Barcelona--wake up you little sleepy heads

It was with much sadness that we set a wakeup call for 530 in order to get up, get dressed, be showered and out of the cabin by 6am for breakfast. We were meeting in the Elite lounge at the Murano restaurant for 6:30--to be escorted off the ship as part of the early departure procedure. It was our goal to be in a taxi and on our way by no later than 7am--we had a six hour tour leaving at 8:30 from downtown Barcelona, and we still had to make our way back to the hotel we'd stayed at on September 18th, to stow our bags for the day.


My very typical breakfast each morning...I'm thinking things will change as soon as I get home :(

I am very happy to report, our early morning plans went accordingly, and before 7am, we had all our luggage and were in a taxi headed for the Hotel Paralel. The front desk clerk at the hotel kindly pointed out on the map the exact walking directions to Julia's Travel where we would meet up with our tour bus.


Travel Agency...we found it...that was to be the last bit of good news for us :(

Again, our timing was perfect...we navigated through the streets of Barcelona and arrived with plenty of time to spare for our tour. However, we were met with some sad (translation "sucky") news....our 6 hour winery tour and stop in the seaside town of Sitges, had been cancelled due to limited interest in that particular tour. With such short notice and limited options, we chose the only other tour that would fit in with our time constraints for the day--a 5 hour bus trip to the monastery at Montserrat leaving at 9:30. To be perfectly honest, this was the last tour I would have ever chosen...no, make that...I would never ever have chosen a tour up to the top of a mountain that was famous for it's religious monastery. But, we had at least six hours to kill, it was almost impossible to research and reserve something else at that point, and we had already found the location, in an otherwise confusing, unfamiliar city.


Neither of us were very happy


This did help to ease the pain....

So, we made the best of it, went for our second breakfast of the day (I drowned my sorrows in a very large chocolate croissant) and we decided we would both take a nice nap on the bus while traveling to and from the location.


Our coach for the day...note the name "Century" on the glass...a sure reminder of what we are missing...how ironic is that!?!?!

If you look back over the last 2 weeks of our European travels--you may notice a pattern emerging...some plans turned out wonderfully and went above and well beyond our expectations. On the other hand, some plans initially turned out not so wonderful, but we made every effort to go with the flow and make the best of each situation as a few random days changed from good to bad, then back to good. No life altering issues occurred, it was a lesson learned that even the best laid plans can be altered through no fault of our own. Just try to find a way to take advantage of the situation and always remember you are on vacation...a bad day on vacation, is leaps and bounds beyond a good day at work. And to be perfectly honest, we never really experienced even one bad day on our trip...moments here and there perhaps, but never anything more than that.

Next up....are we there yet....or how to get your stomach to the top of the mountain without taking the funicular