Travels with Tutu: Barcelona

This day turned out to be much better than we anticipated. Neither of us had been to Barcelona before, and after a pleasant day resting at sea, with our first formal dinner that evening, we were mellow. We were waitlisted for the only tour that interested us, (and we later heard from several people that it wasn't worth the $$$), so we hopped the city T3 into town for 3Euros R/t and landed here at the Cristoforo Colon monument. Across the street was the Barcelona Maritime Museum where we really hit pay dirt. First of all, the Maritime Museum itself was terrific. The displays were assembled to give a good overview of the history of the city, its layout and development over the years. There were Spanish galleons, maps, mosaics, ship models, and even an early wooden submarine. Bob thought he'd died and gone to heaven. Then as we exited, we realized that on the other side of the building was the real Tutankhamun exhibit on loan from the British Museum in London. There was NO LINE, and it only cost us 25eruo to get in. It was fantastic. We'd never been in the right place at the right time to see it in the states, and it was really well done. The audio tour was keyed to the room so most times, you didn't even have to push a button, it just started. Lunch at the museum dining room was great, and then we ventured out to stroll Las Ramblas...Barcelona's famous shopping drag. It was crowded but fun, inspite of the heat. We were heading for the Picasso museum almost a mile away, but felt we were OK to walk it. Thank goodness there was a gelato shop near the museum, because when we arrived to discover we hadn't read the small print and that it was closed on Mondays, and it was now approaching 100F, and beginning to rain, I needed an ice cream. We took our time coming back down into the city, (by the time we found the library which Bob insisted I wanted to see, it was past closing time). There was of course another cathedral or two, several street mimes, and as we got close to 6Pm, a rather good case of exhaustion was setting in. We made our way back to the T3 bus, produced our roundtrip tickets, and meandered down the pier to the ship. We were able to snag a late seating in the dining room and then headed up to the observation deck to watch things 'happen' for awhile. We were sound asleep by the time we set sail at 11:30PM. Oops: Here's the Facebook link, (again, you don't need an account to view the public photo albums) but check back in a few days, some of these have to be uploaded from the blackberry yet. And there aren't as many since we were limited in the museo on what we could photograph.