November 13, 2005 Barcelona

November 13, 2005 3:15am Spain time
Today was another glorious day at port. When we first got off the ship we went and took a shuttle into town. It dropped us off at the Columbus Monument. It was raining when we got there and everyone was complaining, so I said “I am going to see Spain. If anyone wants to see Spain, come on with me!” Susan decided she wanted to come, so we went and found a metro and it was actually pretty cheap, which is a change for this trip. The subway in Spain is so nice. It can get you anywhere so easily, it’s easy to read. The first place we went was the Segrada Familia, a chapel by Gaudi. It was beautiful! It was also very different than what I thought it was going to be like. After, we didn’t know what we wanted to do, because I didn’t know everything I wanted to see while I was there, so we just walked around that area of town. When we realized it was such a big city that just by walking around we wouldn’t see anything, we eventually found a metro and hopped back on. Because of the book I bought, we knew where we wanted to go and so when we were on the metro and saw the different stations, we found that we were only one stop away and could have walked there if we wouldn’t have been so stupid and read the map. Oh well! The metro is a fun experience. When we were going in we found a photo stop machine and took cheesy photos that turned us into Cupid and has a Spanish saying on it that we can’t understand, but it was fun! We were going to see Gaudi’s big park with the statuettes in it (which I still wish we would have seen), but we decided that since we had paid for our one metro trip we might as well fully use it instead of going one stop. So we found out where the Picasso museum stop was and hopped back on. After we got off we were very lost but it was exciting because the street that the Picasso museum was on was called Princesa Street. That made me happy. As we were searching for the museum, which was in the middle of a little alley way, we ran into the cathedral of Santa Maria. It was a beautiful cathedral! Unfortunately, I couldn’t take any pictures because the services had already begun. We eventually wandered upon the Picasso museum and it was incredible! It started out with the beginnings of his artwork and then went through his different stages, and ended up with his paintings, which were breathtaking. My favorite section was his pictador section. He had told a friend that if he hadn’t had been a painter he wanted to be a bull fighter. So he had many paintings of bull fights that were just dots on a page that you had to search through to find what the picture was. I also loved his late paint work. All he used were little splotches of paint about a half inch wide with different colors to make his whole painting, not even blending it at all. It’s incredible. When we were done, we begun walking through the street to find out where we needed to go next to get back to the ship. We finally asked a very nice young good looking Spaniard where we needed to go. He told us that we were very close. He told us to go straight down the street, and if we went down that street we would find many things. Even the most famous street in Barcelona, which was Las Ramblas, and if he was wrong he would buy us a beer. He kept on accentuating buying us a beer. I think he just wanted to get us liquored up. We walked down the street and we found a very interesting shop. I wanted to buy just about everything in there. It had antique jewelry and old pill boxes, and perfume bottles. In there I found my charm for this leg of the race, and it was a pictador with a bull to remind me of the Picasso museum and my favorite piece of his work. The best part about it was it was only 7.50 Euros. We kept on walking and we found Las Ramblas. When we had first been on that street at the beginning of the day, there wasn’t much to it, but in the evening once everyone had gotten out of church, it was a huge market street with so much jewelry I was about to go crazy. It was really interesting to watch the street gamers as they tried to con people out of their money. What they would do is the silly game of which of the three cups the ball was under. I took a picture and after the flash went off, the gentlemen playing looked at me like I was committing and sin and they were going to get caught by their wives. It made me giggle, as well as making me want to run (and pee my pants at the same time). We went back to the Columbus statue, which was the meeting place for our bus back to the ship, when I saw a sign that said “take an elevator to the top of Columbus” (in so many words) . It only cost me 2.50 Euros. When we got to the top, the view was incredible! I could see all of Barcelona every which way. I took pictures out of every single window I could find (It is really weird right now, because I feel like I’m in my own floating hotel that keeps rocking back and forth like mad! It’s crazy!!) Anyways… We finally got back to the ship, and everyone else had spent about 45 minutes in Barcelona, then came back to do laundry (boring!). I’m glad I had my fabulous adventure in Barcelona. We went to dinner tonight (again) and it was really good. I had a spinach turnover in a light cheese sauce, a Mediterranean salad with a really good dressing, and chicken parmesana. For dessert I had a lemon sorbet and Lemoncello cake. It was very tasty! And yes… I can tell I’m getting fatter, and it is hard to get myself to care. I was exhausted after dinner, not only from my long day of walking, but I took another motion sickness pill (only one this time) so I went and took a nap. My nap made me miss two comedians. A magic guy, and an acrobat. Heather says I didn’t miss much. They called and woke me up, and we went up to the Skywalker’s Night Club. It is a bar/night club that is a long room suspended over the back of the ship. We were the only ones dancing, and I bet everyone thought we were drunk (which you get used to around here). It’s really neat to be dancing, then go over to the window and see the waves coming from the back of the ship that follow in a long line from where we’ve been. We were so hot from dancing, that we decided to go swimming. Little did we know it was raining outside, so we just played in the hot tub. It was just Heather and I, and we had a great time talking while we cooked our gizzards, as Heather would say. She told me she was hungry, and we weren’t tired yet, so we went and threw on clothes, and went up to the buffet where we stuffed our faces with a midnight (or 2:45 am) chips and salsa run. When we were eating, I was thinking I would be too tired to write my email, then Heather stepped up and said she was an amazing typist. So here we are now writing to you, me dictating to my own stenographer. So thanks to Heather, you get an email today. You owe her big time (or I guess I do. One of the two). It is now 3:50 am, and I guess we should try to go to sleep. Lucky for us, it is an at sea day so we could sleep all day if we wanted to. Hope things are well at home, and you really should write me. Love you!