BARCELONA

Our “day” in Barcelona was rather unorthodox in hours, i.e. it was a “day” spread over two dates. I think the day’s hours do not count the 2 wandering around the airport and getting to the hotel. Nor the 10 hrs sleeping the first night (yea!) so the day’s hours were spent time in our room, watching Spanish TV for a while, working on-line to reschedule our flight from Venice, time at Gracies Shopping Mall, and taking the Barcelona City Tour, to see many fine works of architecture across the city. We recommend our hotel -- “Silken Hotel Diagonal” because of its proximity to the Mall which has everything. The name comes from the street it fronts – a major thoroughfare. It’s decoration is black & white geometrics, lots of circles, lines and squares.

On the double-decker bus tour, we had constant guide comments in any one of 14 languages from the recorded voice we plugged into. We learned that Barcelona has 1,600,000 people and two official languages – Catalan and Spanish. So, that’s why we could understand some people and not others! We saw several of unique building including the Abnar Tower, right beside our hotel, and also several UNESCO World Heritage sites in the city and buildings that were new or improved from the Olympic Games.

We had fun eating “local” for the most part-- hake, pork loin, café con leche, croissants, cod cakes (bolos de bacalhau) and “tapas” but we passed up Subway, McDonalds and Burger King but Jon 
couldn’t, for the love of Quincy, pass up a Dunkin’ Donuts. He got coffee and a cream-filled donut. (Quincy, MA is the home of the original doughnut shop called “Dunkin’ Donuts” and they are very good, better than Krispy Kreme, quite even with Tim Horton.)

By the middle of the afternoon today, we caught a taxi to the very large cruise ship – the Norweigan Jade. Whew, is it big! 

We have a cozy little stateroom on the 10^th deck. Reception is on the 6^th, the welcome party at the poolside on the 12^th. This is going to be quite an adventure! We are very thankful to be here. There is internet but it is slow and expensive. We’ll buy enough time to make a quick check-in morning and night. Somehow Jon misplaced his camera on our way to the room, but, thankfully, someone found it and turned it in to “Lost and Found”. Yea! He had taken nice pictures of the city bus tour. I’ll try to include some.

Even though it is gigantic, I can feel the gentle rocking of the ship as I sit on the bed. I can hear steps of children in the room above us. But I see the camera and feel the gentle care of the Savior. I read from the devotional book and hear: “Jesus says, I made you in My image, and I hid heaven in your heart…do not be afraid to be different from other people. The path I have called you to travel is exquisitely right for you.”! I believe that for me, for Jon and me and for you. His path is uniquely right.