<\/a>Our hotel offered a free breakfast with scrambled eggs, croissants, and freshly squeezed orange juice. Cathy was fascinated by the orange juice machine: they would load a bag of oranges into the top, it would drop them down two at a time, cut them in half, squeeze out the juice and dispose of the rinds. She would drink glass after glass of fresh orange juice just to watch the machine work.<\/p>\nThe next day we took Hop-on\/Hop-off buses all around the city, past the Olympic Stadium (Barcelona hosted the 1992 summer Olympics) then down to the beach that was built with sand imported from Egypt for the Olympics, and the harbor full of mega yachts. Later that night, we took in a Flamenco show on the main walking street, \u201cLas Ramblas.\u201d Cathy was not familiar with Flamenco and expected it to be a slow, graceful performance with flowing dresses, but Flamenco is performed with castanets and loud, rapid tap dancing, as if one is trying to stamp on cockroaches.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCathy loves tap-dancing, so she began practicing Flamenco dancing in our hotel room at night.<\/p>\n
The next day, we went to Montserrat, a spectacular cathedral built in the Pyrenees mountains 4,000 feet above Barcelona, and the following day we made a three-country trip to a French ski resort and to Andorra, the smallest nation in Europe. Andorra is not a member of the European Union, and keeps all financial transaction private, so it is a major center for international banking and money laundering. \u00a0<\/span>It has no taxes, and a defense budget of just $36,000 a year, so it is easy to understand why there is a pile of wealth in that tiny country tucked away in the Pyrenees Mountains.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCatalonia is an autonomous region of Spain. It gets its name from the castle fortresses built in the Pyrenees mountains as a Christian bulwark against the Islamic Moors who were invading the Iberian Peninsula. Today it is the most prosperous region in Spain, and there is strong support for it becoming an independent nation. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOne word about the traffic in Barcelona. There is no street parking for automobiles, and parking garages are very expensive, so the streets are lined with electric motorcycles and electric bicycles. All the cars were clean and looked new; I asked why there were no older cars on the road and was told wholesalers buy them up and sell them in third-world countries. When the pedestrian crosswalk light turns green in Barcelona, you had better move fast, because as soon as it goes red, it is pedal-to-the-metal for all the vehicles.\u00a0 <\/span>Taxi drivers there are the worst; they weave in and out, cutting within inches of other vehicles. It can be scary for one used to American traffic. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOur cruise departed on Monday.\u00a0 <\/span>The ship was just out of drydock, and the terminal was clearly not prepared to board 2,700 passengers. Carnival is known as a family-oriented cruise line with lots of activities for children, but there are usually very few children on a 14-day transatlantic cruise. The average age of the passengers on this cruise was probably 75, and the cruise had just one wheelchair to accommodate them. And both the elevator and escalator inside were broken.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAfter three hours of standing in line, I finally got inside to the area where dozens of other mobility-impaired passengers were waiting for the wheelchair and sharing the pain pills with those who had run out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut once the cruise got underway, it was totally enjoyable. The crew was very attentive; the entertainment was great; and life without children running everywhere was wonderful. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe stopped at two more ports in Spain, then sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar to Los Playa before sailing for five days of cruising across the North Atlantic to Bermuda. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis was the leg of the cruise I was most concerned about because all the tropical storms that usually come into the Gulf of Mexico had been heading into the North Atlantic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSure enough, we had to race a storm to Bermuda.\u00a0 <\/span>The night before we were to land in Bermuda, the ship was rockin\u2019 and rollin\u2019 so much we could not leave our cabins. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen we docked it was still too windy to let anyone off the ship, so we refueled and headed straight to Orlando. While coming through the airport in Houston I must have picked up a virus, because I arrived home sick as a dog.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>I have now lost 25 pounds since our sojourn began. I haven\u2019t looked so trim since I finished basic training in the Army back in 1964. Cathy says she is ready to do it all again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My wife, Cathy, and I have gone on many week-long cruises around the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and she has often commented that she would love to go on a transatlantic cruise where she could just lay back for two weeks with nothing to do. So, when I came across a super cheap Carnival cruise [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Our Trip To Spain And Back - BestOfSwla<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n