Rogueperson

wow…. Good luck. My miserableness pales in comparison. I’ve been keenly aware of my surroundings because of many warnings of pick pockets and thieves. That probably added to my anxiety overall.

See my live thread. This is Laurieal’s. Not nearly as bad as Little Britain.

Quick update to my adventures. Wifi is worse at Barcelona airport. No way i can upload pics easily. At least I’m here. I had to go through security 3 times!!! They say you have to separate electronics. Usually its just my laptop. They wanted every thing and in separate trays so yeah… But I’m at the gate for my first leg. Delayed by 20 minutes . Worse news. No gate assignment. So I could be here, i could be across the terminal. This place is huge. But pretty nice.

Ooooh, google translate has offline mode!!

I’m assuming you would need data for that. Things I take for granted at home, I’m having difficulty here. The wifi in the hotel sucks. I never thought i’d say this, but the internet on the cruise ship is better. I can’t post because i keep losing the data. Not the signal, thats strong. I’m giving up and maybe i will have wifi at the airport thats better. So guys, not done yet.

For a little bit. I know its next itinerary is a round trip from Barcelona but i didn’t see how many she did.

I noted on the @laurieal’s live thread briefly how awful today has been for me. Yes, getting off the ship stunk. Technically, this is ship to door. However, this is not accurate because i waited on the ship to let the slow line move before getting in line. We were in the Roundaout just hanging out and waiting for the line to die down. I don’t think we actually left the ship until 11:30. And that is 18 minutes ship to door time. We thought about getting an uber, but that didn’t work so we ended up waiting in a real long line for the cab. The cab driver barely spoke english but i thought we conveyed the hotel to him. I was staying at the hotel Indigo on Gran Via. Apparently there are two Hotel Indigo on Gran via 10 minutes apart One was Hotel Indigo Plaza Espana and the other one was Hotel Indigo Plaza Catalunya. Not confusing at all. I have no data so i couldn’t pull up my hotel reservation only knew it was on Gran Via. So I ended up at the wrong hotel and had to take another cab to my hotel. I get to my hotel, thinking its late enough that my room was ready. Nope. Not ready. Its 2:30 at this point. The language barrier is proving to be more difficult than I expected so now my anxiety level is through the roof. Fortunately, they offered to lock our luggage up while we had lunch. Now that I’m writing this, it doesn’t sound too awful. But the language barrier and the lack of connectivity that i’m used to has stripped all the tools i didn’t know i depend on. Add to the fact that my wife was getting hungry because she didn’t have breakfast like i did and she has the allergies that could kill her and we have an iffy chance of conveying this to any food service staff. we ended up having lunch in the hotel. At least the menu was in english as we were finding many that were not. It surprised me how good it was. It was a light lunch. Cheese plate Fried anchovies Steak tartare

My time is Barcelona is pretty bad so far. But i won’t clutter your live thread. Its an adventure…they say.

So we opted for a later departure and may now be paying the price. I thought the ship was supposed to be empty by 10:30, but i guess that was a suggestion. A huge line is waiting to get off. Fortunately, we don’t have to be anywhere and are just chilling. I Love the fact they don’t try to push you out of the room at 8am like other cruise lines i’ve been on. I think the later embarkation is genius. Other ships, later disembarkation is usually quicker as most people are already off the ship. I guess its a balance thing.

Huh, i tried and they said they only do medium. We’re on the same sailing. I asked for it rare.

no. I got a hotel room to spend the day here and fly home tomorrow. Too bad we never actually got to meet. This has been fun.

Good Morning from Barcelona. A bittersweet day of disembarkation. We plan to spend the day and night here and fly home tomorrow. My plan is the hop on hop off bus which incidentally has a stop near my hotel. So we’re not done yet.

@laurieal Not sure who won the race as I just woke up. But we don’t have to disembark until 10:15.

Wow. This represents the last of my Bar tab. Can’t believe I spent $800 on drinks.

Another show. So apparently this is not the same show as last night. I heard it was better music and energy last night. I chose not to go because we were not quite done with Gumbae at 10. The trend is if i dont get in line, its hard to get in or get seats so i didn’t bother. Still, it was a fun show/activity. I have to admit that this kind of show happened on what I considered the best cruise I’ve ever been on. It was on a NYE cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the seas 2014/2015. I had never before seen that on a cruise. And Virgin did it again. You have to have a special energy to make this work.

Got lucky and made it to Lolz supper club. Menu Roasted Vegetable Salad. A little salty but good. Burrata. Its not really burrata, just fresh mozzarella. Parmesan Chicken Wife got Sea Bass Chocolate Mousse Only two comedians and the MC. This dude i saw earlier and it was the same act. I’m feel a little bit like i wasted my time here. I probably won’t do this again if i catch comedians previous to this show.

@laurieal Yeah, you’re pulling ahead again…

I saw this on Deck 16? I think

Folks, Scarlet Lady has been lagging behind for most of this race but what is this? what is this, she’s pulling ahead. Scarlet Lady in the lead!!!!!!

my bad, you said your tour started at 11:00 so i thought you got it through Royal

Wait a second. You had a cruise sponsored excursion AND you had to pay for transport?!?!?

Okay, I’ve posted more bathroom pictures on this Live thread than any other. Why? Because these bathrooms fascinate me! Look at this picture without the floor. Even WITH the floor, its hard to tell in real life that the bathroom has a left passage that leads to urinals, sinks and additional bathroom stalls.

Valencia “food” tour. Valencia is probably the least visually impressive ports of the ones we visited. But it is a real city vs. a tourist attraction. So this tour was a little annoying. It was not the tour guide’s fault, as throughout the tour, he was on his phone practically screaming. The tour part was fine. The food i have issues with. I *think* added this last minute as I do not remember seeing this tour available online when i booked. At our first stop. We stopped at a market where he gave us some pastries. This was not really memorable because i almost forgot about it when writing this. We had to wait a bit as there was another group in the restaurant for our first stop. We got this. a drink was included with this including beer or wine. This dish was pretty good. Afterwards, we were told that we would swap the dessert portion with the lunch portion due to same said tour group. We returned to the beach area and had either ice cream or real horchata as oppose to the stuff i’m used to. This was ok, but i enjoyed it. Now we had to fight through traffic to get back to where we were. Because of the time crunch, the tour guide would give us the sandwiches to go. However, we had to wait in a real long line to get our drinks. What’s worse, when we got our drinks, we had to drink it right there because the drinks came in glass bottles that had to be returned. I thought we could get around it with plastic cups, which the guide suggested. Cool, but driver would not let anyone on the bus with an open container. I somehow got water to my wife who was dehydrated. But now i have to return the bottle. Guide just said don’t worry about it. But then when we got on the bus, the driver said no eating allowed on the bus. 🤬 Worst of all, the sandwich wasn't very good. All this was due to the timing snafu. I feel like the food portion of this tour missed the mark.

We depart at 6:00

There you are… You were behind the sun. That’s my story and i’m sticking with it.