Barcelona

Sorry that this blog is so late. I didn’t have time to post it before I left but at least it was a short sail and I didn’t have you waiting too long.
Barcelona was amazing. We were docked in the main tourist area so tons of people were watching the boat come in. There was so much interest in the ship that the professional crew decided to open the boat up for free tours on Tuesday. In the two hours that I was doing gangway during tour hour’s seven hundred people came on! After my gangway on Tuesday I mostly walked around a lot. I didn’t see too much but that’s fine. I took it easy and did a bit of shopping. Oh I thought that this was kind of cool. We were docked right next to a private yacht called the Pelorus (you can Wikipedia it). It’s owned by a Russian multi-billionaire. There was a forty man army on board and you needed level two security clearance just to get on the boat. It was pretty intense. I think that it’s the sixteenth most expensive yacht in the world, and the owner of it owns the most expensive yacht as well. It was kind of intense and made the Sorlandet look quite old fashioned. We were like the pirate and it was more like the ninja :)
Wednesday was probably the best day of my time in Barcelona. It was a port program to Park Guell but when we got there we were allowed to go off on our own. The park was really cool. It was entirely designed by Gaudi, the famous architect. Everything looked like it was right out of a Dr. Seuss book and the cool thing was that the park was built at the beginning of the 1900s. There were a lot of mosaics on the walls which made some of the buildings look like gingerbread houses. I explored the park for most of the day. In the afternoon we headed back to the ship. A lady from the Canadian consulate came to the boat to speak to us about Canadian-Spanish relations and what her job is like at the Canadian consulate in Barcelona. It was really interesting however we were all really tired so I have to say that it was a little difficult to stay awake. I did manage though. We all had supper with her on the boat. While I’m on the topic of food, our cook, David, was let go. I was really sad. He was really nice and made great food :( He left that morning so making supper was a bit of a challenge. Luckily, our shipboard director’s wife is joining us for the sail to Italy so she was there to help cook. After supper my watch group left on a watch adventure. We’re allowed to leave the ship overnight if we’re with our watchdog so that’s what we did. We checked into a hostel and then went out dancing! I had a great time. We ended up staying out until three in the morning but it was lots of fun.
The next morning we got to sleep in at the hostel which was nice. It was great to be on a bed that wasn’t moving! It really makes a difference. After that my watch went to the Boqueria (a fresh food market) and picked up some food for our potluck brunch. We took the metro to the Segrada Familia, Gaudi’s famous cathedral, and ate brunch in front of it. The Segrada Familia started being built in 1882 and is still under construction today! It isn’t estimated to be finished for another twenty years. So I didn’t even see the finished product but what I did see was incredible. We went back to the boat after this and got shore leave. I went out and did some exploring in the afternoon.
Friday was a shore leave day. We took a tour bus to Montserrat, a mountain about an hour outside of Barcelona. Serrat means serrated and it’s called this because the mountains look serrated. I thought that they looked more like melting sandcastles but you can be the judge :) We hiked in the mountains and also visited a famous monastery that is located in the mountains. The weather was also perfect so I had a really nice day. In the late afternoon I got shore leave so I walked around Barcelona some more and did some grocery shopping for the sail. I went and had paella and tapas for supper!