The cruise begins

Day 5     Barcelona      Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Here are Ramon and I when he dropped us off early in the afternoon at our ship, the Norwegian Spirit. Ramon was such a gracious host to do this, although it WAS only a five-minute drive.

Before we went to the ship, we made one final toursity stop at the HUGE market on La Rambla, Mercat de la Boqueria. It was a riot of noise, people, smells, and colors. We had awakened late (just a few minutes before our 11:00 check-out time), and quickly packed and moved our luggage out into the living area just as Ramon arrived from the airport with the guests who would be taking our room.

The market had dozens of fresh fruit and veggie stalls.

Dozens and dozens of fresh meat and fish stalls, such as one with these skinned rabbits.

Dozens of candy stalls, such as these marzipan treats. I took many other photos, but ya can't show them all, like the octopus and shrimp piles on ice. The only thing we bought were cups of fresh fruit to eat for breakfast. We saw another Basque restaurant that we wished we'd known about earlier since the other one was so far away and this one was close.

Back on La Rambla where we went to catch the subway home, we saw this "advertisement" across the road from us for the Erotic Museum. Marilyn Monroe was letting the fan blow up her dress ala the famous photo, but I took my picture too late for that.

Ramon drove us to the ship and took our photo:

Even though departure time was not until 7 pm, we arrived at about 2:00 and it seemed like 90% of the other passengers did too. We waited in a LONG line to check in and made friends with a group of four from San Francisco in front of us. Once we finally got on board and ate lunch at the buffet, we took a ship tour led by the funniest guy. Why so funny? Because he was flamboyantly gay and knew it. By the way, we loved the ship and its layout, even more than we had liked the Norwegian Gem and Star. The Spirit was smaller than those, which helped us.

As the ship departed, we were eating dinner with a couple from Midland, Ontario, which I knew because Brian and I spent a day there on the Great Loop cruise (I had gotten new batteries at the Bay Pointe Marina there, which they knew well since they were sailors). We also enjoyed the stage variety show that first night, followed by the piano bar entertainment from Michael.