Boarding the Ship in Barcelona – November 29, 2013

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!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.