Cool Girl & Crazy Mom do the Med-Venice: A (very delayed) review of a Serenade voyage

[Jax129]

YAY! I love a detailed review, enjoying yours very much!

[kirian]

Hi, interested in reading your review...thanks for sharing. I have a friend who is from and who lives in Venice, so can't wait to see some pics.

 

Venice was so beautiful! I actually took some halfway decent photos there (I am not the best behind a camera lens).

 

Looking forward to more! And, yes, I have purple luggage, as well.....:eek:

 

Yay - another "cool purple luggage" member!!!!! :D:cool:

[kirian]

Love your review and can't wait to read more. That was our fifth and favourite cruise. We had do much fun with all of you in the posts leading up to the cruise, the sail away party, the meet and mingle.

 

It really was an amazing cruise, wasn't it, Sarah! For my mom and I, one of the things that made it extra special was all of the fabulous folks we "met" ahead of time on our roll call. It will be fun to have you along for this "reliving" of the journey. I hope you will feel free to chime in with your thoughts along the way!!!

 

Melissa

[kirian]

Ok, where did leave off? Oh yes, I think we had just landed in BCN....

 

There is one thing (beside free wine) that I like about European flights… the fact that people clap when you land. And I wasn’t disappointed! Not only did my fellow fliers break into applause upon landing, but our pilot managed to touch down 30 minutes early. Sweet!!!!

 

We collected our luggage (ALL of it), made it through customs with no trouble, and headed for the Aerobus.

 

Based on other reviews I read and my own research, we decided to use the Aerobus to get from the airport to downtown Barcelona. It was super cheap (about 6E each) and fast (we were downtown in no time since it only makes a few stops). Now, dealing with our luggage was a different story.

 

The buses have plenty of room to handle luggage (there are racks inside), but we had that stupid extra bag to drag on the bus. Mom – I know you’re reading this….NO 3rd bag next time!!!!!!

 

We took the Aerobus to the Placa Catalunya stop which is in the center of town. From there, our hotel was about a 200m walk. Of course, we had to stop every block or so to adjust our grip on the mountain of luggage that we were rolling down the street, but we made it….eventually.

 

For those of you flying into BCN before your cruise, I can confidently recommend the Aerobus. Really, there is no need to pay a fortune for private transportation here (unless you over-pack like us... bu "us" I mean the munchkin). It’s quick, convenient, easy and cheap.

 

For our pre-cruise stay, we chose Hotel Curious. It was a good location about a block off Las Ramblas and a block or so away from the big market. The hotel had a somewhat cold, modern décor, but it was super clean and we had a nice little balcony. I think it cost just under $200 for the one night (but this seemed to be low-average for hotels in Barcelona that were near the heart of things).

 

 

When we finally got our luggage up to our room (took 3 trips up in the tiny little elevator), I couldn’t get the lights or power on in the room. What!!!! I was not feeling up to moving a small country’s worth of luggage to another room. Then I remembered something I had read on another CC review…. There was a trick to it! Next to the door was this little box and you apparently had to put your room key into the slot to make the power work (take your key out and poof….off go the lights). So, it was nice to always know where the key was, but for those of us that don’t travel to Europe often, this was a new thing for us. Thank goodness I remembered what I had read on CC about this or else I would have felt like a big idiot (bless my heart) if I had gone to the front desk to complain about no power.

 

 

Now that we had finally made it (and figured out the whole power enigma)…. Let’s go sightseeing!!!!!

[marci22]

We took the Aerobus to the Placa Catalunya stop which is in the center of town. From there, our hotel was about a 200m walk. Of course, we had to stop every block or so to adjust our grip on the mountain of luggage that we were rolling down the street, but we made it….eventually.

 

For those of you flying into BCN before your cruise, I can confidently recommend the Aerobus. Really, there is no need to pay a fortune for private transportation here (unless you over-pack like us... bu "us" I mean the munchkin). It’s quick, convenient, easy and cheap.

 

I did this with my husband and 3 teens. We were wheeling a mountain of luggage to our hotel and a Barcelona policeman came by and asked us if we were ok. Of course we're ok! We must have looked disorganized or something. I'm sure I looked worn out after that flight.

[Kevin's girl]

I can't wait to read more :)

[kirian]

I did this with my husband and 3 teens. We were wheeling a mountain of luggage to our hotel and a Barcelona policeman came by and asked us if we were ok. Of course we're ok! We must have looked disorganized or something. I'm sure I looked worn out after that flight.

 

You don't know how thrilled I am to read that someone else dragged a mountain of luggage through Barcelona!!!!! While we didn't get "questioned" by any police, I have no doubt we got quite a few sideways glances from people....lol!:D

[Moondawgie]

kirian, :D This cruise was 7 months ago - we are at the end of page 3 and still Barcelona! We are anxious to read the whole adventure. :D

[LABCHICK]

I just subscribed. Can't wait to read more. Sound like this is going to be quite an adventure.

[kirian]

I just subscribed. Can't wait to read more. Sound like this is going to be quite an adventure.

 

Thanks for subscribing (really.... it inspires me to know that I'm not on this journey all alone :eek::D) It was quite an adventure, as you shall see. Really, for CM and me, it was the trip of a lifetime (at least, up until now... who knows what the future will hold with out TA next year). I hope in the end, you and all the other folks who have honored me by subscribing, will be happy that they did :)

 

Melissa

[kirian]

kirian, :D This cruise was 7 months ago - we are at the end of page 3 and still Barcelona! We are anxious to read the whole adventure. :D

 

LOL - ok, ok Moondawgie, I promise to move it along :D

 

The 4th of July holiday here in the US got me a little behind schedule (but I will take this opportunity to say a very belated (by 200+ years) to those wacky Brits who thought those red coats they were wearing would help them blend in with the woods as us Yanks fought for our independence :p

 

I may not get us onto the Serenade by midnight this evening (as previously promised), but I will get us very close to boarding the ship :cool:

 

Melissa

[kirian]

Our flight was scheduled to land at 9:40a, but as I mentioned previously, we landed 30 minutes ahead of schedule. This was a relief since I had booked us for a 1p tour at Sagrada Familia and didn’t want to be late.

 

If you only have time to see one thing while you’re in Barcelona, it simply MUST be Sagrada Familia. It’s the most amazing church. Now, you might not think it’s the prettiest church (people have strong opinions one way or the other on this), but you can’t deny it’s an incredible sight!

 

Here’s a tip (and if you don’t listen to me, well, “bless your heart”)… buy your tickets online ahead of time. If you don’t, you will waste hours standing in line. Trust me! The line for people needing to buy tickets stretched all the way around the block. I booked these through to church’s website http://www.sagradafamilia.cat

 

We chose to do a guided tour. To tour on your own, the cost was 13.50E. To go with a guide (or use the audioguide) it was 18E. So, for just a few euros more, you get a guide. Even us cheapskates could get on board with that :D

 

Getting to Sagrada Familia from Las Ramblas is VERY easy using public transportation. We simply headed back to Placa Catalunya (which is at the top of Las Ramblas). From here, we took the metro just a couple of stops (I think…. I wasn’t keeping my journal at this point). Easy-Peasy!

 

Disclaimer #10 – The trip to Sagrada Familia was easy-peasy AFTER I had my first of two melt downs on this trip. I was exhausted by this point (hours and hours of travel with 3 flights, the chaos of the schlepping the purple luggage, yada, yada. I don’t function well at all when I’m sleep deprived. Now, CM…. that woman never seems to get more than 4hrs of sleep a night and does just fine). When we got to the metro station at Placa Cataluyna, for some reason I just couldn’t figure out which line we needed to take, but I knew we needed to get on a tram soon or else we would be late for our tour :eek: So, almost tears, I turned to CM and said (aka begged), “Please, can you just go find someone and ask them to help?” (said in a very whiny voice, I’m sure…. Bless my heart :p). She stepped up to the plate and we got it figured out. In truth, it probably would have been fairly obvious and easy-peasy for anyone who wasn’t still suffering the lingering effects of the anti-anxiety drugs from the flights. OK, back to the sightseeing….

 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, while waiting to pick-up our tour tickets, we had our first “encounter” with our ship neighbors, Peggy & Ernie. Our on roll call, CM and I had mentioned that we would have Mardi Gras beads hanging from our purses while walking around Barcelona (so we could be spotted by our fellow roll callers). So, Crazy Mom and I are standing there and up walks this man I have never seen before and says, “Hi Melissa!” Well, let me tell you, it is an odd feeling to have someone you don’t know walk right up to you and greet you by name (especially when you’re halfway around the globe). But, it was quite a cool feeling (and nice to know our Mardi Gras beads paid off). This would be just the beginning of our friendship with Peggy & Ernie.

 

Anyway, back to Sagrada Familia….

 

The tour way great! It lasted about 50 minutes and we never felt rushed. Afterwards, we had plenty of time to explore on our own. We used those little headsets so we could hear our guide in the crowds. For the most part, they worked fine (every once in a while it was still hard to hear, but nothing as bad as some experiences I have had with these).

 

The church (inside and outside) is packed with crowds. However, it’s not too overwhelming (especially inside where you can easily find spots away from the larger crowds if you start feeling claustrophobic). It’s fairly quiet inside (it is a church after all) and you can actually just sit and take it all in.

 

I had first visited the church in 1996 during a cruise stop on my honeymoon (with my now XH). At that time, the church didn’t even have a roof. It is amazing how much progress had been made in the years since then. I definitely wasn’t prepared for how stunning the church was now that it had a roof and was filled with all the colors of the rainbow as light flooded through the stained glass windows (which also were absent during my ’96 visit).

 

Please don’t miss a visit to Sagrada Familia if you can help it. This is NOT your average church!

 

Now for some pics....

 

 

 

Trust me, you will have this same, exact photo if you visit (or have visited) Sagrada Familia. Your camera will force you to take it under the threat of going on strike if you don't.

[kirian]

... because, yes, it's that COOL!

 

 

Stef, I thought of you when I saw that one. I remember you had pointed it out in your review. To the rest of you, if you take a look, the numbers always add up to 33 when you combine them vertically, horizontally and/or diagonally.... the number of years old Jesus was when he died.

 

Just hanging out with a tortoise friend we found.

 

[crusinpeg]

Great reminiscing about our meeting at La Sagrada Familia..like they say in the movies it was "The beginning of a beautiful friendship"

Ernie still talks about the expression on CM's face when he called you by name!

Awesome review so far..love being able to relive our experiences in Europe!

 

Peggy

[kirian]

Great reminiscing about our meeting at La Sagrada Familia..like they say in the movies it was "The beginning of a beautiful friendship"

Ernie still talks about the expression on CM's face when he called you by name!

Awesome review so far..love being able to relive our experiences in Europe!

 

Peggy

 

It was a great way to start the adventure that we would share with you & Ernie over the next 2 weeks! And, you're right, the look on Crazy Mom's face when Ernie called me by name was priceless :D

[kirian]

Sagrada Familia…. What a sight!

 

I think that including our guided tour, we spent about 2-2.5 hours here. We chose not to visit the towers. Yes, I’m sure the towers are AMAZING, but I had my first ever panic attack in 1996 while trying to go up one of them. I just froze and couldn’t move. I had to sit on the steps (which barely allow one person to walk up/down when a person isn’t going bonkers and sitting on one the steps). I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

 

After Sagrada Familia, we got back on the metro and headed to Placa Catalunya….again (this time, sans a melt down on my part).

 

I wanted my mom to see the Boqueria Market, so off we went straightaway. For those of you who haven’t been to Barcelona, this ranks second on “my” list of must-see things. Yes, it’s a market, but it’s not just any old market. It’s a “cool” market, so aforementioned Cool Girl, had to take Crazy Mom there.

 

The day/time we were there, found about 20% of the stalls closed, but they were mainly the fish stalls and I am totally ok with not seeing wet fish on ice and smelling their…. Odor. So, not a big loss IMO. What was open though was plenty of food stalls like this one that we visited for a late lunch...

 

 

 

After a quick bite, we wandered around the Gothic Quarter (on the other side of Las Ramblas from the Market).

 

 

Here's another pic that your camera will force you to take

 

 

Around 5p we stopped for an adult beverage in a square in the Gothic Quarter. Some of the folks from our CC Roll Call were going to meet up for a tapas dinner around 6:30p. We had hoped to join them, but decided we were just too darn pooped. So, we headed for a little grocery store we had seen earlier, picked up our two bottles of “allowed” wine to take on board with us, grabbed some little nibbles from a take-out place. (they consisted of sandwiches and pinenut cookies for dessert) and headed back to our hotel.

 

Once back at Hotel Curious, we moved some chairs out onto our teensy-weensy balcony and had our nibbles with some mini-boxed wine I had picked up earlier at another grocery store (near La Boqueria).... it was just too darn cute to pass up (yes, that's the price next to it....1.07E for a package of the 3)

 

 

 

Our little nibbles.... we were too tired to eat anything more than this:

 

 

The adorable balcony outside our room where we ate:

 

 

We munched away while just taking it all in and then hit the sack so we would be well-rested for the “real” adventure to begin the next morning.

[Kreuzfahrtneuling]

:Dlol -- that picture above your bed in the hotel room would have freaked me out...looks like you're about to be smashed by a tsunami while laying there :eek:.

 

I'm so glad to hear you loved the Sagrada as much as we did. I totally agree with the camera forcing pictures from you -- lololol I never knew it wasn't even in our strength to NOT take those...but you're sooo right!!! Can't wait to read more:D!

 

Stef

[CruisingDaddy]

Cool review so far! :)

[kirian]

:Dlol -- that picture above your bed in the hotel room would have freaked me out...looks like you're about to be smashed by a tsunami while laying there :eek:.

 

I'm so glad to hear you loved the Sagrada as much as we did. I totally agree with the camera forcing pictures from you -- lololol I never knew it wasn't even in our strength to NOT take those...but you're sooo right!!! Can't wait to read more:D!

 

Stef

 

OMG, Stef, I don't think I ever even took a good look at that picture of the bed in the hotel room. Thank goodness!!! I probably would have thought it was a bad omen before boarding or something :eek:

 

I realized the "power of the camera" while going through my photos and finding so many of them eerily similar to pics I seen on other reviews I had read....lol!

 

Cool review so far! :)

 

Thanks Cruising Daddy! I appreciate the compliment. It gives me to "courage" to keep on writing when I know people are enjoying it :D

 

Next up (to be posted today.... I promise).... Boarding the ship.... so stay tuned!!!!

 

Melissa

 

PS - see what I mean about me and the "..."? Three times in the last sentence. LOL!

[cruiselife4me]

I'm on-board. Loving your review! I love the "bless your heart" references as my granny and grampa are southern and used that as well. :)

[Mrs_Tiki]

Loving your review! DH and I dream of a Med cruise one day ~

[kirian]

I'm on-board. Loving your review! I love the "bless your heart" references as my granny and grampa are southern and used that as well. :)

 

I'm so glad you decided to come aboard for our three hour tour ;) I probably let you in on a little secret your granny and grampa didn't want you to know about....lol! Now, every time you hear them say "bless your heart" you'll know what they are really thinking :eek::D

 

Loving your review! DH and I dream of a Med cruise one day ~

 

Hi Mrs. Tiki! Thanks for the compliment on the review so far. I hope you will stick around until the very end. But beware, by then you might just find yourself uncontrollably booking that cruise of the Med you have been dreaming about :) It really is an amazing way to get a taste of so many places in Europe in a short amount of time.

 

Melissa

[kirian]

Rise & Shine, it’s Embarkation Day!

 

 

Just as a quick review, we flew into Barcelona a day before our cruise. In our short stay, we visited the amazing Sagrada Familia, as well as the Boqueria Market and the Gothic Quarter. Because of jet lag, we crashed VERY early…. I’m talking we were asleep by 8p! But, we rose refreshed the next morning and got our day started by 8a.

 

Hotel Curious was a decent place to stay for one night before a cruise. Not great, not terrible. The room was a nice size, as was the bathroom, but it definitely could get a little loud outside our 2nd floor balcony at night. We also had to pull the blinds (which were on the outside of the balcony windows as you can see from the previous photo of our balcony (so I had to duck under them to get back into the room)) as there was a ton of light from the street. But, it was a convenient location at a price that wasn’t too terrible for Barcelona. Also, it included a nice little continental breakfast with strong coffee that helped open our eyes and give us the energy we would need to tackle Embarkation Day :D

 

We picked up a taxi at the hotel. I think the cost was around 20E ($30 give or take). I believe the fare broke down as follows: 10E for the ride, 6E for the three pieces of luggage (see Mom, we could have saved 2E if it wasn't for that 3rd bag... just saying :p) and a 4E fee to be picked up from the hotel. Kind of pricy for a ride that was approximately 3 miles, but it seemed the best option under the circumstances.

 

And, there she is, our home away from home for the next 12 nights.

 

 

 

So, CM and I started a little tradition…. Taking a daily pic to let us know what day of the cruise we were on

 

 

 

Next up.... the boarding process & lunch!

[kalesco]

I love your writing style!

I'm going on the Serenade on a Baltic cruise next year, so I checked the thread for the ship but I'll stay for your very enjoyable 'story' :)

 

(Not all of the photos work though)

[kirian]

I love your writing style!

I'm going on the Serenade on a Baltic cruise next year, so I checked the thread for the ship but I'll stay for your very enjoyable 'story' :)

 

(Not all of the photos work though)

 

Hi Kalesco - glad you've decided to stick around for the story :) I think you might pick up a few tidbits about the ship along the way that might prove useful for your Baltic cruise. The Serenade really is a great ship!

 

Thanks also for the note about the photos.... is anyone else having trouble seeing any photos and if so, can you tell me which post#? When I look through, I see them all (but some are smaller at the beginning when I was using a different program). I want to to try to get it straightened out ASAP so no one misses out on the photos :eek: