Today is Monday, our day at sea. I didn’t post yesterday because we were boarding and getting settled. Those of you who have traveled with me (and probably the rest of you from reading this blog) know that I find the actual process of travel very stressful. Once I actually get to my destination, I need a day to settle in and destress. Yesterday was a destress day because even the relatively simple process of checking out of our B&B, getting a cab, and getting to and aboard the ship tied me in knots. Now that we’re here and I’m settled, I’m ready to get back to writing.
As I said, yesterday morning was tied up in extricating ourselves from Barcelona. We made sure we’d collected our possessions and emailed the manageress of the B&B to tell her we were heading out (and to tell her that one of the posts on the toilet paper holder had popped off the wall bracket and needed to be reattached). Then we dragged our luggage a couple blocks over to hail a taxi. All throughout the area where we stayed, the sidewalks are patterned. I wish I’d thought to take a photo of one, but I didn’t. Most of the ones near our B&B look like six-inch square tiles with circles carved into them. They’re fun and interesting but a pain to drag small-wheeled luggage over. I”m sure we woke some residents up as we clattered along.
Of course, the usual stress ensued when we found a cab and had to figure out how to tell him we wanted the cruise port. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized that it might be tricky. “Cruise” sounds like “cruz”—“cross” in Spanish, so his first thought might have been that I wanted the cross-port. I couldn’t think of the word for boat (“barco”?) or ship (???), so I started to do some sort of “Walk Like and Egyptian” dance move—I suppose to represent trying to steady oneself on a rocking boat. Fortunately, the driver was smarter than I am gesturally creative and figured out what we wanted. We didn’t say another word to each other until our parting “gracias.”
Because we’d arrived a little before our boarding time, we didn’t have a lot of delay getting on the ship. The lines were relatively short, and we were at the head. The downside was that our rooms were not ready, but the upside was that we could hang out on the decks relatively unmolested and look back at the city. Here’s some of what we saw.
After we sailed, we went down to the LGBT meetup to meet some people on the ship. We’ve always found it nice to be able to know other people on the ship besides ourselves, and indeed, after eschewing the six very loud, very young gay men who were having a lot of fun, we met three fellows around our age and had a nice chat.
We eventually wandered off to dinner and then to bed. We overslept again this morning until 9:30 and then got cleaned up and made our way to breakfast. I forgot to pack a swimsuit, so I’ll probably go look for one after I finish writing.
More tomorrow after we get back from Herculaneum.