Barcelona, Spain - August 4

Spanish omelet, bacon and cava...yum!

32 degrees, blazing sun

Today is another travel day. This year’s vacation certainly has us travelling between places more then usual. We prefer to not have to get on so many planes, cabs, subways etc, but this is how things worked out this year – we’re not suffering. After another lovely hotel breakfast we were out...

Speaking of travelling, we’re about to visit 5 different cities over the next 7 days! This is OK…we’re going to do the travelling between spots

getting ready to set sail

on a cruise ship. Today we boarded the Crown Princess. This is a ship from Princess Cruise lines, which is a first for us. This boat is certainly bigger than we’ve experienced. This boat has 3000ish passengers compared to the 650ish that we usually travel with. This will definitely be a new experience. With more people, come more amenities which I think is a good thing, but |I think more people will also bring new aggravations – time will tell.

All that we have planned for this morning is packing and getting to

wifi gizmo

the ship – our boarding time is officially 1:00, but we arrived around 12:00. This ship doesn’t actually seem overly big. Basically, everything is generally the same size as we are used to, but there are more of things.

A couple of things that we did notice that are bigger are the spa and the gym. I can’t really say about the spa as I typically never go – maybe a pedicure or 2, but that’s it. Today we wanted to see the gym and we wound up on a hard-sell full-on tour of the spa! I suppose it was actually good in the end, I never

wine bar blogging

would have looked for a tour, but am glad to know what’s on offer and what the space looks like. They have quite the operation – teeth whitening, non-surgical facials (2000.00 USD!), foot assessment. We also saw the thermal suite…interesting…a variety of steam rooms/ saunas and hot stone beds. I’m pretty sure the last think I need on this vacation is a ‘thermal’ suite – the last few days in Barcelona have been thermal enough for me. I’d like to know where the ice bar is?? In the end

sitting area and balcony

we did see the gym...that is certainly bigger than we are used to...doesn't mean we (I mean 'I') will actually go. 

Getting to the port and getting on board was really a breeze. We took our first taxi of the trip to the port…easy and didn’t seem to get hosed by the driver. Europe has a taxi hailing app that we used that I put my credit card into, so we didn’t even exchange money. There was a bit of trouble paying (it’s not like Uber that assumes payment, you have to to authorize it) because my wifi didn’t

pretty big bed area

cooperate, but the driver actually was able to give me his wifi and then no problem.

Once we are on board, required welcome champagne in hand we proceed to check things out. Typically we are on cruises that include all beverages – even booze. Princess isn’t one of those cruise lines. Of course, you pay for everything one way or the other. This time we have paid for a daily all-inclusive drink package – it’s hard to say if it pays or not, we figure we’ll likely break even.

entryway, wet bar and first  TV

We’ve decided not to purchase any of the ship’s WIFI. For times we are in port the pocket WIFI gizmo we’ve been using since we arrived in Germany will supposedly work and for the times we are sailing…oh well. The ship’s WIFI is just too expensive and crappy to bother with.

This year our room on the boat is significantly bigger than rooms we have had in the past. We decided to go for a bigger room, because with the bigger room come with other amenities we are interested in, 2 of

second TV and one entry to the bathroom

the big ones being…a bigger balcony, and UNLIMITED LAUNDRY AND DRY CLEANING!! Time will tell if this really is as awesome as it sounds. And speaking of the larger balcony, ours is off of the BACK of the ship, or should I say the aft of the ship. We’ve had a big balcony once before at the back of the ship and I LOVED it. I hope I love this as much.

I'm desperate to post this blog entry before we set sail as I suspect the wifi to be non-existent once we leave port.