Sunday, 10/17
During our flight to
Barcelona, I got woke up rather rudely as the lights were turned on and the
flight attendants handed out breakfast. The yogurt was okay, but not a kind I
would have picked. Much thicker than I’m used to, but at least it was fruit
flavored. After breakfast, they turned the lights back out.
By now, John had
opted to use the empty seat next to us, and I was sitting next to the window.
Despite having only gotten about half an hour of sleep, I couldn’t go back to
it. As the sky lightened as dawn approached (or were we approaching it?) I
watched the Spanish landscape pass by under us. There were entire valley
systems that were full of fog, which lent the view an eerie look. Some were so
large, they looked like seas.
Then we flew out over
water, which surprised me. I thought Barcelona was land-locked. Apparently not.
The Barcelona airport
is big, with long halls to walk and many hoops to jump through. There was a
bottle-neck as our passports were checked. More walking. More walking. Another
bottle-neck as our Spanish health forms were checked. John’s sailed through. I
don’t know what the problem was with mine, but I must have stood there for 2 full
minutes before they sent me on.
Find our luggage.
This was at least an hour after the plane landed. Somebody was collecting
suitcases from the carousel as ‘unclaimed’. Eventually, John found our 2
suitcases, and we put on the luggage tags for our cruise. More walking.
Finally, we saw
somebody holding up a sign for a cruise line. Not the one we were looking for,
but ours was standing not too far away. That person directed us to another
cruise employee, who was taking luggage and sending it to the ship. After
standing around for a few minutes, they took us upstairs and outside to ‘go to
the bus’. We walked a couple blocks. The breeze felt nice. Then into a building
and down 2 floors to get tested for covid. We were told about this, but thought
it would happen at the dock.
Half an hour later,
we got on the bus to the ship.
We didn’t have our
boarding documents that had supposedly been sent to us, but they were ready for
that. They took our passports, found us in their system, gave us our cabin keys
(and gave our passports back), and sent us on our way.
At last, we walked
onto the ship. Our first chore was to find our muster station, in case of
emergency, but that muster station was, for us, right inside the entrance. So
while we were there, we booked reservations for a couple shows. Then we went to
The Taste, one of the main dining rooms, to get some lunch. John got a pork
chop, and I had a philly cheesesteak sandwich. Both came with fries. John
finished his meal, but I was so sleep-deprived, I could only eat half of mine.
My body didn’t want food, it wanted sleep. And fluid. I did manage to drink 4
glasses of cola and 1.5 glasses of water. John drank about the same. We felt
semi-revived after lunch, so went and found our cabin.
Our cabin was so
small, it was lilliputtin-ish. The bathroom had been split up, with the toilet
in a tiny closet on one side of the entrance, and the shower on the other.
There was a curtain that could be closed to separate that piece of the room
from the rest of the room. Beyond that, a curved closet resided on the right,
the sink, a counter and cupboards on the left. A double bed presided over the
rest of the cabin, with–I’m guessing–less than a foot of clearance on either
side of it. So, not a lot of room to move around in.
Our luggage had not
yet shown up. John unpacked the carry-on suitcase and we took our morning
pills. We hadn’t managed to take our evening pills the night before, but it was
far too late to worry about that.
John went out to
explore the ship, and I lay down and stared at the ceiling. After a while, I
got up and unpacked my carry-on bag–mostly–and then I got on the phone and
checked on our specialty dining reservations. We had forgotten when they were
at, and didn’t want to miss them. Then I glanced through the shore excursion
tickets, just to do something. Uh oh. According to my count, we were missing
one ticket for one excursion, and both tickets for another. So I shoved them
back into the envelope and trotted down to the shore excursion desk to check
into it.
The shore excursion
desk was busy. I expected that, so I got into line, as requested. Others
apparently didn’t realize there was a line, and got help before me, but
eventually I got up there, and took all the tickets out of the envelope to
explain the problem. Turned out 2 of the tickets had been stapled together and
I hadn’t noticed. So that missing ticket was solved. Then as I sorted through
the rest of the tickets, I realized I had pairs of tickets for every port we
would hit. All was well with shore excursions. Obviously, my brain wasn’t
functioning well. More laying on our bed, not sleeping but resting as best we
could, and still no luggage.
Eventually, we went
back to The Taste for supper. John had Atlantic salmon, and I had baked zita. I
was so tired, I only wanted comfort foot. We admired the 3-deck tall chandelier
in the middle of the restaurant and went up to the buffet on deck 15 to have a
2nd dessert.
Then it was back to
our cabin. Our luggage had shown up. We quickly unpacked–mostly–and then gave
in to our fatigue. After checking our tickets for our shore excursion the next
day, we set an alarm to wake us up. With an inside cabin, there would no chance
of sunlight seeping in to wake up. And especially at 6:30 am, so we set an
alarm or 2 and thankfully sank into some much-needed sleep.
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