We missed our own bed so much! It’s nice to be home again. It’s going to be hard to leave again next weekend.
Since we last wrote, we visited two more Spanish ports. The first was Ibiza. It’s another one of the Balearic Islands. It’s a lively party spot for singles. Elisa and I walked around the old fortress walls. It was cool, but the sights weren’t too different from the other ports.
Our last full cruise day was our stop in Barcelona. We went to the Sagrada FamÃlia right away, of course. Then we went to the Park Güell. We really liked looking at GaudÃ. (But we didn’t like it enough to pay the 18 euros to see Casa Batlló also. We wouldn’t have had time anyway.) We wish this port stop was longer than just a few hours. A whole day would have been perfect. As our time ran out, we strolled on Las Ramblas. Then we rushed to catch a subway in time to get on the boat again. Barcelona was my favorite port. It offered something unique.
Most evenings we saw the ship’s singing and dancing entertainment. The best show though was Karaoke night when Elisa worked the crowd with I Will Survive. I was a little disappointed at the English selection. That was the only song that I could even try to pull off. The others I hadn’t heard of or didn’t know well at all. And then there were the French, German and Italian songs.
We were happy to get off the ship. We had a great time, but we were ready to go home. One of the 16 English passengers asked us if we were sad that the cruise was ending. I replied that we don’t get sad when our vacations end anymore. 🙂
Genoa has really good Focaccia bread. We tried to make the most of the fact that we had to leave the cruise ship after lunch but our train wasn’t until after 4 pm. It was so irritating that they made us leave our rooms on the ship by 8 am, so really we were homeless all stinking day. Our train ride home went well because we met the nicest couple–they are from São Paulo and have also lived in Switzerland and Austria and Ecuador. They talked about Chad’s three favorite subjects: religion, the presidential race and computers. We chatted in Portuguese too. It was so cute!
After leaving AFRICA we headed back on the cruise ship and docked later in the afternoon in Gibraltar. We had some options for how to spend our few hours there. We could either go up the rock and see monkeys or go out in the bay on a boat and search for dolphins. We chose the dolphins, but now that Elisa has heard about the monkey tour she wishes we saw that one. I had to promise we would go find monkeys some other trip. 🙂 We went out on the boat and found a whole group of dolphins after a lot of searching. I thought we might be the 4% group that didn’t find any for awhile. The weather was perfect and you could see Gibraltar, Spain and Morocco on our ride. I even got to see a few flying fish! I swear!
Yesterday’s tours were in the Andalusia area in Spain. Our ship docked briefly in Almeria to let us off and we met back up with it in Málaga. A bus took us up to the Alhambra. I wish it were better preserved. (The palace, not the bus). It reminded us a lot of the harem we saw in Istanbul. The gardens were the best part in my opinion. But then, they usually are wherever we go. It’s amazing to me that the Moors lost Spain, considering their superior technology and better standard of living. We were treated to a great lunch during which traditional Spanish musicians serenaded us. I love seeing parts of the traditional culture of the places we visit.
We strolled around Málaga briefly before having dinner on the ship. It had some nice areas but I am always amazed that some of the suggested city walking tours bring you through such ugly, crummy areas. In Málaga the cruise arranged a Flamenco show for us. It was wonderful! It felt really authentic. There were no gimmicky tricks like most other tours. The best part of the day was that they invited Elisa up on stage. That would be my dad or brother’s worst nightmare but it was perfect for me! She shook her stuff with her Spanish partner. Everyone in the audience loved it and hooted the whole time. I didn’t know everyone was enjoying it as much as I was. Everyone was commenting to me in Italian and French so who knows what they really thought. 🙂
Morocco was the stopover this morning. We are very excited that we got to go to the continent of AFRICA! We are just as happy to leave. There actually wasn’t much to see in Tangier, where the boat docked. We walked through some bazaars and rug shops, kind of the standard stuff that you see in all Mediterranean port towns. This hotel did a show involving a fire swallower and a belly dancer and horses. It was like traditional folk circus acts. A highlight was definitely when they had the horse show. Five men came riding up twirling their guns over head. They all skidded to a halt right in front of us and BANG! I wasn’t expecting actual gunfire right in front of me. The shot into the ground sprayed some of the dirt up at us and I screamed. I do not ever scream so this was quite a funny experience. Maybe you had to be there. 🙂
One of the evenings we got invited to the captain’s table at a “gala.” Some passengers dressed in formals, and some got all done up at the spa. The maître d’ wanted to get us a seat at the captain’s right hand, I guess because they still want to be so nice to Sea Diamond passengers. We can’t complain about the service.
