On Board Celebrity Equinox - 10/27/14

Boarded the ship about 12 noon. Great lunch on board. Very nice stateroom as well. Sailing for Palma de Mallorca in about ten minutes and on to Valencia, Malaga and then the Canary Islands before crossing the Atlantic to Florida. 

Barcelona, Spain - Sunday October 26, 2014

Our hotel, the Jazz Hotel had a great package online, that included breakfast.  After our eggs, bacon, toast, cake, juice and coffee, we were on our way by 10 AM.  Today we were walking to the famous Gaudi Church, The Sagrada Familia. We took a slow walk, passing many shops, but all the shops were closed today .............. Sunday.  Along our stroll we passed two more great buildings designed by Antoni Gaudi.  The Casa Batllo and La Pedrera.  The lines to visit inside both buildings were incredible......we are amazed at the amount of tourists in Barcelona at this time of year.  Since we are in Barcelona for only two and a half days, we were not going to spend hours waiting on lines.  I took some photos of both buildings from the outside and we continued on to the Sagrada Familia.  We did not have to contend with lines here, since we had already purchased our tickets online.  Both the exterior and the interior of this church were magnificent.  The building of this Gaudi designed church began in 1882 and is still not finished.  The building continues, using Gaudi's original ideas.  As I had said yesterday, one has to actually visit and see this structure to really appreciate it.  Words cannot explain what one sees here.  In addition to visiting the inside of the church, we took an elevator to the top of one of the main towers.  The view of the city of Barcelona was magnificent as was viewing parts of the church.  After our visit here we walked back to the hotel for some rest and to pack and get ready for the beginning of the cruise tomorrow.  It is hard to believe that we have already traveled for three weeks in Spain, renting a car for two of them,  and now ending in Barcelona.  We had a super time traveling around the major cities of Spain and seeing the countryside, but we are definitely looking forward to relaxing for two weeks on the cruise.  The ship has five port stops in Spain before crossing the Atlantic on the way to Fort Lauderdale.

This might actually be the last major post for the blog, since Internet access on the ship is somewhat limited and very, very expensive.  Perhaps if I can access wifi in some of the ports, I might be able to update the blog briefly.  If not, I will post some notes, thoughts and photos once we arrive back in Florida.  For those of you that followed our trip, I hope you enjoyed reading the blog and seeing the photos as much as Gail and I enjoyed traveling for the past three weeks.

Adios for now!

Barcelona, Spain - Saturday October 25, 2014

Great breakfast at hotel this morning and then we walked down the Ramblas toward the port area. Strolling along the Ramblas is quite interesting, as one can see hundreds of people speaking many languages, see all kinds of shops, kisosks and vendors selling anything you would like.  We walked through the old Gothic area of Barcelona and stopped off to see the historic Cathedral before heading toward the sea.  Once we reached the water we headed over to the beach area and the area where the Olympic Village was located for the 1992 games.  There were many people at the beach, as it was quite warm today.  We walked and walked, taking in all the surroundings and made our way back to the Ramblas where we stopped in for some Tapas lunch.  After lunch we returned to relax a bit at the hotel and then journeyed by bus way up the hill to see Park Güell which was designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi.  The park was built between 1900 and 1914 and is quite interesting to see with its many structures that reflected Gaudi's style.  The park actually has to be seen ......... it is not something I can describe!  After spending some time at the park, we took the bus back to Catalunya Plaza where we headed over to the Ramblas for some dinner.  As usual, the Ramblas was packed with hundreds and hundreds of people just strolling around and enjoying a warm Barcelona evening.

Barcelona, Spain - October 24, 2014

After a great breakfast we were on our way to Barcelona airport to return the rental car.  It is hard to believe that two weeks has gone by since we picked up our Skoda.  The car has been great, with plenty of room and got very good gas mileage.  The drive from La Fresneda was nothing special in terms of landscape compared to what we have seen over the past few weeks.  Once we got down to the coast we took the highway into Barcelona to make up some time.  We were amazed at the tolls for such a short ride on the highway ............. we had to pay approximately $20 to travel about 60 miles.  We had no idea that the tolls were going to be that expensive.  It makes me glad we always took the back roads to get to everywhere we visited.  Once we arrived at the Barcelona airport, we turned in the car and took a taxi to our hotel.  We are staying in a very nice hotel a few blocks away from Catalunya Plaza and the Ramblas.  We settled in a bit and then went out to explore the area.   We visited the famous La Boqueria Food Market.  It is one of Europe's largest and most famous food markets.  Every type of food and drink was available ................ meats, cheeses, fruits, nuts, candy, olives, fish, and on and on.  There were many places to eat Tapas as well.  This market was just amazing .......... I could spend hours here, just looking around and taking photos. This market is definitely a must-see for anyone visiting Barcelona.  After browsing the market we walked down to the ports on the Mediterranean and eventually found a nice restaurant near our hotel for a great Tapas dinner and a bottle of wine.

        Click on any photo to enlarge it

La Fresneda, Spain - October 23, 2014

By 9:45 AM we were on our way north to the town of La Fresneda.  Today, the ride would only be about fives hours on the back roads.  Before we left for Spain, I purchased a book "Back Roads of Spain" and it has been helpful in giving us ideas as to what routes to take to see the most scenery.  We drove for several hours and again saw some amazing landscape.  The area near Teruel, Spain reminded us so much of the Southwest US, near Sedona, Arizona.  Much of the land was made up of very red soil and hills.  It really was a beautiful ride. At points the landscape changed from red to gray and back to red.  On top of the many hills there were hundreds of wind turbines similar to what we saw after leaving Toledo last week.  By 3 PM we arrived at our hotel, unpacked the car and relaxed for a bit.  It is hard to believe that we have had the car now for two weeks and we return it tomorrow in Barcelona.  We will be in Barcelona from tomorrow until Monday and then board the cruise ship to head back home to Florida. The past several weeks of seeing Spain and driving around has been fantastic, but we are looking forward to just relaxing on the Celebrity Equinox for two weeks.

Cuenca, Spain - October 22, 2014

Today was a very long day of driving........we spent about seven hours in the car, but saw incredible scenery along the way.  We left Granada by about 10 AM and took the highway for about two hours, since we knew we had a lot of ground to cover today.  After getting off the highway, as usual we put the GPS on non-highway and headed into the hinterlands of Spain.  The drive was beautiful with many mountains and miles and miles of olive orchards. We even came across land where new olive trees had just been planted.  I was able to take a few photos along the way, but there are not that many areas to pull the car over on these backroads.  After several hours of driving we reached one of our main stops along todays route........the town of Campo de Criptana.  The main reason for our visit here was to see the famous Spanish windmills that were an inspiration to Cervantes writing Don Quixote.  Today there are ten windmills standing that were restored from their original structure dating back to approximately the late 1500s.  The windmills are on top of a hill overlooking Campo de Criptana.  There are other original windmills in the area of Consuegra, which is closer to the city of Toledo.  After leaving Campo de Criptana we headed for the city of Cuenca to spend the night on our way toward Barcelona.  Cuenca is known for its "Hanging Houses" or Casas Colgadas.  They were interesting to see, but not as exciting as I expected.  After viewing the Casas Colgadas, we had dinner and headed back to the hotel.

Granada, Spain - Tuesday October 21, 2014

Today we had reservations to visit the famous Moorish Palace in Granada, known as the Alhambra.  We made our reservations for todays visit in August, as most people told us we needed to tend to this two months in advance of the visit.  From our hotel we took two buses to reach the top...........we walked here yesterday, but were not about to do that again.  We walked around the grounds and went into the Nasrid Palace, which is the most famous part of the Alhambra.  The overall Alhambra complex is huge and is a lot to digest in just one visit.  The complex was packed with many, many tour groups, which made taking interesting photos almost impossible.......every time I tried to take a photo, someone walked into the path of the camera.  I did my best, and several photos are posted below.  By 2 PM we left the grounds and walked into the city of Granada for some lunch.  Following lunch we relaxed a bit at the hotel and set out again to see more of the city.  At one point we came across a fantastic spice store that sold not only fresh spices, but dried fruit as well.  I purchased an assortment of dried fruit, and the dates were the best dates I have ever had.  They were so fresh, soft and sweet that I could have eaten a dozen. In several of the Spanish cities we visited thus far, there were similar stores selling fresh spices.  We must have walked at least eight or ten miles today overall.  We finished our day with a light dinner near the hotel before retiring for the night.