A Welcome Back....To Reality

We enjoyed many things about sailing on HAL (Holland America Line). We always tell people that we have no favorite cruise line really, because they all differentiate themselves by a collection of little things. One of the little things HAL does is that they allow you to stay in your stateroom as long as you like on dis-embarkation day, even after your number/color is called for leaving the ship. The other nice little difference on HAL is that they will still deliver you a room service breakfast on the day of dis-embarkation. Most other cruise lines have no room service on the last day. A difference of much larger proportion is the HAL beds, I think the matress on our bed was about 16 inches thick and perhaps the most comfortable of any of the cruise lines!

By 8:30AM, our number (one of the last) was called so Peg and I began to leave our sureal European experience. The airport Marriot in Barcelona was more efficient than expected upon arrival on the dock with their shuttle driver waiting for us / our luggage right outside the terminal (holding up a sign so we could find him). For 10 Euro each, the driver was bussing people to the Marriot by the airport (BCN). We dumped our bags in our tiny European hotel room (which had no normal electrical outlets for anything) and was about 1/3 the size of a normal hotel room.

Peg and I jumped on a free shuttle to the city center in Barcelona. The driver left us at Plaza Espanya (sort of in the middle of things). Ironically I was telling Peg how fun it was in London to take a double decker Red bus around the city when one of these busses pulled right up. We thought it would be a great way to see all of Barcelona by jumping on the Orange line for the east side of town and then transfer to the green line for the west side. I got some great pictures of churches and other architectural marvels including some of the facilities used for the 1992 Olympics held in Barcelona. We walked down the Las Ramblas area where everything seems to be happening in the city except being Sunday, most businesses were closed. It was odd to see so many stores and shopping centers completely closed because it was Sunday! After shooting pictures all day we ended up in a small cafe enjoying some of the local wine and food (pizza and payeia....a seasoned rice dish filled with seafood in this case). After we had our dinner, we headed back to the main plaza and found hoards of people heading up to the local stadium for a footbal game (these people are more passionate about soccer than Amercians are about the NFL). We were amazed at all the people. In the midst of it all was a large group of young people dressed in goth / completely black clothing and weird wigs. We could not for the life of us figure out what these demonstrators were trying to say or what their point was. Even the locals looked at them weird.

We caught our shuttle back to the airport hotel and were now totally exhausted. I felt especially worn out just thinking about the 4:00AM wake up call for the 6:55AM flight to Paris and then the change of terminals / more security checkpoints / more passport station checks / topped off by our 8 1/2 hour flight to Chicago where we would fly ahead of the sun all day. Right now we are decending into the Chicago area and the local time is 12PM Non. My watch says 7:00PM still. As we fly over Lake Michigan, the monitor on the seat back in front of me says we have now travelled 4,082 miles since leaving Paris this morning, and we have about 60 miles to go!

We are definitely back in reality now.