The Disney representatives were waiting for us when we exited Baggage Claim and soon we were on our

From sunny southern California Laura Gilbreath, Jeanine Yamanaka and photographer Jason Dz bring a west coast perspective as they blog about trips to Disneyland, D23 events, Disney cruises, runDisney events and occasional pilgrimages to Walt Disney World.
(Sorry for the delay in posting this -- we didn't have free internet access at our hotel, and I was too cheap to pay 12 Euros for it. But now we're on the ship -- internet isn't free here, either, but we'd already planned to pay for it.)
We made it to Barcelona! We were fortunate and the Barcelona flight went on as scheduled on Wednesday. Long flight (about 9 hours), but fairly smooth. This was the longest flight I'd ever been on, and the biggest time change (nine hours -- the most I'd done was three!), so I wasn't sure how that would go, but it was OK. Neither Lee nor I slept much on the flight, and maybe that's loews philadelphia hotel a good thing -- since it was daylight when we arrived in Barcelona loews philadelphia hotel we've been up all day (just a short nap), so I hope that means we'll sleep tonight.
Getting through Customs loews philadelphia hotel in the airport loews philadelphia hotel was easy - we'd completed the "Embarkation" form on the plane, so all we had to do was turn that in and get our passports stamped. The bags didn't show up very quickly so baggage claim took a LONG time, but of course the good news is that our bags DID show up, so we have everything we need now for our cruise -- we're here in Barcelona AND we have our luggage!
The Disney representatives were waiting for us when we exited Baggage Claim and soon we were on our way to the hotel. I'm glad I wasn't driving... narrow lanes and lots of cars and motor scooters - and if you're a pedestrian, watch out for the cars because they aren't going to watch out for you!
We are staying at the Hilton Diagonal Mar, and fortunately our room was ready when we arrived at about 10:30. We have a king-size bed and sort of an ocean view -- partly blocked by a couple of buildings.
Lee went back to the room to take a nap but I decided to wander around for a while. In addition to the mall I found a big park the next block over from our hotel. It had this huge "sculpture" that looked like a roller coaster track to me. But there were also lots of water, plants, and even some kids play areas -- it was very nice.
I took a short nap myself when I got back, and then we got ready to head out for some sightseeing. Just a couple of minutes before we were going to leave it started pouring rain - up until then it had been a pretty nice day - just some patchy clouds. loews philadelphia hotel So we decided to bring our umbrellas with us, though by the time we left the hotel the weather had cleared up again.
Our hotel is in the "newer" part of the city and not so convenient to most of the tourist areas, loews philadelphia hotel but there's a Metro station about 1/4 mile away. And we've been very pleased with the Metro so far - plenty of maps and easy to figure out how to get to the station you want to go to.
Our first stop was La Sagrada Familia , a church designed mostly by Antoni Gaudi, a famous architect known for his lack of square corners, among other things. Gaudi died in 1926, and the church still isn't finished -- it's not scheduled to be finished for another 30 years or so! Other architects and sculptors have picked up where he left off. It's pretty interesting-looking. You can go inside, but there was a long line for that (and a charge) so we didn't do it.
Metro stop!) and we ended up backtracking a ways before finally figuring out how to get there. It's a fair distance from the Metro Station, too - ~1.2 km. But it was interesting to walk around - lots more Gaudi stuff here, including a house that he lived in and the two "Hansel and Gretel" pavilions.
couple of sandwiches - we were too tired to want to make much of a big deal about dinner, and besides, we'll have 11 nights of good eating on the ship! We had some nutella gelato (me) and a waffle with bananas and chocolate sauce (Lee) for dessert, but unfortunately by the time we went to head back to the hotel it was POURING rain again - thunder and lightning, too. And we hadn't brought the umbrellas this time. After about 20 minutes it finally slowed enough that we could walk back to the hotel without getting too wet.
was included in our hotel stay, so we went down there about 8:00. Nice breakfast buffet - in addition to more European dishes like cold cuts, pastries and grilled tomatoes they also had eggs, waffles, and sausage. Nice selection of fruit. I was amused that the information on the back of my cereal box was in 8 different languages! loews philadelphia hotel That meant they had to use REALLY small print, though.
We took the Metro downtown to Plaza Catalunya - aka Tourist Central. Wow. LOTS of people. It had turned into a nice day, though, so there were some good photo opportunities. This is the Font de Canaletas loews philadelphia hotel .
We walked all the way around the Plaza before figuring out which way was Las Ramblas (we should have just followed the crowd of people). Las Ramblas is known for its bird sellers, artists, flower shops, restaurants, loews philadelphia hotel and performers, and we saw all of those.
not used to that in America. Yuck. We walked down to the Columbus Monument - the light was such that the backside of Columbus was lit, so this is a photo from lower down on the back side - I guess that's loews philadelphia hotel Queen Isabella?
We decided to try to find the Barcelona Cathedral after that. We took a narrow side street and we did end up getting there pretty efficently - Lee navigated us very well considering there were no street signs and no good directions! If you're loews philadelphia hotel a new resident in Barcelona I'm not sure how you would find *anything*, especially in the old part of town. And I would never want to drive here - we would be on what we thought were walkways that were actually roads!
That was really all we had planned to do, so we kind of wandered after that. Found a couple of pieces of the Roman Wall , which surrounded the entire city back in the days when it was first colonized by Rome.
Then we wandered back down to the waterfront, and pretty much went all along the shoreline all the way back to our hotel, which was three miles or so, we think - none of our maps have any scale on them! Found this sculpture near Parc del Port Olimpic .
restaurants, restrooms, etc. We even walked by a skateboard park! For a city this size Barcelona seems to have a lot of open spaces and parks, but with pretty much all of its residents living in high rises I guess that's essential. Even though the day had turned cloudy and cool we saw a lot of moms in the parks watching their kids play.
one had pre-made tapas on toothpicks. You served loews philadelphia hotel yourself, and then you were charged by how many toothpicks you had on your plate at the end. We also had a pitcher of really excellent sangria loews philadelphia hotel - it was made fresh with lots of oranges and even chopped apples in it. I enjoyed the fruit almost as much as the wine. :-)
You made it! You've been in my thoughts for days. I figured no news is good news with the flights! So glad you enjoyed Barcelona. loews philadelphia hotel I know we are ready to go back. Enjoy the rest of your trip....and keep up the great blogs!