We'’re out of it! A summer 14 “MAGICal” Med adventure Day 14/Aug 05 updated 05/05

[darnheather]

Barcelona looks gorgeous and the food...So nice of you to let us live vicariously!

 

[Linda67]

Hi Karin
I nearly missed this one
Just stopping by to say hello and now I am off to read

 

[Linda67]

I've finally caught up Karin
Great photos of Barcelona. it's been many years since we visited and now I want to go back

 

[MAGICFOR2]

Great start! It was nice you didn't have to deal with jet lag on this trip - just a little "got up early."
Too bad your driver got in an accident. I'm glad it wasn't worse. Poor guy, he was probably thinking, "there goes my tip." Maybe the car services spread the rumors themselves that it is hard to get a taxi

Nice apartment to start your trip out!

Beautiful pics of the city! I was thinking your last restaurant looked kind of medieval, then realized it probably was at one time - but then the floor was new - so cool.

 

[debsters41]

Oh my goodness I am so late to this report but in my defence I was on vacation

 

[eandesmom]

I am here!!!

What an adventure already. How fortuitous that the accident happened in front of your destination! I was in a cab once that did that but it was quite a ways away from my destination and made me rather late

Love love all the Barcelona pictures, I can only imagine the difficulty in finding food at the off hours, I remember it well. I would love to get back there again one if these days.

Tapas are so fun, I actually dined at a Tapas place just this week while on my work trip in San Diego, sadly their tortilla was not the one if my memory (or my own kitchen) but the rest was quite lovely!

 

[GoofyFan1515]

All caught up again! Some more great pictures, but don't you just hate when they mess up the view with having cranes everywhere........

 

[dizneeat]

What a nice tour of Barcelona.

Looks like you saw a little bit of everything.

It was a great tour and this was only part one of two. The HOHO was a great way to see the city and even use it as a means of transport.

OK, I'm here now. Better late than never. You haven't even boarded the ship yet!

What a way to start a vacation with a fender bender! I have never been to Spain, so it's neat to see your pictures and hear about the city. The apartment is great! So spacious!

We were so happy that we had chosen to fly in a few days early and explore the city. It would have been a shame not to see some of the sights of this beautiful city.

I'm thoroughly enjoying this tour with you...beautiful pictures.

Glad you enjoy the pictures, Kathy. A lot more to come!

OMG...Just started reading...very excited!!!

Dania!
Awesome to know that you are "coming along" as well.

 

[dizneeat]

More yumminess!! Oh Karin, I am loving the pics, the architecture is just gorgeous!

I am happy to hear that you like our tour and the food. Barcelona is such a beautiful city.

Beautiful pictures of Barcelona.

Thank you!

What a beautiful city!

My boss absolutely loves Barcelona and has talked about some of the places that you saw. He's not much of a picture taker so I haven't seen the sites, just heard of them. Now, I can tell him that I've seen them in your pictures!

Great we could be of "help".
It really is a beautiful city, you cannot blame your boss for loving it. We have both been there before, but it was when we were still pretty young. It has changed over the years and we were really in awe with what we saw.

 

[dizneeat]

Bumping the car ii front of you is not a good start.

The room is very nice.

My SIL is very nervous of the pickpocketers in Italy.

The city looks so pretty.

MMM, the tapas looked good.

The city looks so pretty.

Strange but funny they said they forgot your apps.

Great pics.

All caught up.

Well, it was not our car and no one was hurt (I guess not even the car. ) so we never even thought about the accident lateron.
In Italy, especially Rome you should be very aware of pickpockets. Many big cities are like that.

Mmm look at that yummy food! I've never seen round calamari like that. It looks like onion rings. And the shrimp looks soooo delicious.

Yes, it did look pretty big and I was not sure if she had brought out the right thing, but once we tasted it, it was really good.
Loved the shrimp, loads of yummy butter and garlic.

Too bad about the Starbucks cake, it really does look good.

Barcelona looks like such a beautiful city.

I totally forgot how late everyone eats over there! That would be difficult for us I think. We eat so early for every meal it seems, we already act like senior citizens

The further south you travel, the later they eat, but I think the Spaniards are some of the ones who eat really late. Here in Austria, 6 - 7pm is regular dinner time and lunch is around noon.

Barcelona looks gorgeous and the food...So nice of you to let us live vicariously!

It is a very beautiful city. And we were very lucky with the food, but the best is yet to come.

Hi Karin
I nearly missed this one
Just stopping by to say hello and now I am off to read

Linda!
You caught this one right at the start, perfect timing.

 

[WDWLinda]

I, like I think you wrote, am currently planning our 2016 vacation and a Disney Med cruise would be at the top of my list (but I haven't looked at prices yet - that may shorten my list a bit!), so I'm so happy I found your TR. I love the details and the pictures, and I can't believe how large your hotel suite is...I'll have to put this in my notes - "aparthotel" - correct? That would be perfect for our family of 4. And I'll note that we can order a selection of tapas for lunch and dinner.

Thanks for recording all of this - keep posting please!!!

Linda

 

[perfectmatch300]

We're back from our Dream B2B! We had a great time! It was Disney cruising at it's best. I'm just now getting here to catch up with your TR.

Barcelona really does look beautiful. I know we would both enjoy the HOHO tour that you took. Can't wait to read the rest of your TR.

 

[RGirl]

Hi Karin!

Still loving the tour of the city.

I remember the difficulty of finding a place to eat at an early hour in Madrid from years ago - they eat SO LATE there! Your meal looks great though!

 

[dizneeat]

Sorry I have been neglecting this thread AGAIN. But the start of the school year AND "house (and flat) trouble" required all of our attention.

I've finally caught up Karin
Great photos of Barcelona. it's been many years since we visited and now I want to go back

I am glad you enjoyed the photos - there are even more to come! And I really understand that you want to go back - so do we, and we have just been there.

Great start! It was nice you didn't have to deal with jet lag on this trip - just a little "got up early."
Too bad your driver got in an accident. I'm glad it wasn't worse. Poor guy, he was probably thinking, "there goes my tip." Maybe the car services spread the rumors themselves that it is hard to get a taxi

It was wonderful to arrive and not have another time zone to deal with.
I don't think it is the car services that spread the rumors, it was definitely Mr. Facebook. I should have checked more into it, but since this was Europe, I never really did much research. I am sure private transfers are great, especially when there are more people, but it was just a waste of money for the two of us.

Nice apartment to start your trip out!

Beautiful pics of the city! I was thinking your last restaurant looked kind of medieval, then realized it probably was at one time - but then the floor was new - so cool.

Many of the buildings are very old and they are all very narrow and go quite a way back. We found that in many buildings in the old part of the town. They have done wonders to keep the original buildings, while modernizing the inside.

Oh my goodness I am so late to this report but in my defence I was on vacation

Hi Debbie!
I hope you enjoyed your cruise! And you are not late at all, as you can see, we have not even made it onto the ship yet.

I am here!!!

Cynthia!

What an adventure already. How fortuitous that the accident happened in front of your destination! I was in a cab once that did that but it was quite a ways away from my destination and made me rather late

We definitely started out with a BANG! But fortunately no one was hurt (apart from the driver's pride, I think).

Love love all the Barcelona pictures, I can only imagine the difficulty in finding food at the off hours, I remember it well. I would love to get back there again one if these days.

I am glad you like the photos and that they seem to bring back good memories!
I should have remembered that those countries just don't eat at "our" regular hours, but as I mentioned before I had never given this trip too much thought. My bad.

Tapas are so fun, I actually dined at a Tapas place just this week while on my work trip in San Diego, sadly their tortilla was not the one if my memory (or my own kitchen) but the rest was quite lovely!

We just LOVED the Tapas we had, we even did a Tapas tour when we returned from our cruise and it was all amazing.

 

[dizneeat]

All caught up again! Some more great pictures, but don't you just hate when they mess up the view with having cranes everywhere........

Great to know you are caught up. Guess I can now go back to posting more of our adventures.
I love your remark about the cranes. They have kind of always been in our pictures. They really take a long time to finish that church. But they should be done soon!

I, like I think you wrote, am currently planning our 2016 vacation and a Disney Med cruise would be at the top of my list (but I haven't looked at prices yet - that may shorten my list a bit!), so I'm so happy I found your TR. I love the details and the pictures, and I can't believe how large your hotel suite is...I'll have to put this in my notes - "aparthotel" - correct? That would be perfect for our family of 4. And I'll note that we can order a selection of tapas for lunch and dinner.

Thanks for recording all of this - keep posting please!!!

Linda

Linda,
Isn't planning a trip such a fun part ..... until ....... we find out what Disney charges for the fulfillment of our plans.
I have to warn you, but I thought that a cruise in Europe would leave me with quite the nest egg for the following year, but the 12 night in the category we had was REALLY expensive.
The Aparthotel on the other hand was a steal and absolutely wonderful with all the room it offered. They will not feed you breakfast, but with the coffee machine and a bakery about 10 steps from the hotel it was an easy task.

More updates coming up very soon!

We're back from our Dream B2B! We had a great time! It was Disney cruising at it's best. I'm just now getting here to catch up with your TR.

I cannot believe you are back already!!!!!!!
I am so glad you had a fun time and enjoyed your b2b cruise!

Barcelona really does look beautiful. I know we would both enjoy the HOHO tour that you took. Can't wait to read the rest of your TR.

It was so easy to see "a lot" of the city from the top of that bus. And since we had a two day ticket we were able to use their other lines as well.

More coming up shortly!

Hi Karin!

Still loving the tour of the city.

I remember the difficulty of finding a place to eat at an early hour in Madrid from years ago - they eat SO LATE there! Your meal looks great though!

I am happy you like the tour of the city, as there is loads more to come.

I completely forgot about the fact that they eat late and then it was so frustrating to see all those restaurants and they were all closed.

 

[dizneeat]

Day 2, July 24

So much to see, so little time …. Part 3

With that heavy load in hand we slowly made our way up the Rambla Catalunya until we reached our hotel.
It was nice to be back in the airconditioned room and after putting our purchases in the fridge we made ourselves comfortable on the couch in front of the TV where we watched the news.
We rested and relaxed for some time, then decided that instead of sit on a really full sightseeing bus we would just take a taxi to our next destination, Parc Guell. So around 3.30pm we walked down one block on Rambla de Catalunya to where a taxi stop was. I showed the tickets to the driver as we had trouble communicating places to the locals and he let us climb into the back and off we went.
He drove as mad as the private driver and we had fun guessing where he would fit in next. We were getting close to Parc Guell, when the driver asked where we were from. We told him that we were from Austria and he responded in perfect German. To say that we were stunned would be an understatement.
He told us that he had understood bits and pieces of what we had said, but missed the most of it as we were talking in our area slang. He had been living and working in Germany for 15 years, so that is where he had learned German. Thank god we hadn’t spoken louder when talking about his driving.
And while we had been chatting we had reached the park’s front gate. I paid the driver, was stunned how cheap the fare actually was, tipped the driver well, and then we headed towards the side entrance



as again, we were early and had time to look around the “open for all” area before our timed tickets would go into effect. Parc Guell has been designed by Antonio Gaudi, famous architect who had done designs for the Sagrada Familia. We walked along the paths admiring the view and the many monuments.











From up there you had an awesome view over the whole city and how large it actually was.



















The vegetation was wonderful and we took it all in and were happy we had not given in to the notion of not heading out again and just relax in our room. Soon it was time to walk down to the entrance to the main area,



which you need a ticket for. We were about 10 minutes early and already a line had formed, which we now joined. It didn’t take long and they started admitting people into the area.

To be continued ..........​

 

[dizneeat]

Day 2, July 24

So much to see, so little time …. Part 4

It didn’t take long and they started admitting people into the area.







It led onto a huge viewing platform with a marvelous view of the main entrance plaza and the city.













We then walked along the side pathways through covered paths all filled with artwork and mosaics.













It felt like another city and so we just followed the signs to the next sight and then the next and the next and so on. We walked around for about an hour until we got to a tiny little self service restaurant. We were so hot and headed inside for a





drink and some Malaga and Dulce de Leche ice-cream. We sat inside as it was cooler there and we sat there for quite some time.


To be continued ..........​

 

[dizneeat]

Day 2, July 24

So much to see, so little time …. Part 5

We sat inside as it was cooler there and we sat there for quite some time.
Once we felt refreshed enough we went outside to explore the main staircase







which is guarded by a huge dragon









and the little houses which were left and right of the entrance.



















Our last stop was the Austria Garden, for which Austria had gifted them some trees.







And even though it had only been about two hours of exploring we were tired again, the heat had gotten the better of us.


To be continued ..........​

 

[Flossbolna]

Karin, so sorry about your house troubles!!

I am amazed at how different Park Guell is now! When we were there it was still only half refurbished and there were only a handful of tourists. I don't even remember an entrance fee!! But I remember the colonnades that provided shade when Katharina and I were battling with sun allergy!

I read your comment about hoping that a European cruise would come out more economically and had to chuckle at that. I always look at the prices Disney dares to charge for those cruises and shake my head. But since they seem to be able to fill the ship... Our Norwegian cruise price was kind of ok, but we are staying in an 11B and since it is only a 7 night cruise, this helps as well. The good thing hopefully will be that all the ports are places where we can just walk off the ship and explore on our own. I would think that this is the case for many Med ports as well. I am looking forward to reading about what you did in the ports. I think we Europeans tend to explore differently on European cruises as for us it is less of a once in a lifetime experience.

 

[linetbo]

I hope you resolve all your situation, because I need your report☺ a smile on my face every time I read it!!! Cant March come faster please!!