Click here for more photos.  Scroll down to read Mike's posts.

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Margaret

 

May 10, Tuesday

 

The ship docked in Barcelona about 5:30 am, and we were up by 6:30 and on Deck 15 aft to beat the crowd of continuing cruisers who needed to check out.  We got a temporary card there, but had to wait until 10:30 before going to Guest Services on Deck 4 midship to get our permanent Sea Pass cards.  So, being the active couple that we are, we had a light breakfast on Deck 14 aft and went to the gym on Deck 15 forward.  Back to the stateroom on Deck 12 midship to shower and then to Deck 4 midship to get our new cards (like a credit card, it lets you in to your stateroom and off and back on to the ship, plus you can charge all kinds of things on the ship), but not before Mike realized we had to pick up professional photos from Deck 5 midship.   We are now Gold Members of Royal Caribbean, which provides us with some nice discounts.  (By the end of this adventure, we will almost be Emerald status members.)   Our new cards, however, didn’t work and we were back at Guest Services.  Those new cards didn’t show our Gold status, so, again, back to Guest Services.  Finally, we were able to disembark (Deck 5 midship) at about 11:30.

 

We found a taxi to take us to the stop where we picked up the Hop-on Hop-off bus.  There are two bus routes, the orange route which travels west, and the green, which travels east.  We got on the orange, and, in the cold rain, were somewhat disappointed.  That part of the city really was not very appealing, at least to us.  Once we were able to transfer to the east route, the city became much more interesting.  We hopped off at La Pedrera and had tapas at the restaurant, went on to see the goofy cathedral La Sagrada Familia.  I think that if they ever finish it, no one will come, so they might as well just keep working on it.  Be sure to take a look at the photos.  Because of the weather and construction, we were not able to see Parc Guell, but it will stay on my “to see” list.  Be sure to see the photo of the building with the big banner “Refugees Welcome”.  I don’t know anything about it, but am very curious.

 

The rain continued as we walked briskly along the Las Ramblas.  Our friends Anne and Rich recommended the St Joseph Market, and a restaurant at the rear.  It truly is an amazing market, and we did find a restaurant at the rear (not sure if it’s the same), where we had an amazingly delicious meal of fresh seafood.  Afterward we caught a cab and headed back to the ship.  By that time, it was about 8:00 pm.  We changed clothes and moseyed over to the 270 Lounge to listen the Ovation of the Seas Orchestra big band.  We met a couple about our age from Las Vegas who are on their 16th cruise.  Mike went back to the room to put on his dancing shoes and we danced the fox trot and rumba.  :)

 

If that wasn’t enough for one day, the ship held a mandatory safety drill for all passengers, including children, at 10:30 p.m.  on Deck 5 midship.  This lasted an hour, and then we waited another 20 minutes for an elevator.  Good night, sleep tight!

 

 

May 9 - Monday

 

Today is a day at sea, so we are taking some time to update the blog.  Yesterday was less than spectacular (which is the norm here, so it really wasn't that bad).  But first, let me tell you about Saturday's dinner.  Five courses with wine pairings.  Besides us, there was a young couple from LA on their honeymoon, two sisters from Canada, and a couple near our age from New Jersey.  What a lively group!  We laughed and talked so much we almost overlooked the delicious food the chef had prepared for us.  The photos are on the Life On Board page.

 

 

I had my second facial on Monday.  The esthetician, Anna, was from Taiwan, and we talked about Caroline’s experienced there.  The facial was one of the best I’ve ever had, and I ended up buying products that made Mike choke when he found out the price.  However, I will definitely get another facial before this trip is over.  And I’ll make Mike get a massage from Anna.  Such a treat!

 

Dinner at the Italian restaurant Monday evening was a big disappointment.  For me, mostly because it’s Southern Italian and Sicilian food.  Not my taste.  The waitress, however, was as cute as could be.  A young Chinese woman who described the menu with a good Italian accent (and a little Chinese thrown in).  She really wanted to chat with us to practice her English.  She admitted that she knows the food and the menu, but beyond that, her English was limited.  We talked about acupuncture and Chinese medicine and about how she got her job.  She was very proud of China and especially Tianjin.

 

May 8, Sunday

 

MLXLSunday in Gibraltar was raining quite heavily.  We'd booked a taxi tour to the cave and Europa.  Visibility was miserable, and our taxi driver was less than conversational.  He did have a few disparaging words to say about Muslims and Spaniards, which made all of us raise our eyebrows.  We walked through the shopping district, but most of the stores were closed (Sunday).  Then we couldn't find the round-about where the shuttle was to take us back to the ship, so we ended up walking 30 minutes in the rain.   That evening we went to the Spectre Cabaret.  It was very interesting -- a combination of Prince and Michael Jackson, with state of the art lighting.  Be sure to look at the photos, as the monkeys on Gibraltar made good photo subjects.  

 

I had my second facial this morning, with Anna from Taiwan.  It was, again, one of the best facials ever.  I must say, though, that I was sucked in by the Salon's sales pitch on the first day on board.  I was told that I would get a discount for a second facial and could book it any time.  But it turned out that I had to use  it during this first leg, before arriving in Barcelona.  "Sorry, can't book for the next leg."  And really not very nice about it.  Lesson learned, huh?  

 

This morning Mike was standing on our balcony and saw dolphins playing in the wake of the ship.  The sea is calm today and the weather is warming up.  We're doing laundry (in the bathroom sink) and will lounge around the pool this afternoon.  We have dinner reservations at Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant, which is extra cost but not too much.  

 

Oh, I should add that Mike and I have been to the gym.  Twice.  Of course, everything is new and very nice.  The people who use it obviously know their way around gyms.  But it's comfortable, as gyms go, and we intend to use it more as we have multiple days as sea.

 

 

May 7

 

Today is a day at sea.  And what a day.  There is a big storm that we as passengers don't feel so much.  However, Mike and I often get confused about where we are -- forward, aft, port, starboard -- and that got us in some serious trouble today.  We were looking for a comfortable place to sit and read while looking at the sea, and found ourselves out on the top of the pool deck with winds howling around us, no one else in sight. I was sure I would be blown overboard!  We tried to get back inside, but the door had been locked to keep people like us from stepping outside.  Fortunately, a crew member saw us and helped us to the lower deck where we could recover.  The remainder of the afternoon was spent reading in a lounge chair watching the waves.

 

Tonight we have a special dinner -- paid extra big bucks.  We will see what that brings us.  The food here is excellent in all of the restaurants that do not have a supplement, so we are expecting something really special.

 

 

May 6

 

MLXLToday we docked at Vigo, Spain.  It's a quaint fishing village that's also home to a large Citron auto manufacturing plant.  In the photos, you will see mussel farm beds in the sea.  A fisherman will collect mussels from his bed twice and year and earn about $100,000. A bed is family-owned and rarely available for sale.  Mike and I enjoyed a plate of the most delicious mussels for 7.80 euros.  A glass of the local wine, which they call vino verde because the white wine is young, was about 2 euros and quite good.

 

Our tour guide, Mary Ann, was very entertaining.  There was a steady rain all day, and she informed us that "rain is romantic, so enjoy!"  The region has several museums and castles. The town has a population of about 300,000.  Some sites that we saw date back 2000 years.  

 

We boarded a bus for a 30 minute ride to Valencia, Portugal.  Here we toured the ruins of two forts that were surrounded by one wall.  It overlooks a river that separates Spain and Portugal.  There were many cute shops and I bought some articles of cork.  Mike bought a bottle of Port wine.  

 

May 5

 

MLXLToday was our first port stop, Gijon, Spain. (click here to see photos.) We boarded a bus with 50 other people and took off for Oviedo, about 30 minutes away.  This is a town of about 200,000 people with much history.  The first church we saw, San Julian, was built in 812-832 by Alfonso II.  Alfonso founded the walk of St. James Way.  The monastery was build in 760; thee is a "holy tree" brought from the Holy Land.  Pilgrims could not be buried there is not Catholic, but if they died from the pilgrimage, they could.  At least that's the story our guide told us.  

 

If you look at the photos page, you will see a cross with two angels.  The story is that the king hired two Scotsmen to create a gold cross with jewels.  The people were quite upset about hiring foreigners.  So the king locked the tradesmen in a room to build the cross.  The next morning, when the doors were opened, the people were gone, but the cross was finished and floating in the air.  Supposedly by angels.

 

It is interesting to see the different architecture -- Romanesque and Gothic towers to close to each other.

 

King Alphonso lived to be 85 years old, which was nearly unheard of those days.

 

 

MLXLDay 1

 

Rainy Chicago day, getting ready to take off.  It was really nice for Maureen, Todd, and Mikey to come by in the morning and join us for brunch at the Blue Max Cafe.  Moe drove us to the airport.  Mike's hat almost blew away in the wind at O'Hare.  Thanks to free United Club passes, we enjoyed a relaxing couple of hours reading and sipping wine before our flight.  And, we were able to Skype with Matthew, Ashley, and Connall.   

 

Eased through customs at Heathrow after a 45 minute wait.  our OVC guide "Mike" met us and drove us to our Hotel, the Lancaster.  Took a leisurely stroll through the Kensington Gardens and found the Orangery, where we had reservations for tea that afternoon.  Back at the hotel, we found a delightful bar and ordered tea and smoked salmon, which had  been prepared by the hotel chef.  Amazingly delicious.  Finally got assigned a room, changed clothes, and headed back to the Orangery for tea.  See the photos on the London page.  We then walked back to the hotel and changed clothes again, and met our hop-on-hop-off bus.  The plan was to find a hop-off spot near the Globe Theatre, where we had tickets for that evening's performance of Midsummer Nights Dream.  However, the bus driver let us off way too soon, and we were almost lost, getting to the theatre just in time for the performance to begin.  After logging nearly 18,000 steps, we opted to explore the "Tube" and ride home.  Thanks much to the nice attendant who helped us figure out how to get a ticket.

 

Some observations and things I've learned about London:

 

-- Most people don't speak "British" (a big disappointment for me, as I was expecting everyone to sound like Roger Tilbrook.  I am hearing English with many different accents.  Almost like being in Chicago.

-- Londoners love their dogs.  They take them everywhere, even on the Tube.

-- Street signs are very hard to find.

--  Row houses everywhere.

-- Cars drive on the left side of the road, but people walk on the right side of the paths in the park.

-- An English breakfast is excellent.  (However, Arabic and Japanese breakfasts are available)

-- I have a new affection for strawberry jam.

-- I now understand Maureen's interest in photographing benches.  There are benches everywhere.  Most with people sitting on them -- reading, eating, chatting, snoozing, or just enjoying the day.  Some are vacant, waiting patiently for the next occupant.

 

Day 2

 

Be sure to check out the photos from our bus tour, on the London to Barcelona page.

 

Day 3

 

Recovering from a full day of sightseeing.  Hoards of people.  Was it because of the holiday?  We're packed now and ready to get on a bus to take us to Southampton and embark on the ship.  It will be nice (I think) to have a floating hotel room.  Stay tuned.

 

 

Mike:

 

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, May 9-11

 

I have nothing to add to Margaret’s description of Barcelona except to say that Hop on/Hop off buses are great places to catnap in the sun as long as you are wearing enough to mute the wind chill.  The restaurant we went to in the Market suggested that if I wanted squid I should get the baby squid since it was not something that I could get elsewhere.  I had to go along with that reasoning, those suckers were delicious!

 

We went to a show on the ship but the singer had to cancel and they substituted an 80’s tribute band.  We lasted two songs.

 

 

Friday thru Sunday, May 6-8

 

I’ve got our first gripe about our voyage.  We paid for high speed internet only to find out when we started to use it that it was way too slow.  We brought in the ship IT staff to check out our reception and got the first bad customer service of our trip.  Margaret and I shooed them out of our cabin after it was clear that they belonged to Doonesbury’s “Preventer of IT Services” tribe.  For our next leg we had already upgraded to hi speed internet plus streaming to watch Kate’s grad school graduation ceremony (Yeah Kate!).  Hopefully that is more hi speed than the hi speed we bought for the 1st leg.

 

This ship is very stable.  We hit some choppy weather and it was tough to feel it.  We could open the balcony door and see it but the ship just kept gliding along. 

 

On our day trip up to Portugal from Vigo, we bought a bottle of port and a couple of souvenirs in the rain.  Sat in a café and had the local unaged white wine “vino verde” (green wine).  Our tour guide was interesting but condensed the previous history of the region into “we are all friends now”.

 

Gibraltar was a struggle.  It was rainy and foggy and our views from the top of the rock were blurrily spectacular.  The recommended Taxi tour was underwhelming with a less than forthcoming guide.  We saw some barbary apes and they are as pushy as advertised.  One poor guy got out of his Taxi only to have a monkey jump on the roof of the Taxi and then jump on his head where he perched until shooed off.  As Rick Steves predicted, most of the shops and business were closed since we were there on Sunday.  But the port was full of shipping and we got to use our binoculars (thanks Moe & Todd)

 

Funny note, you lose track of what day it is on the ship and to remind you, the elevator floors have a tile that they replace daily that is embossed with “Sunday, Monday, etc.”.

 

 

Wednesday & Thursday, May 4&5

 

All my trepidation about fitting us and our stuff into this cabin were unfounded.   We got nooks and crannys galore.  Even all of our bags fit out of sight out of mind under the bed. 

 

At the risk of future bad ju-ju, the voyage down the Bay of Biscay was gentle and pleasant.  I am addicted to Wooden ships and Iron Men novels (C.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian, etc.) and the weather has been nothing like what I read in their novels, think gentle rocking.  Our first night on ship we missed breakfast by sleeping until 10:30AM.

 

As Margaret mentioned we ported in Gijon Spain on Thursday and our excursion took us inland 30 minutes.  Our guide was very partisan about her home and worked us through a rigorous lecture on the history of the kingdom of Asturias (now a principality, like Wales in the UK).  Things I didn’t know about this northwestern part of Spain:

• A mountain range provided isolation from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula

• The Celts moved in and their culture remains as the defining culture in Asturias

• Consequently, the bagpipe is the official musical instrument in Asturias

• The Visigoths ruled until the Moors conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula in 3 years

• The revolution that pushed the Moors out of the Peninsula began in this area and took 8 centuries to win back what the Moors took in 3 years

• In 1492 as Columbus sailed, the last of the Moors left Granada

We are underwhelmed by the dance opportunities on board.  The ship has an excellent 10-piece orchestra but we only got to dance a little on Wednesday.

 

We discovered a 2-person lounge/sofa on deck 14 and we read and watched the sun go down before adjourning to our stateroom to finish a bottle of wine.  Somebody in the elevator asked if we missed home, not yet and it’s looking grim for home.

 

 

MLXL​​

 Prelude

We started our preparation for this cruise before we retired in September, call it 8 months ago.  We’ve used all of that time in

• buying things (luggage, new camera with wifi, clothes to wash in the sink)

• completing paperwork (visas, cruise ship waivers, shots - $1,200!)

• research and planning (Scrum board post-its, port excursions, ship layouts)

• and personal preparation (gym workouts, dance classes, living in a small apartment for a month with a 6 year old)

Now it’s the night before and everything on our Scrum board has been moved to the Done column and the multitude of bags are packed.  I am a little worried about jet lag when we arrive in London so I’m ready to get some sleep.  Not going to happen.  Margaret is so wired she is either lying in bed quivering or jumping up and rummaging through the closet (“Honey, wtf are you doing?  Answer- I almost forgot my dancing shoes!”  Every time she twitches, I go to high alert.  Think Mike Meyers in “So I Married an Axe Murderer”

 

Departure

Good riddance Chicago.  It’s 4:00 and raining.  Love waiting on the plane for a technical problem and looking out at the fog bank.  We were too cheap to pay United $330 for a little extra legroom (really! $330!, really!) so we squirmed our way into our seats back in steerage.  Uneventful flight, we read, squirmed and catnapped. 

 

In London - Day 1 Sunday

Who knew London was so sunny.  Margaret kept us up and moving the entire day, except for the catnaps on the Big Bus hop on/hop off.  Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens is right across the road from our hotel and we did a fair amount of strolling through the park.  Since it was Sunday and sunny, everybody was out.  Lots and lots of kids with scooters.  Nice to see that London likes the same heavy awkward bikes that we use in Chicago.  Dogs everywhere and none on a leash despite the signs.  All those dogs and not one squatting to leave a mound behind.  No owners walking with filled plastic bags, what kind of dog food do they use here? 

 

London - Day 2 Monday

Staying up all day worked!  I got a full nights sleep.  Margaret got up early and showered and waited patiently for me to wake up and start moving (who is this woman and where is my wife?  She’s probably wondering who’s the lazy slug).  Breakfast was nice, we sat by a window on the second floor overlooking Kensington Gardens, very pleasant

 

Today was another sunny day and the Big Bus day.  It was also the May 1 international worker day and a banking holiday.  We rode on top all the morning and got off to have lunch in Soho.  We fought the holiday crowds on the main streets but found a small pub, the Tom Cribb, for a beer and pub food.  Soho is a great place to wander, easy to find yourself going the wrong directions but each street has something interesting.  Another long walking day with 12, 000 steps.

 

Back to the hotel and nap time.  Light dinner and we repacked and labeled our bags for pickup in the morning

 

Wednesday & Thursday, May 4&5

 

All my trepidation about fitting us and our stuff into this cabin were unfounded.   We got nooks and crannys galore.  Even all of our bags fit out of sight out of mind under the bed. 

 

At the risk of future bad ju-ju, the voyage down the Bay of Biscay was gentle and pleasant.  I am addicted to Wooden ships and Iron Men novels (C.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian, etc.) and the weather has been nothing like what I read in their novels, think gentle rocking.  Our first night on ship we missed breakfast by sleeping until 10:30AM.

 

As Margaret mentioned we ported in Gijon Spain on Thursday and our excursion took us inland 30 minutes.  Our guide was very partisan about her home and worked us through a rigorous lecture on the history of the kingdom of Asturias (now a principality, like Wales in the UK).  Things I didn’t know about this northwestern part of Spain:

• A mountain range provided isolation from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula

• The Celts moved in and their culture remains as the defining culture in Asturias

• Consequently, the bagpipe is the official musical instrument in Asturias

• The Visigoths ruled until the Moors conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula in 3 years

• The revolution that pushed the Moors out of the Peninsula began in this area and took 8 centuries to win back what the Moors took in 3 years

• In 1492 as Columbus sailed, the last of the Moors left Granada

We are underwhelmed by the dance opportunities on board.  The ship has an excellent 10-piece orchestra but we only got to dance a little on Wednesday.

 

We discovered a 2-person lounge/sofa on deck 14 and we read and watched the sun go down before adjourning to our stateroom to finish a bottle of wine.  Somebody in the elevator asked if we missed home, not yet and it’s looking grim for home.