July 31, 2016- Barcelona/ Embarkation on Our Second Costa Cruise

This morning we ate at the hotel buffet again. We packed up almost all of our belongings and walked through the Olympic Port area, along the walkway by the sea. We wove in and out of a few streets before settling on a café by the ocean for some tapas for lunch. We had octopus, mussels steamed in wine, gazpacho, and roasted potatoes with aioli and spicy aioli on them. With ice cold Spanish Coca Cola this was an excellent repast.

We will miss waking up to this view

Buffet breakfast

Wandering the streets

At El Pacifico Cafe

We had a friend join us for lunch.

Our tapas lunch

We walked a little more and found an ice cream stand to have an ice cream. In the hot Spanish sun with real ice cream (unlike Canada) we were soon covered in melting ice cream. 

We  found a grocery store and bought a whole bunch of bottles of sparkling water, some nuts, a few granola bars, and a couple of chocolate bars to supplement our onboard the cruise ship diet. We returned to the hotel and collected our bags.

We could see our cruise ship (the 'little" one) from the windows by the elevator in the W Hotel 

We took a taxi to the Barcelona cruise ship terminal, which was just down the water a ways, so not much more than a 10 minute ride. At the terminal, despite our online check in, we waited in line for a long time to check in our suitcases and show our passports and boarding passes. The employee who viewed Bill’s Canadian passport was not impressed that he didn’t have an entry stamp. We tried to explain that he had come through the EU lineup with April and therefore he didn’t get a stamp. The guy had to view Bill’s boarding pass and then go off and verify it. Then Bill had to surrender his passport while April was able to keep both of hers (because she has an EU passport- anyone without an EU passport is made to surrender it on a Costa cruise). Again the passports were all in a rows in little boxes sitting on top of a folding table, no locks, no top to the box, and ample opportunity for anyone to seize them. We were not impressed that no changes had been made to this practice from last year.

We boarded the ship and found our room. The room was about the same size as our room last year, however, the big difference was our balcony (last year we only had a little window, no balcony). We have a balcony that is about 35 feet long. It has two chairs that partially recline and a little table. It’s way, way bigger than the other normal balcony rooms’ balconies.

Our bathroom.

Our balcony.

Hallway looking into our cabin.

The picturesque Port of Barcelona from our balcony.

Annoyingly, the room has only one chair and one little stool to go with the little table, unlike last year when we had a couch to sit on side by side on when we ate at the little table (room service is one of the only ways to survive these Costa cruises). Bill and April unpacked and April did some sink laundry before we had to dash off to the safety session in a lounge on one of the lower decks. We had to bring our huge life jackets with us. The safety video offered examples of people being complete idiots. Then we returned to our room.

We changed quickly and then went up for dinner. This year we requested the first sitting of dinner. Last year we had second sitting and we often finished dinner after midnight, a nightmare when you have to be up early the next morning to go on an excursion or explore a port where you only have a limited number of hours. The first sitting was at 7:30 pm.  Unfortunately, our experience with dinner in the dining room on a Costa ship was not any better than last year. Our two servers were pleasant, one from Indonesia, the other from India, but that could not improve the fact that it took forever to get through all the courses, almost everything on the menu was previously frozen, many dishes were cold or hot and cold (we suspect pre-made and then microwaved), the food tasted gross, and there was only one thing on offer for dessert with coffee flavour (no ice cream available this time, damn it! That’s practically the only thing that was good about the last cruise.).

Hot on the outside, cold in the middle. M&M Meats probably makes these.

During dinner, April started to shake with cold and couldn’t keep warm. We assumed it was air conditioning, but then she had stomach cramps that intensified once we reached the room where she could not keep warm. She slept fitfully that night feeling absolutely horrible. We wondered if she had food poisoning or if the stress of revisiting the world of Costa had brought on the gastrointestinal distress.

The bed is not that comfortable (and being a cruise ship, it is two single beds pushed together). We have one thin pillow each. The sheets are rough in comparison to the W Barcelona. But that’s the problem with going from one extreme to the other in accommodations. At least our room wasn’t falling to pieces like our one on the Costa Magica- the Costa Fascinosa that we’re on now is much more new.

July 30, 2016- Rest. Relax. Repeat

This morning we woke up and went downstairs to the Wave Lounge in the hotel for breakfast. As a Platinum Starwood Member, Bill can choose extra points per night, free breakfasts each morning, or a free gift which was a luggage tag. Bill chose the free breakfasts. It was a huge breakfast buffet with everything from smoked anchovies and olives, to meats, cakes and doughnuts, croissants, scrambled eggs, crepes, fruits, granola and yogurt, nuts, smoothies, juices, and fruit infused waters. Per person it is 33 Euros (about 49$ Canadian at our current exchange rate). It was pretty good, but Bill and I never would have paid 100 bucks for it.

April caught the morning sun rising from our room

April caught the morning sun rising from our room

Our breakfast, compliments of SPG

We went back to the room and dressed in our swimsuits and went down to the Bliss Spa area where there is a small pool with nice lounge chairs and less people. It's an infinity pool that looks out over the view of Barcelona and the beach (always packed with people, even in the morning and into the evening). We warmed up by the pool on our comfortable lounge chairs and then went for a refreshing dip in the pool, swimming right up to the edge (it's glass so you can even go underwater and see through the view of the city, albeit blurry from being underwater).

The lovely, warm Catalonian sun.

April enjoying the infinity pool 

Bill enjoying the infinity pool

We returned to our chairs and ordered two salads for lunch. April's was a quinoa salad and Bill's was a falafel salad. April's salad again had arugula or as they call it in Britain, rocket. It seems to be the kale of Europe. But we think kale is a better salad material. Maybe it just doesn't grow well here. Neither salad was that great.

We spent some more time in the sun, reapplying sunscreen after we took another dip. Eventually, the tall tower of the hotel blocked the sun from the pool in the mid afternoon and we went back to our room to shower off. Bill had a snooze, while April caught up on her travel journal.

We wanted to check out the club at the top of the W Barcelona, Eclipse, to which we had a free pass, so we went to dinner later than usual, almost 9:00 pm, which is of course early by southern European standards. The restaurant was basically empty until past 9:00 pm when people slowly started to filter in. When we left the restaurant at 10:45 pm it was jumping (and it's Saturday). We had prawns and tuna tataki as a starter, we shared monk fish and sea bass as mains, and Bill had cactus sorbet in a fruit soup for dessert, while April had chocolate brownies in chocolate sauce with spicy chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream. Everything was excellent. The Spanish really know how to cook seafood. We've noticed that the service in this hotel is absolutely excellent. The training program must be superb.

All dressed up for dinner

April before dinner with her new scarf

Appetizer: tuna tataki and prawns with peach gazpacho 

Monk Fish

Sea Bass

Chocolate bliss and cactus sorbet in a blood orange soup

We went back to the room and worked on the blog and killed time, so that we wouldn't be at the club, Eclipse, before the really good people watching began. FYI this is considered "research" when you're a writer.

We had to go down to the lobby and see the woman who guards the separate elevator that goes up to the 26th floor where the club is. She looked at our free pass and gave us each a plastic wristband that looked like a Euro Trash version of our hospital bracelets back home. We bought a sparkling water each and sat down in the EDM side of the club (the other side, R&B, looked busier and was smokey). There was almost no one there at 11:45 pm when we arrived. People slowly filtered in, but it was not very busy and almost no one was dancing. Most people just sat around or stood around in groups with the occasional lame dancer. The music was disappointing. We waited for 1:00 am which is when Google said the crowd peaks there. But it just sort of increased somewhat and stayed lame. We went over to the R&B side and tried to dance to one song but it was packed and we were being jostled. And we were like "I'm too old for this shit, I'm out." We had to take the separate elevator back down to the lobby and then get on one of the other ones to go back up to our room. Not what we expected from one of the "hottest" clubs in Barcelona, but the view was pretty. The DJs in the club were just not that creative or good at mixing or song selection.

Poppin' bottles at da club...

Under the blue lights of the Eclipse night club

A video survey of the crowd

July 29, 2016- AMS to FRA to BCN, Our First Day in Barcelona

We awoke at the ungodly hour of 4:30 a.m. after less than 4 hours of sleep. We finished packing, had our breakfast in our room, and went and checked out. They removed a breakfast from our bill that we had in fact never ordered or consumed and was a mistake. Other than that, the bill was accurate. They asked for our feedback. We said that we loved the location of the hotel and it’s safe and comfortable and quiet, but the cleaning really left something to be desired. We noticed that the cleaning in our room wasn’t done very thoroughly and they broke a glass a couple of times and instead of replacing it, they’d leave it out in the hallway on the floor. Then we’d have to call down for a glass from the front desk. And they didn’t replace our Kleenex another day. And of course there was the weird electric toothbrush in a glass of water day. But all in all, we’d probably stay there again.

They called a taxi for us and the fellow was there right away. He was very pleasant and chatted with us as he drove us to Schiphol Airport and we discussed polar bears, the north pole, and other important facets of Canadian life.

Bill found the PwC office on the way to the airport.

He dropped us off at the Lufthansa departure section. We had checked in online, but the machines there are only for check in and not for printing baggage tags like in Canada, so we had to get in line with everyone anyways. We sent our bags away and we went through security. April always gets harassed back home and even here, she got the pat down of a lifetime right after being in the screening machine. The woman kept feeling her up and then some guy barked “spread your legs.” Yeah, that’s how you want to start your morning.

Bill was enthralled with the urinal fly and golf hole that you can aim at in the urinals in Schiphol Airport bathrooms.

We walked towards our gate. Bill found a pair of sheepskin slippers at a shop along the way and bought them. They look really snug, but they were too wide at the back for April.

The flight from Amsterdam (AMS) to Frankfurt (FRA) was about 30 minutes late boarding and leaving but made up 15 minutes of time and wasn’t too late getting in. It was a 45 minute flight but they still managed to find time to give us a delicious strudel and a drink (hot drinks were even on offer- hear that Air Canada?).

Strudel doodle doo.

April noticed a drop in the standards of the bathrooms right away from Amsterdam to Frankfurt. No more alcohol disinfecting spray to put on toilet paper to clean the seats and the lighting was worse. It just didn’t look as clean. Still great compared to the bathrooms in a lot of places though.

In Frankfurt we didn’t have to wait long until we boarded, about one hour. There was a stand with many different newspapers for free for Lufthansa passengers to read for free and a machine that made tea, coffee, etc free for passengers. What service!

There is no boarding by zones in these Lufthansa flights so everyone just piles together in a lineup and then merges from various places into one or sometimes two gates. By the time you get on, if you aren’t lining up from far ahead of time, the overhead bin space is taken and you’ll have to put your carry-on luggage under the seat in front of you. It’s not the best system for boarding.

The flight from Frankfurt to Barcelona left around the right time. The flight was about 1.5 hours.

We took a cab from the airport to the W Barcelona, which is right on the water, near where the Olympics Village was.

Cab selfie.

When we arrived at the hotel our room wasn’t ready yet, so we went to the W lounge and had a late, but extremely delicious lunch of local fare. Our server, Marco, spoke English with a textbook middle-England accent. Upon further investigation we discovered that the part of England he was from was Sicily (he had studied in England for four years, however). Our second server was a trainee named Julie who was from the Netherlands (Rotterdam) and was doing a 3 month stint here in Barcelona at the hotel after studying hotel management… we just can’t escape these Dutch people. When April came back to the table and she met her for the first time, Julie did a very visible double take. No April’s not Dutch!

We shared a salad of tuna, chicken, olives, Parmesan cheese, etc. and roasted chicken breast with roasted potatoes and a tomato sauce with perfectly cooked whole prawns. The ingredients were obviously fresh and absolutely flawlessly prepared. And there was good bread to eat with the meal with a variety of different things to dip it in like garlic aioli, tomato sauce, red wine salt, etc… 

We left satisfied and went to the front desk to see if they had our room ready yet. They did not. We sat and waited in the lobby since we couldn’t go far as we don’t have our phones working in Europe for calls when the room was ready. After a longer wait, Bill went up to ask again, the room was finally ready. We were relieved because we were both tired and wanted to get out onto the beach in front of the hotel and have some sun and maybe a little sun and just relax and unwind from the journey of the morning.

Our room had been upgraded to the best available one. This one was on the 14^th floor and faced the beach and the city with floor to ceiling windows and a king sized bed. But our bags weren’t there yet. We called down to try to retrieve our bags so we could change into bathing suits. Eventually the bags were brought up, by which time we had discovered two disappointing defects, the note with chocolates was addressed to someone with a name different that Bill’s name (he’s a platinum member, they should know his name- hellllloooooo!!!) and there was a gross long black hair on the soap dish/soap.The bellman sent a cleaning lady to replace the soap.

Welcome chocolates.

We changed and went down to the beach. It was really, really windy and the towels that they gave us at the beach club were blowing around and slapping at us. It was quite warm out, but the wind made it feel a bit chilly, especially when we waded into the Mediterranean. We both dunked ourselves in and then we lied on our beach chairs and dried off a bit. It was kind of cold in that wind though, so eventually we went back to the hotel.

We had a shower and decided that with a view like ours, we should just order in room service and eat in front of the window. The room service came just as April was nodding off. 

Mmm gourmet dog food and a beautiful view. Our night was set to be awesome.

Can't beat this view.

We discovered the fries were stone cold and seemed to have an extra protein bit deep fried with them, a hair. We called down about this. The woman who brought up the replacement fries was so apologetic. She actually came back later with champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries as an apology. But we told her we don’t drink, so she offered to make some other drink for us. We ended up with a Spanish version of a milkshake (more like iced milk, not thick like what you'd get in Canada or the U.S.), one vanilla (real vanilla beans!) and one chocolate that she dropped off on another trip.

Milkshakes and chocolate covered strawberries.

Then there was another knock and a woman showed up with “a tray for Mrs. Hepburn.” We were both puzzled. It was tea. It had a note hoping that April would feel better. We suppose they must have witnessed her in bed earlier in a robe feeling sleepy at dinnertime and thought that she was sick.

Tea makes everything better, even when you didn't know anything was wrong.

Then there was another knock at the door. This time it was the cleaning lady offering turn down service. We refused this and worked on the blog and tried to get ready for an earlier sleep. And we didn’t even mention all of the different calls we received either. Bill became a Platinum Starwood member from all of his business trips and they certainly seem to be acknowledging that they value his membership. They have been very attentive.

And the view out of this room is absolutely stunning.