

We chose a hotel right across the square from the Barcelona Cathedral. What a great location. Easy walking distance to anything in the Barri Gotic (Old City) and a beautiful sight, complete with bells on the quarter hour.

Morning view from our room

On Sunday, we walked around the Block of Discord, a block in the Eixample on the lovely Passeig de Gracia that contains three distinct Modernista residences, one by Gaudi which we toured later in the day. There are a number of interesting buildings in this area, but these three are the stars.

Casa Amattler by Josep Puig i Cadafalch

Casa Lleo Morera by Lluis Domenech i Montaner

Our first new Gaudi sight was La Pedrera, an apartment building a few blocks north of the Block of Discord. Rick Steves calls La Pedrera a “quintessential Modernista building,” so it was probably a good place for us to start. Nothing cookie cutter about this place. It was an interesting visit, one shared with hundreds of other people, in spite of the fact we had timed tickets, meaning they control how many people can be in the building at one time. Seeing one of the apartments allowed us to see how these spaces worked and how Gaudi brought in light from every direction.

(1) Exterior view, (2) Vaulted attic space for ventilation, laundry, and storage, and (3) Chimneys on the roof

Next up was Casa Batllo, the Gaudi-designed residence in the Block of Discord. Even more crowded, but even more striking.

(1) Exterior, (2) Pretty window, (3) Stunning blue and white tiled atrium, (4) Interesting rooftop

On Monday, we rounded out our Modernista-themed visit by taking a tour through the Palau de la Musica Catalana. This Modernista belle of the ball by Lluis Domenech i Montaner is a real stunner. I can’t get the stained glass ceiling out of my mind. Quite beautiful. The tour included (in addition to lots and lots of stairs!) a demonstration of the acoustics via a Beethoven piece on the organ. Wow! This space holds 500 concerts and events per year. Think about that. That’s an average of well more than one per day, and they have to print the calendar of events in 2-month increments. It is one very pretty and very busy place.

After our tour, we walked through the streets of the El Born district, which is where we stayed last year. We spent a little time revisiting the Santa Catarina market. It seemed curiously quiet on this Monday afternoon, but that made it all the easier to wander through. How I wish I had this wonderful market in my neighborhood!

(1) Exterior, (2) All things ham in this part of the world, (3) Produce looking appealing too

As we trekked from place to place, we got to see lots of interesting buildings and little placas. This is really a charming city with lots to offer. Our 2 days zipped by in no time, and I am sure we have yet to scratch the surface.

Each afternoon we returned to the big area in front of the Cathedral. It is a great meeting place of tourists and locals alike. There was a little of everything here: an antiques market, pedicabs, tour groups, people making balloon animals, a really good guitarist, break dancers, and cafes filled with people watching the whole show.

I saw a sign on a shop in the El Born called “Barcelonitis,” which sounds like something one can catch. If so, we may have a mild case of Barcelonitis.

Let me start by saying all is well, and we’re indeed “on the road.”

But our first travel day was a challenge.

It all started so well. Our own perky, personal Lyft driver (niece Jill) showed up right on time and got us to the airport with lots of time to spare. We boarded and departed a bit early.

We flew northeast and got to see lots of snow-covered mountains and endless miles of the snowy and frozen north of Canada.

And then things turned complicated. Especially for one unfortunate man on our plane who suffered a severe asthma attack and passed out.

We were in that phase of overseas flights when the lights have been dimmed and everyone is trying desperately to get some sleep as we wing across multiple time zones. Suddenly the lights came on—an unusual thing for sure. And there were people standing in the aisles. Lots of people. Also odd. Three burly guys forced their way through the folks standing in our aisle, walked forward, and passed in front of the people seated in the bulkhead row, to the other aisle and back to an area just two rows behind us.

At this point, we noticed a man standing with a stethoscope draped around his neck and a woman with rubber gloves on. Now things are starting to fall in place, and we understand there is some kind of medical emergency. The three big guys scoop up a man with an oxygen mask on and carry him to the front of the plane where they can have more room and presumably use one of the seats that lie flat into a bed.

We were still heading north and east. But everyone is up and buzzing. There would be precious little sleep for most of the 300 people on our flight.

About a half hour later, the captain came onto the loudspeaker and announced that we were being diverted to Minneapolis-St. Paul so that our patient could receive medical care. By this time, we were just passing north of the western edge of Hudson Bay. Trust me when I tell you there was no evidence of habitation anywhere near us—but Minneapolis? Turns out Minneapolis was due south of our location and was a Delta hub. But it was also several hours away and not exactly on our trajectory toward Amsterdam.

So here is where plans started to unravel for everyone on the plane. I didn’t hear a soul complain or question the decision. Nonetheless, sleep was vanquished for the foreseeable future, and everyone was trying to calculate potential options.

We eventually landed in MSP, our patient was removed into the arms of waiting emergency personnel, and then we waited for Delta to make its determination of how the situation would be handled. A pair of maintenance workers came onboard to install new oxygen tanks and to replace medical supplies that had been used—a necessity before our plane would be allowed to fly again.

Still we waited. We knew that one option would be for our flight to continue. Another would be for us all to deplane, claim our bags, and Delta to rebook us out of MSP. Complicating things was the fact that our crew could not complete the trip because of rules concerning hours, etc.—they were no longer “legal to go over big water,” as the captain said.

The final decision—and the right one we think— was that we would keep the flight intact—all 300 of us and our bags. But we needed a new crew. This is where it got stranger. We flew to Detroit to pick them up. Our existing crew could go that far. New pilots and attendants were most likely awakened requesting their service. In DTW, we bid our original crew farewell and welcomed the new one. But all this took time, more time than estimated. We were on the ground in Detroit around 2 hours before taking to the skies again, getting a de-icing as we taxied out to a runway. We left around 3:15am. (One nice aspect of this was a flight almost the length of Lake Erie, beautiful nighttime views of Cleveland, and the half moon reflected in the lake.)

Seven hours later, we arrived in Amsterdam. A 4:30pm arrival vs. our expected 8:30am. Three hundred anxious people queuing up to talk to gate agents. Those of us who had had connecting flights were sent in different directions depending on ultimate destinations. We had been rebooked on an 8:35pm flight to Barcelona. We used a self-service kiosk to print new boarding passes and then had to wait 4 more hours. But at least—after 19 hours on our original plane—we were on the ground and out of those confining seats. Since we had turbulence for over half the DTW-AMS flight, we had been strapped in and unable to move around.

We had emailed our Barcelona hotel from Minneapolis to give them a heads up. Once we knew our rebooked flying time, we emailed them again to let them know we’d be arriving at the hotel after midnight.

We had a pretty bumpy flight to Barcelona, but were greatly relieved to finally be there.

This is not our first rodeo, so I am not sure how things continued to unravel, but they did. Probably because we were supremely rummy. We’d been enroute for about 27 hours, and not unstressful ones either. The problem: we were directed by some (hopefully) well-meaning person to the wrong baggage claim carousel. We ended up in a line to deal with missing luggage. We ultimately tracked them down to a cart of unclaimed bags from the correct carousel. But, of course, Jerry ‘s bag had been visited by TSA, and his front pocket was left unlocked. When we found it, the pocket was about half unzipped. Amazingly, two out of the three items were still there. We spent some time trying to work with an agent about the missing item, but declined to proceed when we were told we’d have to file a police report. Really?

We dragged ourselves and our bags to a taxi stand and made it to our hotel around 1:00am. Once we got to the room and I saw myself in a mirror, I was surprised they didn’t tell us we had come to the wrong place. Their mercy and acceptance will forever be appreciated.

So now we’re in Barcelona and picking up the itinerary we had planned—a little worse for wear, but recuperating. My goodness, we are not as young as we once were!

We’ll, we’re nearing our departure date, and the “to do” list—almost magically—seems to be growing. For every item that gets checked off, something else seems to get added.

This is my least favorite part of travel. The time to leave is near at hand, and the time to get all the bits and pieces accomplished is dwindling at a frightening pace. You would think we’d never traveled before. Keys, contact information, who’s on point for what, itinerary, tickets, passports—you know, all that stuff that goes along with the privilege of being able to travel.

And the worst part of all? Choosing just the right clothes to take. Now Jerry would scoff at this notion, but it is always the tricky part over which I stress.

Not too many (clothes, that is). Layers, of course. We’re going pretty far north in what locals are quick to remind you is still the off season. But when we were in Scandinavia 2 years ago, only a few weeks later in the year, they were having their equivalent of a heat wave and we were sporting t-shirts. So some light things, plus some things to keep us warm as well. Rain gear for sure. Good walking shoes for all the cobblestones to come.

Being a ruthless packer, I’m sure, is the right way to go. Sadly, this may be one of those life goals that I will never achieve.

The good news: the days to agonize over choices and “to do’s” are few, and soon we will be on to the fun of discovering new places and seeing new sights. Barcelona awaits us, we have our Gaudi tickets in hand, and now we just have to get ourselves there and on our way on this long-awaited trip.

Up, up and away!

 

[A note on the technical side: This site is about to become a secure site (think “https”). If you received an odd note about this site imitating another or some other warning about financial information, rest assured. I have no ability to get, nor an interest in getting, your financial information. Google is trying to require all sites–financial or not–to be secure sites. Dear friend Theresa is on the job, and the site should be officially secure in the next couple days.]