Catching up with last year!! The Cruise Part I.

Looking back, we seem to have had such a busy year in 2013, with so many days literally sailing by without a post! I want to return now to those days and catch up first with the fantastic cruise that we enjoyed in May. I apologise for the fact that the next few posts will have little to do with the Charente, but I promise that we will return there before long! I hope that meanwhile you enjoy the break as much as we did.

Our May holiday began in Carcassonne and the surrounding area with friends, and then we went on to Barcelona, where we  met up with our very good friend Gunter, who had arranged the cruise for us.  He had sent us an email earlier in the year, to say that the ship he was working on as Hotel Director (second in command only to the captain!), would be based in Barcelona during the summer months and would we like to join him??!!  Now, how could we possibly say "no" to an offer like that!?  To cut a long story short, he met us at the dockside on Sunday morning 19 May, where we found ourselves quickly taken through the customs and security procedures and whisked upwards by lift to our magnificent top deck double deluxe stateroom (with balcony!)  on the Royal Caribbean liner, Liberty of the Seas.

A few facts about the ship that may interest some of you :-

Registry: Bahamas

Built: Kvaerner Masa-Yards, Turku Finland 

Maiden Voyage: May 19, 2007 

Gross Tonnage: 154,407 GRT Length: 1,112 feet Width: 185 feet Draft: 28 feet Speed: 21.6 knots cruising speed

No of Decks: 15 passenger decks  No of Elevators: 14 passenger elevators  Guest Capacity: 3,634 guests (double occupancy)  Guest Capacity: 4,375 guests (total)  No of Crew: 1,360 crew

All in all, those statistics spell massive!!; we had never experienced anything like it. The guest capacity represents the equivalent of 10 large European hotels!

A view of the liner taken from a ferry, when we stopped off a few days later in Villefranche.

Below are some photos of our suite.

Our bedroom

The lounge

En suite with full bath and shower!

Our private balcony.

A large bowl of fruit and a bottle of bubbly greeted us as we walked through the door!

Rainstorms over Barcelona as we set sail from the quayside.

and also out at sea!

The Blue bridge - well mostly blue, but at times it changed to all the colours of the rainbow.

The main dining room.

The main reception desk. To describe the décor as lavish is an understatement!

The Royal Promenade.

Leaving port in the late afternoon that day, we sailed overnight, to find on waking up on our second day, we were docked at Toulon on the south coast of France, near Marseilles! We did not leave the liner here as we felt this was a place close enough that we could drive to when we wanted; also because the weather was quite cool for May, we decided to spend the day exploring the ship, and great excitement that night of dinner at the captain's table.  Watch this space to see  part II of the cruise.

Barcelona Part 4 and final - The Boqueria Market and Christopher Columbus column .

A visit to la Boqueria Market, alongside  La Ramblas, in Barcelona is a must!  So many colours, and so many smells  that make your mouth water!  It's a crowded place, so amongst the heaving throng, you need to keep your valuables tucked away!

Here are just a few of the stalls of which I took photos.

Fresh fruit and ice cold fruit drinks.

No shortage of fresh fish and plenty of willing buyers!

Sweets and glacé fruit. Yum!

Fresh fruit and vegetables piled high!

Cheeses, hams, salami and dry sausages. Spoilt for choice!

More sweets and glacé fruits

The children were fascinated by this man in a park making large soap bubbles.

 Christopher Columbus monument;  the scaffolding is certainly not on the scale of that at Sagrada Familia church, but the monument was being cleaned!  Good to know that, in these times of severe economic recession, Spain is looking after its national heritage! The column is 60 m (197 ft) tall and was constructed in 1888.  At the top stands a bronze statue of the man himself, supposedly pointing towards the New World!

At the base there are four staircases, each flanked on either side by lions.

The octagonal base has eight bronze panels, each of which depict important scenes in Columbus's first voyage to the Americas.  See two of them above and below. 

An interesting way of getting around Barcelona; rent an electric 'car'!! Never seen these before anywhere else, but Barcelona seems to pride itself on its  eco approach and I think it's a good initiative, as long as there are enough charging points!

This lady human statue must have had excellent balance, as she was standing motionless on the bike saddle; other than the flicker of her eyelids, there seemed to be no movement! We saw her each day we were there - what a hard way to make a living!  The only time I saw her really move was when we had a sudden shower of rain, and then she took cover very quickly.  Guess if she had not sheltered, the yellow may have ended up in a puddle at her feet!

Last but certainly not least, we could not leave Spain without eating the famous paella! Looking at it now, it does bring back the gastronomic memories!

Sorry I am still finding it difficult to find time to catch up with everyone's blogs but I promise I will do so very soon. I am struggling to keep up with all the bottling and freezing of the fruit and vegetables in the garden. How can anyone say that there is nothing to do in retirement!  I have never been so busy, and of course in summer there is so much going on here in France.

Barcelona Part 3 (of 4!!) Sagrada Familia and Picasso Museum

Antoni Gaudí  (25 June 1852 – 10 June 1926) was a Spanish architect, born in Reus.  Gaudí's work has a very individual and distinctive style and his most famous / well known work is the Sagrada Familia, a large (also the largest!!) Roman Catholic church in Barcelona  - and now a UNESCO world heritage site.  Work commenced in 1882 and it is still not finished!  As you can see from the tower cranes, work is continuing on the building and it is expected to be finally finished in 2028!  You can read more about it HERE. The sheer scale of it and the external decoration are quite breath-taking! It all seems very big for the space it's in. One cannot seem to get far enough away from it to take anything but upward-looking shots, as the closest buildings are not that far away - unless you resort to wide-angle or fisheye lenses!

 I struggled to take photos because, as you see, there is a lot of scaffolding and many cranes in the way!

 The front entrance.

 The towers above the front entrance.

 A lot of work going on, but you can still see the beauty of the church. The lighter shade of stone shows those parts which have been installed quite recently.

 The workmanship is really outstanding.

A photo of a post card; obviously a night shot!

A post card of the interior.  We did not get to go inside, as the queues were horrific - wall-to-wall, and about 500 metres long- and in the hot sun it seemed just too much of a strain ! The entrance fees were eye-watering as well! You can get tickets on-line, which saves queuing, but we hadn't thought that far ahead!

A post card aerial shot; you can see the cranes in place front and back.

Yet another postcard, this time of the interior.

We also visited the Museu Picasso, but sadly no cameras could be used inside.  I have never been a Picasso fan, but after seeing his early paintings, I may just have changed my mind!

Post cards to the rescue again; this was simply called "Man in a hat" and not at all what you might expect of a Picasso!

The choirboy.

 and for the cat lovers out there...

I thought that I would finish Barcelona in 3 parts but it is not to be!  I still have the market, Columbus Monument, and a few odd photos of interest, so I hope that part 4 will be out there very soon. I promise I will get back to blogging on Charente subjects ASAP, so please hang in there!

For those who are following My Life Before Charente, I will get back to that I hope also very soon.  Just too much to do, and now all the fruit is ready on the trees,  there is much bottling to do in the kitchen as well!

Part 2 of our trip to Barcelona. The Cathedral and the Defence Walls.

The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, also known as the Barcelona Cathedral and commonly known as La Seu, can be found not far from La Rambla.(see photo below)  This church, with its beautiful façade, should not be confused with the spectacular Sagrada Família, about which I will be writing  in Part 3!

This  Gothic style cathedral  is the seat of the Archbishop of Barcelona. The cathedral was built between the 13th and 15th centuries, most of the work being done in the 14th century.  There is a lot of information Here if you would like to read further.  It appears that opening hours are mornings and evenings only, so make sure about this if you should want to see inside!

Various views of the inside below.

Below are two photos of what remains of part of the Roman city wall and the buildings later built on top of it by the Spanish. The sign by this building below reads:- "The Roman wall and defence towers from the second enclosing wall of Barcino (4th century AD).  The buildings that are conserved on this section of the wall are the Royal Chapel of Santa Agata and the Royal Palace (14th century)"

Moving quickly on to dining out, a popular activity in the city, the seafood platter on our second night in Barcelona was a feast for the eyes before we even had one mouthful! As a coastal Mediterranean city, Barcelona offers great choices of fresh fish and seafood. There is a multiplicity of restaurants throughout the city centre specialising in all sorts of cuisine; it seems that almost every other building provides a site for a restaurant or café!

We got hooked on Cava (Spanish sparkling wine) in the three days we were there and drank little else with our evening meals. It goes so well with tapas (Spanish snacks) and with seafood.  Really  quite delicious!

We are busy redecorating at home, having just had new oak double glazed windows installed.  We have nothing standard size, so all the frames had to be hand made!  Installation has been a major exercise for our two local artisans, as the old frames were built into the walls and had to be chipped out, necessitating areas of new plasterwork.  

If I do not visit you for a bit, please understand that after attending to the house and the garden, there is little spare time left at present!