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!
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.
Friday was a hectic day at work. I hardly got a chance to get to the projects I had planned. I really didn’t want to leave on my vacation with unfinished work, so I kept working through the night until 7 am. I was shocked when I woke up at 6:30 and saw he was still not there. Two hours later we left for the train station and started our vacation.
I was worried that with Chad getting no sleep the night before I would have a very lonely trip, but we were in a car with some expats from Seattle living in Zurich. Small world. They were good company for the first half of our trip. The train ride south through Switzerland is awesome. And the Swiss are so scrupulous about maintaining their property, with manicured lawns and stacked wood. Because of that you can tell as soon as you cross the border into Italy. 😉
At the port in Genoa, the cruise director met us. “Are you Elisa Parry?” Several of the crew were watching out for us, it turned out. We got escorted to the front of the security line. He said that he wanted to make Elisa comfortable because she was pregnant. I think it was also because he wanted to be extra hospitable to ex-Sea Diamond passengers. It was amusing that he made a lady with a cane hold her bags and wait so we could go through. 🙂 I was amazed at how attentive everyone was. Part of me is a little worried it is because I put up a bit of a fuss this spring when we were working out details for this cruise.
The first port call on the trip was Marseilles. Poor Elisa learned the pronunciation as Marsailles (like Versailles), and it’s forever ingrained in her memory that way. Just trust us when we say it’s tricky. We don’t like French pronunciation. French is more than foreign to me– it’s like something alien. I just do not have any concept of pronunciation. We took a ferry out to the ÃŽle d’If. It’s Marseilles’ version of Alcatraz. That’s the island prison that you read about in the Count of Monte Cristo.
All the restaurant staff have been really friendly. Several of them already knew about our Sea Diamond experience. The maître d’ is weird–he explained to us that his pregnant wife has three steins of beer every week, because it’s good for breast milk. 😕 I suggested that he ask a doctor about it. We thought he was joking, because he is a real personable guy–not so. Wow! And he was so proud of himself after he got us a seat in the place of honor at the captain’s table.
Today we stopped at the island of Palma de Mallorca. We don’t really remember much Spanish but we wish we did. Palma is a really beautiful port. One of its defining features is windmills all over the island. We went to shore just for a tour of some big underground caves. The highlight was arriving at a large underground lake for a concert. When the announcer said it would be live we assumed it must have been a mistranslation. But then a lit boat came rowing into the dark with a string quartet and organist playing classical music. We got to have a little trip in the rowboat to cross the lake before we left the caves. Very romantic. The guide was nice and spoke some English for us. There’s only a dozen English-speakers on our whole cruise, so on our next tours we will just have to try to understand the German guides.
