Floating along

We're on the ship, which will hopefully be the most calm and relaxing part of our crazy trip so far.  For 12 days we'll be able to open up our suitcases and not worry about packing them up again for a while (I hate things being unpacked, then re-packed...my paranoia of losing something is to blame).  

We had an early-ish morning (after a bit of a rough night...Trevor had the air conditioning on in the room at a meat locker temperature and I never got to sleep and ended up shivering like a lump until I managed to find the two spare blankets in the closet -- and the traffic noise was CRAZY.  Cars all the time, sirens, bad mufflers...you name it, we heard it, and neither of us are light sleepers!).  So with a not great night behind us we packed up and attempted to find breakfast around 11am.  The best english we've been able to find so far in Barcelona is broken at best, with hand gestures and basic spanish being tried out (we were able to get by with 'gracias', 'ola', 'uno', 'dos', 'si'...you get the idea).  We had an early lunch at a small cafe where we ordered Fantas a limon (very tasty!) and I ordered the tortilla espanola (weird sandwich with a cooked potato filling) and Trevor ordered the croque monsieur (which has continued to haunt him...I won't go into details!).  We visited a patisseria afterwards (bakery) and grabbed something sweet  to nibble on while we went for a short walk.  So far Barcelona hasn't been wow-ing us, but I think it's because we've only spent limited time there, and on our last day we'll get to try it again with a different hotel/location.

The traffic in Barcelona is only for the seasoned professionals -- it is truly hairy to be in (the taxi driver was tested a few times).  The number of ambulance sirens was fraying on my last nerves -- why they choose to have this 'weee-waaaar-weeeee-warrrrrr' noise is beyond me.

Once we arrived at the cruise ship terminal things went smoothly.  Trevor wussed out and didn't ask for an upgrade at the pier (instead, got his second wind on the ship and asked again...our names are on a list -- who knows if that will actually come to anything).  The ship itself is nice, we've been on it before for an 11-night Panama Canal trip two years ago.  The rooms have been upgraded a bit since then, new linens, mirrors, a bathroom upgrade...so it's looking fresh and clean.

We have an excursion planned for tomorrow, visiting Nice and Monaco.  I think we'll have an easier time of things as our French skills are much better than our Spanish!

Our little cabin.  Cozy.

A farmacia.

Car parking garage (and Trevor's forehead).

Scooters and bikes are everywhere.