PACKING OUR BAGS FOR BARCELONA 2022!

At home
Erie, Pennsylvania

October 23, 2022

Janie and TK are ready to cruise again!!

Hello, Readers! 

TK is back at it, making up for lost time! Since 2020, we have had a Mediterranean Cruise scheduled, but the cruises were cancelled for Covid and then an unexpected medical situation.  So in just 9 days, on November 2, we are leaving Erie to head to Barcelona, Spain--we are blessed!

One of our new cruise friends, "JillieBean," created this calendar on the site, Cruise Critic, at https://boards.cruisecritic.com .  This is as big as I can make it, but it is a nice graphic to show where we are going when we leave Barcelona aboard the Regal Princess.

We will leave Erie (ERI) about 6 a.m. on Wednesday, November 2, and fly to Chicago with a layover of about 8 hours. We will fly from Chicago to Zurich, Switzerland, transfer, and fly on to Barcelona, where we will arrive on Thursday, November 3.

After recovering from the long overnight flight, haha, we will enjoy some of Barcelona's culinary delights--TK is watching YouTube videos on where to eat there.  On Friday, November 4, we have a tour scheduled for La Sagrada Familia (The Holy Family) Roman Catholic Church, mostly designed by Catalonian architect Antoni Gaudi. Construction began in 1883 under the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar.  The church is scheduled to be finished in 2026, 144 years later.  This spectacular church has intrigued me since I first saw it in 2012 and this will be our third visit. We already have the tickets for a tour of the basilica and tickets for the elevator to tower at the top of the Nativity facade, which represents the birth and childhood of Jesus Christ.    https://sagradafamilia.org/en/ .  

From the website: "The plan for Sagrada Familia, laid down by Antoni Gaudi, was truly ahead of its time. Gaudi’s original vision for the towers includes 18 spires, to represent the Twelve Apostles, Virgin Mary, the four Evangelists, and Jesus Christ. Of the 18, only 8 spires have been completed so far. These correspond to the four Apostles of the Nativity Façade and the four Apostles of the Passion Façade.

The spires, dedicated to the Evangelists, will be surmounted by sculptures of their traditional symbols while the tallest spire, dedicated to Jesus Christ, will be surmounted by a giant cross and will have a height of 170 meters (560 ft). While the towers are a long way from completion, once completed they will make Sagrada Familia the tallest church building in the world."

We also have a tour scheduled for Saturday, November 5 to visit Montserrat, a multi-peaked mountain range near Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain. My nephew Bob and his wife Katie have been telling us to visit Montserrat for years and this is the year.  We will explore the nearly 1000 year old Benedictine Monastery set high up the mountains, and more spots of interest in that area, about 32 miles northwest of Barcelona.  This is a Viator tour. https://www.viator.com/

We have fourteen tours scheduled during our visit to the Mediterranean, Ionian, and Adriatic Seas. Based on our travel experience, it is best to plan ahead with so many ports. I am very disappointed about our tour in Genoa which was cancelled by Princess tours, a trip to Milan to see DaVinci's Last Supper.  There was no explanation and by the time they cancelled it, there were no other tours to Milan available.

This cruise is exciting for us--there are 6 ports that I have never been to and several that TK has not been to--his U.S. Navy "cruise"  the Mediterranean in the late 60s -early 70s took him to Greece and Gibraltar.  I will also make a reurn to my beloved Aix en Provence, the city I lived in for a year, 1967-1968, my 4th return visit!

Anyway, here is the itinerary--soon we will fly away!

 On another note, I am grateful that son Randy suggested that I use the MS Paint program to resize my Canon T7i photos for the blog, instead of lowering the image resolution on my camera. I am going to practice that. Hopefully this will solve some of the problems of uploading photos to the blog. In September it was painful when one photo would take an hour to upload because of the slow ship Internet. Aargh!

I am also grateful that friend Sue M helped me get around MS OneDrive--it is so easy for me to type my blog in MS Word and transfer it to the blog. OneDrive is not my friend!

Stay tuned for an exciting adventure!!!

TK's Takes:  He is too busy packing--anyway that is what he tells me. He has been packing for 3 weeks. I sure wonder what is going on inside his luggage.

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For Inquiring Minds!  La Sagrada Familia--why is it taking so long to complete this fabulous church? 

(Note: I am not sure if the link below will take you to a 2021 article--I hope!)

Basically, in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War, Gaudi's models of his vision for the church were destroyed. Gaudi himself died tragically in 1926, hit by a tram as he walked to his daily confession. He had been working on the church for 43 years.  There was a revolving door of architects and funding problems. Finally, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated it as an official basilica

https://www.euronews.co m/culture/2021/12/05/why-has-barcelona-s-sagrada-familia-taken-over-100-years-to-be-built#:~:text=Construction%20is%20halted%20ever%20further,of%20the%20war%20in%201939 .

This photo was taken in 2013 on our last Mediterranean Cruise. Janie was looking out 

an open window at one of the spires, with Barcelona in the background.

Another photo from 2013--the Tower of the Nativity

La Sagrada Familia

Barcelona, Spain