European Vacation Day 3

I love to go for runs when I am in new places. I feel like it is such a good way to see a place. I was not loving it when my watch buzzed me awake at the crack of dawn, but I drug myself out of bed. It was all worth it when I stepped out the door and was greeted with this:

This street was usually pretty crowded during the days, so I was wondering how runnable it would be. but guys, Spaniards are not early birds. I ran down this street and over to Las Ramblas (which had always been PACKED with people), and even it was gloriously empty. Behold:

I ran down the streets with a huge smile on my face. It was so beautiful and peaceful and so fun to hear the birds and have the place almost to myself on a beautiful morning. I ran all the way down Las Ramblas to the Columbus Monument, than down to the beaches and ran along the water, then back! It was one of the favorite things I did in Barcelona. 

I ran back and showered and we headed out to catch a few more of the sights before our check-in time for our cruise. Unfortunately, we had to get our luggage out of our vacation rental, which was a challenge since we had a few hours to kill. I looked around online for a place to park our stuff, and there was a place kind of close to the cruise ship terminal...we dragged our stuff over there via metro, and it turned out to be a back room in a teeny convenience store. Kind of sketchy, but turned out fine. 

We taxi'd our way up the hill to Castle Montjuic. So cool! It started raining while we were in line for the funicular, so we were happy that the gondola ride up the mountain was covered:

It was cool to see the city from up in the funicular cars, but there were too many raindrops were on the window to take any pictures. The castle was really cool! The green grass and flowers used to be a moat, and there was a drawbridge we walked across and everything. Again, I read all about it and gave the highlights to the fam.

We ended ran around outside and climbed on the cannons and stuff, but didn't end up having enough time to go inside very much, because it was almost time to get on the cruise ship!  We got really excited when we looked down from the castle and saw it (look out at the top of the picture, that is our ship!!!)

We walked back down the mountain to save some $$, and picked up our luggage. I jumped on the taxi app and summoned a taxi to take us to our ship (it was too far to walk, and obviously no metros run over the ocean). We watched our taxi on the app drive around in circles for quite a while, with the kids (and okay, me) getting a little bit antsy about whether or not he would ever find us. But eventually the taxi hombre found us and pretty soon we were next to our new temporary home!

We had to wait in some passport lines (and then some other lines), but eventually we made it aboard!  As we walked into the beautiful main atrium, they announced over the loud speaker, "Welcome, Zaugg Family, to the Disney Dream!" 

Guys, wow!

I looked up and saw this beautiful art deco chandelier and my mouth fell open. 

We wandered around the atrium and went up the grand staircase, enjoying the air conditioning and gaping at the beautiful space we were in:

We got in the elevator to head up to our room, and it was glass so we could still look down on the space, see the princesses?  My kids were a little to old to care about meeting Cinderella unfortunately. Actually, there weren't a ton of little kids on this cruise since it was a European Cruise, but there were a LOT of teenagers.

Here is our room door! We all squeezed ourselves into one cabin. You know, "togetherness."

It was a tight squeeze, but look how cute our or little room number was:

Me and Preston had the main bed, and then Dax took the bed by the big porthole, and the girls were in the fold down bunk beds!  But hey, we weren't in the room that often so it was mostly ok. Preston's snoring was a challenge, but I bought the kids headbands that wrap around their ears and played music, and also earplugs. So they would put in the earplugs and then play music, and that seemed to work. Unfortunately one night Arden forgot to charge her headband...but no one died. 

You can't see in this picture, but behind the far curtains is a giant porthole, that had nice upholstered seat built into it. We saw dolphins from there our first day!

The first thing we did was actually go up to "Cabanas," which was the buffet kind of place, and eat lunch! The food was really good, but the kids were most impressed with the dessert. Look at this cute mousse with a chocolate Princess Tiana! We could eat all we wanted and drink all the soda/juice we wanted (although there was only Coke Zero after the first day when they ran out of Diet Coke). And of course, all the ice cream our little hearts desired.

We wandered around the ship, and on the very top deck was the "sports deck," and we played a game of mini golf! You can still see Barcelona in the background. They also had a basketball court, a gym, a golf simulator, etc. etc.

Finally, the ship pulled away, and the horn played the tune of "When you Wish Upon a Star," and all the characters were there to sing us a song about Sailing Away! We got another free drink and waved goodbye to Spain.

We had to do the life vest drill (no pictures) and after that, we had some time before dinner. The app listed out all of our entertainment choices. There were multiple things to do at almost any hour of the day. There was a movie theater, and a regular theater, multiple clubs that had different entertainments (trivia, other small shows, bingo, crafts, cooking classes, etc.) They also had a teens club just for teenagers. Cora got brave and went to the first activity, and met a fun group of friends that she spent most of her on-boat time with. Dax was too shy to go, and Arden also was too shy to meet up with the "1820" club (for the kids who are older, but not so old that they just want to hang out with their parents). So...they had a big show in the big theater every night, so me and my two shy kids saw the "Fly Boys" show before dinner, which I thoroughly enjoyed. They were like an old school kind of barbershop quartet kind of group, but singing modern songs, like "Livin' on a Prayer" from Bon Jovi, and even "Jump Around" from House of Pain, which was hilarious.

Then we went to dinner! They had three fancy dining rooms, and we rotated every night. We were table friends with a family with a girl Cora's age, they were pretty cool. The dad loved to talk, while the mom and daughter were a little more quiet. My family made me sit by the dad so they didn't have to talk all the way through dinner, my bunch of introverts!  The food was always really really good, and had a four courses...an appetizer, a salad/soup course, main course, and dessert!  I was uncomfortably full but happy each and every night.

After dinner, we went up by the pools to watch a movie. They had movies on the big screen up by the pools all day and night. That night was Cruella, the new one. Me and Dax and Arden watched. We got more free soda, and they had hot chocolate too, which was nice because it was a little chilly on deck with the wind from the ship moving. I had to get some beach towels to use as blankets.

I started getting pretty tired around 11pm, but Dax wanted to stay until the end so I toughed it out. Guys!  I'm on a beautiful boat in the middle of the Mediterranean watching a Disney movie! Here is the view forwards,

and here is the view behind

After that I was d.o.n.e and hurried back to our room, changed into my jammies in our little teeny bathroom and crawled into bed. Preston was already snoring. So I put in my ear buds and put my phone with white noise playing right next to my face and put my pillow over my head and went to sleep pretty quick. Tomorrow: Sicily!