Barcelona to Ft. Lauderdale Transatlantic Cruise – 2013

Stephanie and I are writing this, safe and sound, but very tired, in Barcelona, Spain.  This was certainly NOT one of the smoothest travel days we have had.  Here is the recap of the long duration flights….

Well the weather outside was frightful, and we were in it.  Today was our day of departure to fly to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and then from there to Barcelona, Spain.  The weather was the worst we have seen in weeks, and of course, it was the worst in Atlanta, where many flights were being delayed.  Trying to be proactive, we called Delta to inquire about getting on an earlier flight to Atlanta in order to have a better chance of making the connection for the transatlantic flight to Amsterdam.  We were scheduled for 65 minutes between our arriving flight from South Carolina to Atlanta, and the departure from Atlanta to Amsterdam.  On a nice weather day, not a problem, but on a cold, rainy, foggy day, not so good.

The first person I contacted at Delta indicated it was not a problem to change, but something “had to be done manually” to change the ticket, so I was transferred to another person, who I had to re-inform about the issue, only to be told the entire booking would be re-ticketed at a new fare, for the small price of $3,000.  This was due to the fact that there were currently “no delays at any of the airports we were traveling to”.  This grateful offer was declined, and plan B was put into effect.  We decided to try the same strategy at the airport instead of on the phone.  We could see the weather was getting worse, and delays on the flights to Atlanta  from South Carolina, and back were getting delayed by as much as 35 minutes.

We headed to the airport about 2 hours early (thanks to Mom for the ride) to try and get onto a 1:40 PM flight instead of our scheduled 3:27 PM flight.  We were put on standby, but were also informed that this was a smaller regional jet flight, and due to the weather, they pilots had to carry more fuel and could not carry as much weight on the plane, passengers and baggage being the victims.  While waiting at the airport in South Carolina for the earlier flight, we were informed at the gate that flight coming from Atlanta was actually delayed by 40 minutes arriving in South Carolina.  So much for all of the additional between flight connection time!  Then, based on what we had been told, the plane could not accept any more stand-by passengers.  In fact, two persons on standby got on ahead of us, and then about 5 minutes later, they were coming back off, too much weight.

Fortunately, our original flight, also originating in Atlanta, had left only about 5 minutes later than scheduled, and by this time, was scheduled to depart South Carolina only about 45 minutes later than the ‘earlier” standby flight, with all of its delays.  We thought all was looking good, and maybe we would make it on the original flights without any issues.    Not.

We got on the plane in South Carolina, looked like we were set for an on time departure, and then we were caught in the dreaded “gate hold”, meaning we were being held at the gate in South Carolina in order to make a specific time slot going into Atlanta – weather based control.  The 65 minutes we were scheduled to have between flights in Atlanta was counting down, reduced by 25 minutes of gate hold time.  We actually did hold tot he delayed takeoff time, and made it to Atlanta, but I believe we landed on a runway closer to Alabama than to the Atlanta terminal, after a LONG taxi, we arrived at the terminal, de-planed, and  rushed from Terminal B to Terminal F, the international terminal.  We made it to the gate as the last of the boarding passengers was loading.  Fortunately, even though we were near the back of the plane, and would have been loaded fairly soon in the boarding process, we still had some overhead bin room available for our three different carry on/personal bags.  Since it had been a rush to get to the connecting plane to Amsterdam, we were now just hoping our checked baggage would also make it.

At this point in time, the pilot addressed the passengers and informed us we were going to be 30 minutes late because we were now waiting on a replacement co-pilot, one had gotten sick.  This was actually good news to us, it increased the chance of our checked baggage getting on board.  The 30 minutes ended up being over an hour, now delaying our arrival in Amsterdam by that same amount.  No worries, we had over two hours layover in Amsterdam for our connection to Barcelona, it seemed all was finally going our way.  The flight to Barcelona was about 7 hours, 40 minutes, and was without incident.  We had a small dinner, made a couple of adult beverages, including fresh home grown key limes, and watched some movies on the seat back TV’s.  We do have to say the system and remote used on these Delta planes was horrible.  They actually had to reset the system after about an hour, some passengers were having video issues.  The meant everyone else had to start movies over, fast forwarding to their previous point in the movie.  The remotes were just horrible, the buttons just did not work correctly.

The flight had a few bumpy spots, but overall, it was fine.  We did not get much sleep, it just seemed too cramped, more so than on other flights.  We landed in Belgium, well it was Amsterdam, but again ,we had about a 15 minute taxi to the gate, resulting in our time between connections being only about an hour instead of over 2 hours.

Although we did not have to collect our bags for any customs like in the U.S., they were checked through to Barcelona, we did have to go through immigration, then back through security, which ended up being quite an event.  I have never had to take all of my camera gear out of my camera bag, but I had to remove any electronic devices, power supplies and lenses and place them in a plastic bin.  Oh well, better safe than a terrorist.

After all of that, we made it to our connecting gate about 5 minutes before boarding was started, almost 40 minutes after getting off of the plane in Amsterdam.  Stephanie had to gate check one of our carry on bags, apparently they considered her backpack as one, and the actual carry on as another.  Yes, we did end up taking two checked bags and one carry on, we just needed a little more room for the shoes, and some other items, including some change of clothes, which ended up as being a great addition, as explained later.

We boarded for the two hour flight to Barcelona, and we thought all was going our way, certainly we thought there was enough time between all of our flights for our checked baggage to make it to Barcelona.  The flight was smooth, and arrived on time, flying along the Spanish coast before heading to land the airport.

We got off, and headed to baggage claim.  First one small set of bags was unloaded, then another and out came our gate checked carry on, then another load of bags, but not ours, and we were still waiting.  Then the belt stopped, and we were one of the few passengers remaining without our bags.  Two different gentlemen who had flight connection and re-route issues coming from Detroit had no bags, as well as one local man from Barcelona was missing his bag.  We were not happy, but at least we were not getting on a cruise ship today like the other two gentlemen from Detroit.  They were on a Royal Caribbean ship leaving at 5 PM.

We all headed to the lost luggage station.  Our bags were supposedly in Amsterdam, they had apparently not made it on the flight to Barcelona for some reason.  The bad news, there was not another flight to Barcelona from Amsterdam until tomorrow.  The bags are supposed to be delivered to the hotel in the morning.  Luckily, we had the extra carry on, and we had packed a change of clothes in that as a precaution.  We both got a small bag of toiletries, some socks and a 2XL t shirt for our troubles.  We do have travel insurance, so we may be able to get some additional items while waiting on our bags to arrive tomorrow.

After all of that additional stress, realizing it could have been worse, the two gentlemen on the cruise ship were not getting their bags until tomorrow in their  next port of call in Cadiz, Spain, and they had nothing at all.

We took the Aerobus service from the Barcelona Airport to a bus stop about 3 blocks from the hotel.  It was easy to find the hotel, thanks to having used Google Earth  to see the buildings and familiarize ourselves with the walk from the bus top at the Placa Universitat to the Hotel Jazz.  We checked in and informed them to be on the look out for our bags tomorrow morning.

After freshening up, we headed out to find a grocery store fro some refreshments, Diet Pepsi and wine, a replacement corkscrew (it is on our checked baggage) and some lunch.  We just stopped st one of our favorites, Gyro sandwiches.  After the late lunch, and visit to a nice large grocery, we walked down the Las Ramblas street to the port and back.  This will be our route on Friday when we head from the hotel to the cruise ship.  Las Ramblas was nice, all of the vendors were selling their wares.  It was very cool and windy, about 45 degrees with a wind chill of 38 degrees.

It had been a long day, with not more than a couple hours of poor sleep, so we headed back to the hotel and arrived about 5:15 PM.  After refreshing with nice hot showers, we opened a bottle of wine and wrote this post.  We took a few pictures today, and will try and post some tomorrow.  I know we will sleep well tonight, probably waking up much earlier than we will want due tot he 6 hour time difference.

We have reset the clock on the blog to reflect our current time in Spain, and for the next several days both here and on the cruise.  My spell check helper is sound asleep, so blame any typo’s and really poor grammar on being tired and on Stephanie, this is not proof read yet.

View From Our Hotel Window

Today we will be going down to the port to board the Ruby Princess to start our cruise portion of the trip. We got up about 7:00 AM and could feel the effects of all of the walking we had done yesterday. After getting ready, we organized our suitcases and removed as much from our carry on bag to make room for some refreshments to take onto the ship.

We expanded our large suitcases since we were no longer concerned about any size or weight restrictions for boarding the ship, thus allowing us to have more room to free up space in the carry on bag. It was surprising how little reorganization we had to do to the large bags, I guess you don’t mess them up much when they are missing for almost two days, and you don’t remove any clothes from them!!

Inside The Barcelona Cathedral

Our plan for the day was to have breakfast at the same cafe as yesterday, then head over to the Barcelona Cathedral to see it during the daylight, without the awful effects of the yellow sodium lighting. After breakfast, we did come back to the room so we could go ahead and check out of the hotel, leaving our luggage stored at the hotel until later in the day so we could do a little more sightseeing in Barcelona before heading over to the cruise ship.

With our luggage locked, and then secured in the luggage storage area of the hotel, we headed over to the cathedral. It was brighter and more colorful inside with the sunshine coming through the stained glass windows. However, it is still an old and somewhat dingy church inside.

Barcelona Cathedral

Afterward, we walked some through the Gothic section of Barcelona, heading south to the port area where we got on the underground metro to head over to Montjuic to ride the funnicular partially up the mountain, and then to  board the gondola cars visit the castle and fort at the top.

Funicular to Montjuic

The funicular is a cable driven sloped rail car, one is at the top and the other is at the bottom. The upper car helps to counter balance the weight of the lower car, and the tracks are split in the middle for the cars to pass side by side, then merge back to a single track. It is only about a 3-4 minute ride from top to bottom.

From the exit of the funicular, it was a short walk to the gondola cars, similar to those used at a ski resort. The tickets for this were not covered in our two day metro pass, so we had to purchase two tickets from the automated machines. Again, tickets could only be bought through a machine, and the credit card required a PIN, same as yesterday, and as a result, we had to use cash, just like yesterday.

With tickets in hand, we got on a 6 passenger gondola, and since there were hardly any other people waiting in line, we got to ride by ourselves. It is an interesting route, the cars actually turn ninety degrees to the right about halfway up, and there is a station at the turn to depart only in the downward direction. There is a park area halfway up, so I guess some people may want to get off there on the way down from the fort/castle at the top of the lift.

View of Barcelona Harbor From The Castle

Once at the top, it was a short walk to the castle/fort. It was uphill, but the worst part were the large gaps in the cobble brick pavers. One could easily turn an ankle if not paying attention while walking. The views from the top were nice, but due to the low sun angle at this time of year, and the significant amount of smog hanging over Barcelona, it was not as good as we had hoped. We could see our Princess Cruise ship in the port, but it was directly into the sun for photos, and the ship was partially obscured by some of the large container ship cranes at the port docks.

Lower Portion of Las Ramblas

We headed back to the gondola, then to the funnicular for the ride down to the bottom, where we caught the metro to the upper portion of Las Ramblas Street to visit the grocery store one more time to pick up some cranberry juice and another diet Pepsi, just stocking up on supplies before getting on the ship. With the purchases in hand, we headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags, pack the newly acquired supplies into the carry on bag, and head to the port to board the ship.

We were debating the choice to either walk all the way to the port, about 20-25 minutes through some of the crowds on Las Ramblas, or to take the underground metro, and face the potential of carrying the heavy luggage up and down stairs to access the various underground platforms. Although almost all of the underground metro stations have escalators, most are only in the up direction heading out of the station, not going down into the station like we needed to assist with the luggage transport. Some stations do have elevators, but not all, so it was not an easy decision not knowing for sure what mechanical assistance was available to help ease handling the luggage. With all of the crowds we had seen on Las Ramblas on the way back from the grocery store, which was the same route in reverse we needed to take to go to the port, we opted to take the underground from the metro station that was really close to the hotel. We think the large crowds were in town for the Christmas celebrations that were starting this weekend.

Of course, the first underground station entry point had no mechanical lift of any type, only stairs going down into the station. I handled the two big bags, and Stephanie carried the camera bag and carry on full of supplies. We got through the ticket gates using the special entry gates for wheelchairs and baby buggies, which was much easier than struggling with the bags through the normal narrow entry gates. After the initial steps, we had to take an elevator down to the next level to catch the proper metro train. We were glad for this lift, it was at least three stories down to our platform. Once on the proper platform, we took the next available metro train for the short ride to another station where we had to make a transfer to another line. Unfortunately, there was yet one more set of steps to navigate with the bags, so we split the bags up once more and headed down. On this train, we only had to go one stop to be near the port, and once we got off the metro train, we were glad to see this last station had an elevator for the one story ascent to street level.

Arriving at street level, it was just a short walk across one major street, and over to the stop for the special port bus, which carries passengers to and from the ship for a nominal fee of euro 2.50 per person. We paid and boarded the bus,  but had to wait about 20 minutes for the bus to load up with additional passengers heading back to the ship that had been out visiting Barcelona, obviously staying on for the second part of their cruise. Most of these passengers had likely started in Venice on the previous segment of the cruise.  We learned later that about half of the previous cruise passengers had disembarked in Barcelona, and half had stayed on for the back to back transatlantic cruise. We were the only ones on the bus with luggage, so everyone else on the bus was already on board from the previous cruise, or had checked in earlier in the day and were out sightseeing.

We dropped off our bags outside the terminal, placing it next to some luggage from other passengers arriving by taxi, and headed into the terminal. Right off, we were in a line to go through Security, just like at an airport.  We had to remove watches, cell phones, etc. and place them in our carry on bags to go through the x-ray. Apparently, there was not much of an issue with bringing anything on board, such as wine or other beverages of adult nature, all our bags went through without question. After checking in and getting our ship/room access cards, we noticed some duty free stores inside the terminal, two of which were selling wine and liquor.

We were a little reluctant to purchase anything at first since one of the security officers from the ship was in the store. Apparently, she was just purchasing something herself because a nice couple from the ship informed us that there was no other security checks going onto the ship, and we could take anything onto the ship we wanted.  They were actually in the store for a second time “stocking up” We purchased a bottle of Vodka, and also a bottle of Canadian Club, which was rare to find for sale in Europe. We had always planned on the vodka, which was supposed to go with some Crystal Light powder mix we had planned to bring, but somehow forgot. There are NO powdered sugar free drink mixes in Barcelona, we had looked in several  grocery stores we had visited in Barcelona. This over site in packing forced us to purchase the Ocean Spray Raspberry/Cranberry juice at the grocery store earlier in the day, as a substitute for the Crystal Light. This information about the lack of concern by the ship’s Security for bringing spirits on board also eased our concerns about the items we had packed from home and placed in our checked bags.

We got to our stateroom, and unpacked what luggage we had, basically our carry on and backpacks. Then it was off to lunch at the Horizon Court buffet. After lunch, we headed back to the cabin and discovered that Stephanie’s large bag had been delivered. We thought it odd to get only one piece of luggage, I guess we were a little paranoid after the issues we had with the airline luggage fiasco. Stephanie unpacked her bag, and then headed down the hallway to the crew service elevator area looking for my bag. She reported back that she could see my bag was in the service elevator area waiting to be brought to our stateroom, which happened a few minutes later. It was nice to have all of our luggage.  After getting everything unpacked, it was time for the emergency drill, so we gathered up our life jackets and headed to our muster station.

After the emergency drill, we headed to the outside bar in the rear of the ship to have our traditional ship’s departure beers. We talked with a nice bartender from the Philippines, and were glad to hear he was from an area in the Philippines that had not been in the path of the recent typhoon, and his family was not directly impacted. We asked about the number of total passengers on this portion of the cruise, and based on what he told us, we think the ship may be about 75% full.

By this time it was 7:00 PM, and the ship was releasing lines to head out to sea. It was dark, cold and windy, so the ship did not have any sail away party. We headed back to the room to watch the departure from our balcony, until even that got too cold.

We headed to dinner, once again in the buffet.   We were just too tired to get ready for the dining room, and based on the number of passengers we saw at the buffet, so were a lot of other folks. After walking around some on the ship, we headed back to the room to relax. The weather report for tomorrow is not the best, cooler, with winds of 20-30 mph, and scattered showers. If it looks too bad in the morning, we may not rent our car, and just hang around in Toulon, and just get some rest. We think the stress of the flights related to the weather, and the stress over the luggage being lost has us more tired than we normally are after the first couple of days dealing with the 6 hour time zone change.

We do get ESPN2 on TV, so we watched some football before retiring for the night.