Detailed Photo Review of Carnival Sunshine 12-Night Mediterranean Cruise 9/8/13

[deladane]

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this review! Your pictures are beautiful and you make me feel that I'm right there! We just did a Northern Europe cruise on The Legend, so next year we're hoping to do the Med. again (of course no CCL!) We did do some of the ports you were at, but would love to repeat them.

 

Sorry your report will come to the end soon!

Thank you! Isn't it annoying that Carnival isn't going back to the Med next year? I hope you find a great other option when you book your Med cruise :) I guess the cruise line doesn't really matter considering how much time you spend in port every day! And don't worry, I have to get through 3 days in Barcelona, so I still have a bit more of the story to share!! :)

 

 

Hi:

 

I've just started reading your review, but wanted to say how glad I am to find it! I'm sailing next year on the NCL Spirit, but with many similar ports (starting in Venice & ending in Barcelona too) & also flying Delta from/to JFK. Can't wait to read all about it!

Oh wow, it sounds like your NCL cruise will mirror my cruise pretty closely! I hope you enjoy my review, and that you find some useful information to help with your planning. Please let me know if you have any questions! :)

[Buffalofirsttimer4]

Hi:

 

I've just started reading your review, but wanted to say how glad I am to find it! I'm sailing next year on the NCL Spirit, but with many similar ports (starting in Venice & ending in Barcelona too) & also flying Delta from/to JFK. Can't wait to read all about it!

 

NCL Spirit was my first ship, not a Med cruise but she got my family hooked on cruising, enjoy!

 

Sent from my KFOT using Tapatalk 2

[wnycruisefam66]

NCL Spirit was my first ship, not a Med cruise but she got my family hooked on cruising, enjoy!

 

Sent from my KFOT using Tapatalk 2

 

I'm glad to hear you liked the Spirit! This will be our 1st Norwegian cruise. Looking at your screen name, I'm wondering if we're from the same part of the world? We live in a suburb of Buffalo.

[wnycruisefam66]

Oh wow, it sounds like your NCL cruise will mirror my cruise pretty closely! I hope you enjoy my review, and that you find some useful information to help with your planning. Please let me know if you have any questions! :)

 

Love the info on the Rome in Limo Tours, we have them booked for the same 3 ports too. Same tours, with the exception of Naples, we are adding the Mt. Vesuvius climb to ours. It just sounds so cool to be able to see it close up!

Great job!

[deladane]

Friday, September 20th - Barcelona, Spain

 

After 9 long months of planning and 12 incredible days in the Mediterranean, it was time for our cruise to come to an end. Debarkation announcements started at 7am on the overhead speakers. We had ordered room service for between 7:30 and 7:45am. At 7:35, I thought I heard a knock, so I opened the door, but they were knocking on the room next door several times as if no one was answering. They saw me come out but said it was not my food. We still had no delivery by 8am so I called the room service number and they said they tried delivering it but no one answered. I told them what happened and that they obviously tried delivering our food to the wrong room, so they said they would send up the food now. I was starving by this time, so I just ran up to Lido for one last breakfast burrito. I had planned to get room service because I feared long lines on Lido, but there was actually no wait for my burrito. Maybe people assumed it was closed and didn't try? Or maybe enough people had already gotten off the ship? Anyway, I was back in the room by 8:10 and the food arrived from room service around 8:15am.

 

We had zone 30 for debarkation, and were called to go down to the lobby to get off the ship right on time at 8:45am. We got our luggage and waited in a loooong line for a taxi for 45 minutes. The taxi cost 25 Euros with the meter running for a 20 minute drive to our hotel. We did a lot of research on where we wanted to stay in Barcelona, and decided to stay near Placa de Catalunya and the top of Las Ramblas at Hotel Lleo. It was a medium-sized hotel which included a fantastic breakfast, and it was relatively inexpensive compared to some of our other options. The lobby and hallways looked newly renovated and were very nice, but the room looked dated. The room had a mini-fridge, flat screen tv, WIFI, and a balcony and it was a nice size, but it didn't have very many outlets, so luckily we had multi-outlet power adapters or we wouldn't have been able to charge all our devices each night.

 

 

There is a balcony behind the curtains:

 

Bathroom on the left, closet and safe straight ahead, front door on the right:

 

Our room wasn't ready yet when we arrived at 10:30am, so we put our bags in the locked storage closet and went out to tour the city. We pre-purchased tickets for the red Hop On Hop Off bus online with 2-day passes. My plan was to ride the Green route today so we could see Park Guell. There was a 45 minute wait to board in Placa de Catalunya, and we could see the people waiting to board the Orange route had a similar wait. We were able to exchange our online vouchers for actual tickets right on the bus, but while we were walking to the bus stop, we passed a parked bus on the side of the road which is used as an office, so we had already exchanged our vouchers there.

 

This was the line for the Orange line:

 

Look for these signs on the sidewalk to know where to board the buses:

 

Finally on the bus, the view of Placa Catalunya from the upper level of the bus:

[deladane]

We spent the next 2 hours riding all over Barcelona and listening to the audio guide. They do provide you with earphones, but I would recommend you bring your own because theirs didn't look very comfortable. We sat upstairs and were able to take tons of photos along the way...

 

 

I think those black and white things are lights, but in the daytime, they just looked like giant eyeballs to me! haha

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

 

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

 

 

 

 

 

 

This route also went passed Sagrada Familia and the other Gaudi buildings, but I will hold off on those photos until I get to the day we visited those sites.

[Buffalofirsttimer4]

I'm glad to hear you liked the Spirit! This will be our 1st Norwegian cruise. Looking at your screen name, I'm wondering if we're from the same part of the world? We live in a suburb of Buffalo.

 

Yup, we live in the city, I have children who attend Honors, so we have to be a resident of the city. Which suburb?

 

Sent from my KFOT using Tapatalk 2

[mj]

Friday, September 20th - Barcelona, Spain

 

After 9 long months of planning and 12 incredible days in the Mediterranean, it was time for our cruise to come to an end. Debarkation announcements started at 7am on the overhead speakers. We had ordered room service for between 7:30 and 7:45am. At 7:35, I thought I heard a knock, so I opened the door, but they were knocking on the room next door several times as if no one was answering. They saw me come out but said it was not my food. We still had no delivery by 8am so I called the room service number and they said they tried delivering it but no one answered. I told them what happened and that they obviously tried delivering our food to the wrong room, so they said they would send up the food now. I was starving by this time, so I just ran up to Lido for one last breakfast burrito. I had planned to get room service because I feared long lines on Lido, but there was actually no wait for my burrito. Maybe people assumed it was closed and didn't try? Or maybe enough people had already gotten off the ship? Anyway, I was back in the room by 8:10 and the food arrived from room service around 8:15am.

 

We had zone 30 for debarkation, and were called to go down to the lobby to get off the ship right on time at 8:45am. We got our luggage and waited in a loooong line for a taxi for 45 minutes. The taxi cost 25 Euros with the meter running for a 20 minute drive to our hotel. We did a lot of research on where we wanted to stay in Barcelona, and decided to stay near Placa de Catalunya and the top of Las Ramblas at Hotel Lleo. It was a medium-sized hotel which included a fantastic breakfast, and it was relatively inexpensive compared to some of our other options. The lobby and hallways looked newly renovated and were very nice, but the room looked dated. The room had a mini-fridge, flat screen tv, WIFI, and a balcony and it was a nice size, but it didn't have very many outlets, so luckily we had multi-outlet power adapters or we wouldn't have been able to charge all our devices each night.

 

 

There is a balcony behind the curtains:

 

Bathroom on the left, closet and safe straight ahead, front door on the right:

 

Our room wasn't ready yet when we arrived at 10:30am, so we put our bags in the locked storage closet and went out to tour the city. We pre-purchased tickets for the red Hop On Hop Off bus online with 2-day passes. My plan was to ride the Green route today so we could see Park Guell. There was a 45 minute wait to board in Placa de Catalunya, and we could see the people waiting to board the Orange route had a similar wait. We were able to exchange our online vouchers for actual tickets right on the bus, but while we were walking to the bus stop, we passed a parked bus on the side of the road which is used as an office, so we had already exchanged our vouchers there.

 

This was the line for the Orange line:

 

Look for these signs on the sidewalk to know where to board the buses:

 

Finally on the bus, the view of Placa Catalunya from the upper level of the bus:

 

Thanks again for the info. I had planned to do a hop on hop off tour in Barcelona. The Epic gives me 8-9 hours in Barcelona and wanted to see the Park Guell and the church, and some other sights and felt that was the best way to accomplish this with the time given.

[deladane]

Thanks again for the info. I had planned to do a hop on hop off tour in Barcelona. The Epic gives me 8-9 hours in Barcelona and wanted to see the Park Guell and the church, and some other sights and felt that was the best way to accomplish this with the time given.

 

If you want to see Park Guell (which I recommend that you do because it was AMAZING!!!), it is in a somewhat remote area of the city that is not easily accessible by public transit, so the best way to get there is really by using the HOHO buses.

 

I'm not sure how much research you have done about the HOHO buses in Barcelona, but there are lots of threads on here about the two options: the Red bus and the Blue bus. The blue bus is very heavily advertised by the hotels and other tourist spots in the city, so as a result, it tends to be very crowded. I would recommend you pre-purchase tickets online with the Red bus. You can print out a voucher online and exchange it for real tickets on the bus (and then save your ticket so you can get on and off the bus as often as you want). The Red bus has 2 routes: Green and Orange. Honestly, with only one day in Barcelona as a port, I would suggest skipping the Orange route. I will talk about it in more details when I get to Saturday in my review, but we found that one to be a bit boring.

 

On the other hand, the Green route was great! It will get you to Park Guell, Sagrada Familia and the Gothic Cathedral (not sure which church you are referring to, but it goes to those and they are the most popular so I assume you meant one of the two haha), and it also takes you down to the beaches and a bunch of other great spots in Barcelona. Definitely a good way to spend your day if you want to see as much of Barcelona as possible in just a few hours! :) Have a great cruise and make sure to come back and tell us how it went!!

[mj]

If you want to see Park Guell (which I recommend that you do because it was AMAZING!!!), it is in a somewhat remote area of the city that is not easily accessible by public transit, so the best way to get there is really by using the HOHO buses.

 

I'm not sure how much research you have done about the HOHO buses in Barcelona, but there are lots of threads on here about the two options: the Red bus and the Blue bus. The blue bus is very heavily advertised by the hotels and other tourist spots in the city, so as a result, it tends to be very crowded. I would recommend you pre-purchase tickets online with the Red bus. You can print out a voucher online and exchange it for real tickets on the bus (and then save your ticket so you can get on and off the bus as often as you want). The Red bus has 2 routes: Green and Orange. Honestly, with only one day in Barcelona as a port, I would suggest skipping the Orange route. I will talk about it in more details when I get to Saturday in my review, but we found that one to be a bit boring.

 

On the other hand, the Green route was great! It will get you to Park Guell, Sagrada Familia and the Gothic Cathedral (not sure which church you are referring to, but it goes to those and they are the most popular so I assume you meant one of the two haha), and it also takes you down to the beaches and a bunch of other great spots in Barcelona. Definitely a good way to spend your day if you want to see as much of Barcelona as possible in just a few hours! :) Have a great cruise and make sure to come back and tell us how it went!!

 

Thanks again. It is Park Guell and Sagrada Familia that is on top of my list to see. I am in Barcelona from 5am-6pm on the Epic, which will be where most people will disembark. That is why you see the odd time of 5am and that is what is listed on my itinerary. Currently using Rick Steves guidebook to get an idea of a what to do in a day and get a gameplan. The architecture in Barcelona looks so amazing! Would love to go outside of Barcelona to Monserrat, but there is a lot to see in Barcelona.

 

 

Looking forward to hearing the rest of your story. Also, love the fact that you posted pictures of the green line as that gives me a visual of the area and I find that most helpful.

[swim4lifekac]

Hi Dana, we stayed very close to you by the Placa Catalunya at the Grand Ducat. We got off the ship around 7 am with our carry on luggage and the research we did showed that the port was very close to Las Ramblas, so we planned on walking to our hotel. However, when we got off, we weren't where we thought we would be, so we asked a taxi and they quoted us 30 Euro. We did not want to pay that, so we walked from the ship to our hotel by Las Ramblas and Placa Catalunya (where we could take a bus to the airport easily). I thought it was going to be a much longer walk than it was, going over the bridge was kind of scary, but we were at our hotel around 8 or 8:30, where we locked up our luggage and also caught the HOHO. We had prepurchased our tickets as well, and it was very easy. However, we took the other bus. From your pictures, your bus loaded people across the street from where we caught our bus. It was a great way to get around the city and we also loved Barcelona and plan to go back and have more than one day there. It is funny, because your room looked very similar to our room, small and bare, but it was for only one night, so not so bad.

 

From the HOHO we realized that our ship docked at a further terminal and that is why our research did not match up to what we thought. When the HOHO went to the marina, we saw where we thought we would dock. Oh well, the vast majority of our planning worked out and this was so much the trip of a lifetime. When I look at our pictures and see us in them, it seems like a dream. It was such a wonderful trip.

 

I am loving your review. :D You have done such a good job. Taking the notes you did was a super good idea. See you on FB ;).

[deladane]

It took close to 2 hours to reach the Park Guell stop on the HOHO bus (it was stop #13 out of 16 stops total). We got off the bus, turned right on the next side street, and walked 10 minutes uphill to reach the park. It was now after 2pm and we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast at 8am, so we stopped at a small store for bocadillos con chorizo.

 

 

That was the first store we saw, and we didn't know if we would have any other options, so we just ate there. It turns out, a few blocks further up the road, there were several other restaurant options. One of them sold gourmet popsicles, so we got those as a treat for the walk back to the bus after we left the park.

 

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.... I loved the park! It offered beautiful views of the city, and I loved the Gaudi style of art throughout the park. It was like Alice in Wonderland meets a Gingerbread house. We spent about an hour walking around the park and taking it all in. Unfortunately, it was crazy crowded so that made it a little hard to relax and enjoy the atmosphere, but it was still quite a feast for the eyes!

 

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

 

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

 

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

 

 

 

 

 

[deladane]

We stayed at the park until around 3pm, then made our way back to the bus stop to finish the last 3 stops to get back to Placa Catalunya.

 

 

 

 

We got back to the hotel at 4pm and checked into our room. We unpacked and freshened up and left the hotel at 6:30pm to get dinner. Our plan for tonight was to eat dinner in Placa Espana and watch the magic fountains. We took the metro for 3 stops to Placa Espana, and took our hotel concierge's advice and ate at Las Arenas. Right when you get upstairs at the subway stop, there is a huge building called Arenas. It used to be a bull ring, and they converted it into a huge shopping center with tons of restaurants. It costs 1 Euro to ride the glass elevators to the top, and you can see a great view of the entire plaza and the city. They upper level has about 10 restaurants, so we walked around looking at the views and deciding where we wanted to eat.

 

 

 

[deladane]

We decided to eat at a restaurant called La Loma. I ordered the paella, and we had an amazing view of the sunset while we ate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After dinner, we walked over to where they have the magic fountains. Now is a good time to mention that this weekend was the biggest festival of the year in Barcelona, called La Merce Festival. Thousands of people come to Barcelona for this festival, and it made the city extremely crowded. They had a concert outside for a pretty good pop rock band, but this meant that the escalators were closed to access the magic fountains, so we had to detour back around a huge building and up a side street to get to the fountains.

 

[deladane]

When we finally got to the fountains, it was extremely crowded, but we found a spot to stand and watch the show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, another downside to the La Merce festival and the rock concert was that they did not play the music which normally accompanies the fountains. As a result, we thought the fountains were pretty, but we got bored fast and we left by 9:45pm and took a taxi back to the hotel.

 

Placa Catalunya was a major hub for the festival, so we could hear people honking their horns and screaming up in our room, but luckily it didn't disturb our sleep. We went to bed around midnight after a long but exciting first day in Barcelona.

[deladane]

[B][SIZE="3"][COLOR="Purple"]Saturday, September 21 - Barcelona, Spain

I woke up at 7:30 and it felt like I was sleeping in haha I ordered mom some coffee from the hotel's room service and it arrived 10 minutes later. I finished getting dressed and went downstairs for breakfast. Hotel Lleo offers a great breakfast with tons of meats, cheeses, pastries, other breakfast staples, and even wine!

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After breakfast, we took the metro to the Gothic Cathedral. Entrance to the church is free as long as you enter before noon, so we made this our first stop to save a little money. We got to the front door of the church and the guard said I needed to cover my knees. Remember that black skirt I carried in my purse every day of the cruise? Well I don't know why, but I totally forgot to bring it today! Oops! Luckily, there was a lady on the church steps selling thin brightly colored shawls for 2 Euros each, so I bought a pretty one and wrapped it around my waist to cover my knees. I guess it worked out okay in the end because that shawl was lighter and less bulky to carry around for the rest of the day than my original black skirt in its pouch.

We spent about 30 minutes walking around the cathedral. It was very detailed and pretty, but I was disappointed that there was a La Merce Festival tent set up in the front which blocked the views and made it hard to see the whole facade in one glance.

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[deladane]

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Famous ducks in the courtyard:
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[deladane]

[B][SIZE="3"][COLOR="Purple"]Next, we went down to the marina to see the Columbus Monument, the wave bridge, and the harbor. It was such a beautiful day outside, and there was lots of activity along the waterfront so it was fun to wander around and people watch for a little while.

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[Jimmy Geegitz]

Great review. Hope to be on the sunshine soon.

[deladane]

[quote name='Jimmy Geegitz']Great review. Hope to be on the sunshine soon.[/QUOTE]

thank you! it's a great ship, so I hope you enjoy your future cruise :)