Pandemic Diaries - Mediterranean Cruise - Barcelona, Spain

5 November 2022 – Barcelona, Spain

 

Today is a “turnaround” day for the ship – some people are disembarking and flying home, other people are boarding the ship for the rest of Spain and then the Atlantic crossing.  So things are not quite normal, including no breakfast delivery for us.  It really is a luxury to have breakfast delivered to the room, enabling me to get up slowly.  But today, I was forced to get up, exercise, take my shower, dress, and only then go up to the buffet and get some breakfast.

 

I boarded the elevator and ran into my teacher friend from yesterday.  It turned out that her mother was one of the people on board who caught Covid, and however mild it was, she was still put in isolation, in a lovely suite with a verandah.  My friend her daughter was not allowed to visit, for fear of spreading the disease.  The two had originally planned to tour Barcelona seeing all the wonderful buildings by Antonio Gaudi, but they had to cancel those plans with her mother being quarantined.

 

So my new friend and I agreed we’d trek around the city today, and see what we could find.  We had a wonderful time!  Not everyone is happy to just walk and figure things out as they go, but she and I both seem to travel that way, so it was a good match.  We met at our appointed time, boarded the shuttle bus to town, and headed off.

 

The bus let us off at the base of La Rambla, the huge pedestrian street that bisects the old part of Barcelona.  It’s about 2 miles in length, with a very slow uphill.  Full of shops and cafés, it really is the center of the city and perfect for tourists who like to just wander without a plan.

 

That’s what we did.  We walked for a while, chatting.  We found a sort of secondhand goods open air market, and browsed briefly.  All kinds of interesting things, but nothing we couldn’t live without.  We wandered on.  Stopped at a lovely café for some coffee, sitting at a table along the sidewalk, watching the masses of people walking by.  There were something like five cruise ships in port, but most of the people along La Rambla seemed to be locals out shopping, a normal Saturday activity.

 

We walked onward, and saw the huge food market to our left.  Of course, we had to explore that as well.  Turned out to be the perfect place for lunch!  We each had a delicious empanada, the stuffed meat (or chicken) and veg pie.  The pollo picante was the perfect amount of spicy!  Then another stand had wonderful little things for tapas, so I had my favorite, tortilla española, the little potato omelette.  (She had a croqueta, sort of a little fried ham and cheese thing, not as doughy as a fritter but along those lines.)

 

We found a plaza that was, well, not quite cleaned up for tourists.  There were sitting places, but they were a bit grubby so we chose to stand and eat our lunch.  And read the graffiti.  Oddly, there were signs for Antifa – no idea if this movement crossed the Atlantic, or if US citizens were spray-painting graffiti in Barcelona, or what!

 

Walking back to La Rambla, we suddenly saw a parade of people coming toward us, all in fancy clothing and faces painted like skulls!  I overheard someone saying something about “La Dia de los Muertos, de Mexico” – the Day of the Dead, from Mexico!  I thought the Day of the Dead, also celebrated in many parts of Central and South America, was usually on November 1 or 2.  But since today was Saturday, it made sense that the parade down this main road would be saved for the weekend.  They were colorful, and some people seemed to have giant papier-mâché heads covering themselves.  There even was a stilt dancer, what we Virgin Islanders call a mocko jumbie!  I’ve never seen a mocko jumbie at a Day of the Dead celebration, but, well, sure, why not!

 

Onward, we walked up the rest of La Rambla, just looking at people and buildings and stores.  Nothing was quite as exciting as that parade, but it was still fun. 

 

There’s a giant tile image in the middle of La Rambla created by Spanish Joan Miro.  I love his work, abstract but somehow representational, in basic shapes and colors.  There’s something soothing about his paintings that appeals to me.  I tried to get a photo of the whole artwork, but it wasn’t easy with the numbers of people walking up and down the street.  Most not even noticing that they were walking over art! 

 

I thought I should pick up some chocolate for Richard, because Spain has really good chocolate.  So we found a store that had gorgeous chocolates, and tons of samples.  Their dark chocolate with almond bits was delicious, and yes, I had three or four samples just to be sure.  They also had a very good almond paste covered in candied orange – wow was that good!  But Richard is a milk chocolate fan, and they only had one bar that was milk chocolate – though it came with puffed rice bits. 

 

To top it off, the bar only came in one size, 8.8 ounces (250 grams).  HUGE!  Bigger than a paperback book!  Fine, not a problem, more to enjoy that way.

 

It turned out that all the chocolates in the store were on sale all weekend, because Monday was National Torrone Day.  I’m not exactly sure what kind of candy a torrone is, because the sale included this huge bar, as well as the boxes of smaller chocolates.  But hey, a discount is a discount, and I’ll celebrate any kind of candy any day of the year!  (And why isn’t there an International Chocolate Day??)

 

My friend bought a lovely box of chocolates for her mother, in a pretty blue and white box.  We were set, although we had one or two more little samples.  Wandering on.

 

We both hit that point when we needed a ladies’ room, and my solution is always find a café, order a drink, use their facilities.  We went back to our original café, but they weren’t serving coffee at this point in the day.  (It was maybe 1:30 PM, I guess kitchens become busy with lunch orders and don’t want to bother with small coffee orders.)  We also couldn’t find a table, so we shared a table with a woman from England who was on another ship, and who was traveling by herself because her husband couldn’t get time off from work.  So we had a lovely time just chatting, sharing thoughts and experiences on travel, life, cruising, all that.  It really was fun to just sit with a perfect stranger and spend an hour or two getting to know about their life.

 

But we needed to catch the shuttle bus back to our ship, and the last bus was due to leave by 4 PM or so.  We said our goodbyes, then finished our day of walking by catching the bus and heading back to the ship.  We’ll check in with each other tomorrow, and possibly meet up again.

 

Richard was happy to sample his chocolate, and said it’s pretty good.  (It really is quite thick, but fortunately breaks easily into 8ths.) 

 

While some people disembarked here in Barcelona, it seems that more people came on the ship than left.  Things were crazy crowded at dinner, to the point that we were given a pager to be called when a table was available in the dining room!  It will take a few days for all of us to adjust to this, but it was a bit surprising.

 

I want to add that I’ve walked over 5 miles today – and my new pedometer is quite funny!  Apparently when it hits 10,000 steps, I get a little flashing symbol of a person with their arms raised in victory!  Seriously, I saw that and started laughing!!!  Who programs that in???  So funny!!!