Geeky Yet Waterproof

Today we arrived in Barcelona, Spain. I can now tell people I went to Spain twice in three days…

The first thing we did was, of course, hop on a Hop-On, Hop-Off tour bus. The bus made its first stop at a very old gothic cathedral. The cool thing about this cathedral was that there was an elevator which takes you up to the very top. This we did, and it was an amazing view: you could see everything for miles around, including at least two cruise ships.

Our second stop was at another huge church called Sagrada Familia. But this one is unique, in that it’s covered with 18 steeples. Another interesting fact is that there’s not a single straight line in the whole structure.
It was designed by Gaudi in the beginning of the 1900’s, and is still under construction — they say it will be finished in 2020! You can tell which parts of it were built before Gaudi died and which parts were built after he died, because the stone is a different color.

The only problem is that there’s giant fruit on the top of each steeple.

After this last bus stop, we went to a little restaurant and had (you guessed it) anchovies and Spanish adobo kebab for lunch. We had read there was a flamenco show at 2:30, so after we had eaten we began our quest to find the Something de Flamenco place. We took a bus into the general area, then attempted to walk the rest of the way. But we weren’t finding it, and time was running out. We asked some Filipinos cleaning a window where it was, but they didn’t know. Eventually we found it, with less than 10 minutes until the show started.
But woe were we! It turned out the Official Tour had reserved all the seats, and the next available showing was after the ship would have left.

So, we decided to hop back on a bus and and tour some more of Barcelona.
While on the bus we passed by the Olympic stadium of 1992. It’s gigantic! We only saw the inside of the stadium through an open door, and only for a split second as our bus drove by, but it was enough to amaze.

Eventually we Hopped-Off the bus and started heading back to the ship. But we got distracted and took an “unintentional” detour which so happened to end in a cafe where we had some kind of deep fried desert to be dipped in a chocolate drink. I forgot what it was called, but it was a thing to warm the taste buds.

After this minor deviation, we finally returned to the ship. Although we had already been to Spain just a few days before, it was fun to go back. Barcelona feels like a mix of the ancient and the modern (with a little bit of futuristic thrown in).
Tomorrow we’ll be in Monte Carlo, Monaco. Monaco: the country with an area of 3/4 square mile, and the only full monarchy left in the world. This should be an adventure.

PB (POSTBLOG): Tonight the Noordam Singers and Dancers performed their last show of this cruise, which had a Las Vegas theme. I took some cool photos of the performance; look for them below.

Yesterday we arrived in Cadiz, Spain. Cadiz is the oldest city in all of Europe, dating from way back in the 1100’s… BC!

We were pleasantly surprised when we stepped off the ship into Cadiz to see the same Hop-On, Hop-Off busses that were in Portugal. So to initiate our 8-hour stay in southern Spain, we took an hour-long bus ride around the edge of the city.

Since Cadiz is so old, I think it was probably the coolest place we had been so far. During the first hour alone we saw the ancient walls surrounding the city, the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, and two castles.
After the bus tour, we (purposely) found our way to a guitar shop. Nobody in the shop could speak English, and none of us could speak Spanish, but we somehow got the point across that I’d like try try out a few guitars, and they understood.
And guess what happened: I ended up buying one! It has a really nice sound, and they said it was made in the north of Spain by a very old maker (but don’t ask me how we understood that).

After that, we went and sat by the beach for a few minutes so I could play it a little, then we went to go find lunch. We ended up eating outside a little restaurant (the owner/waiter/employee of which didn’t speak any English) in a plaza right under a HUGE cathedral. Again, we all had fish, and again, it was all delicious.
While we were eating, some utility guys dressed head to toe in neon green started taping down the sidewalk. Pretty soon, as we were having our dessert, they started up a dismayingly loud machine. They were laughing and smiling at us, because they knew how annoying it was! Then it was apparent that the machine was a power-sprayer, and they proceeded to paint a green line onto the sidewalk. We didn’t realize until after our lunch when we began our walking tour guided by our little map from the tourist office, that we were supposed to follow the green line! How could this be? They had just painted it!

So after our lunch, we followed the green line around Cadiz, and eventually ended up at a cool 15th-century castle. We explored a lot inside, and patrolled the walls a little bit.
The castle was located right on the edge of the water, and by this time it was getting really hot; the Spanish sun beats down on you with a force probably equivalent to that of a place like Arizona! The water looked really tempting, but we had to start heading back to the ship lest we be left in Spain.

So after calling home from a pay-phone in a Spanish bar (which, believe me, was an adventure), we boarded the ship to sail to Casablanca, Morocco.
We had a lot of fun in Spain, and somehow communicated with people even though the majority didn’t speak English. I guess that’s the good thing about knowing Latin: you can understand anything!

This report may have been rather short, but we have now, at the time of this writing, arrived in Casablanca and are getting ready to leave the ship. Expect to hear from me on the African continent soon!