Our cruise from Malaga to Alicante was very smooth and we pulled into the Alicante harbour just as the sun was rising after 7am. The weather was clear most of the day with a high of 15C, with a stiff wind from the east making it necessary to wear our jackets most of the day. Our excursion in Alicante started at a more convenient time than yesterday's in Malaga. I had time to work out in the fitness centre before breakfast, although I kept it to a moderate exertion level because this was the first time back since I got the cough about a week ago. We met our tour guide just after 10:30am, and boarded a bus for a 10 minute ride to downtown Alicante where we got off the bus and headed for the Museu de Fogueres, which tells and shows the story of the celebration of the Feast of Sant Joan (St. John) during the week culminating on the big day of June 24. For Catalan nationalists (people in this part of Spain), this day has become Catalan Nation Day. (Notice the similarity to Quebec's celebration of John the Baptist on the same day). There is a good description of the event and its history on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonfires_of_Saint_John . Artists create fantastic figures and displays that are carried through the streets and then are burned on the 24th in big bonfires. They have started to retain the best ones, however, and these are what are on display in the museum. Our guide then walked us over to the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas where she guided us into the church. Unfortunately, she wasn't aware that there was a mass underway and Ann & I left as we did not feel it appropriate to be sightseeing during the mass. We then visited the Town Hall which dates back hundreds of years. During a 15 minute "free time", we had an opportunity to explore the Calle de l'Explanada de Espana, a beautiful pedestrial walkway parallel to the sea with 365 palm trees lining the sides. We boarded the bus once again and headed up a steep hill to the Castillo (Castle) of Santa Barbara, where we had a commanding view of the city, the coast line, and the environs behind the city. The fort was started by the Moslems in the 9th century and it has been used over the years for military purposes and, finally, by Franco as a place to imprison political prisoners. Today, it's a major tourist attraction and is being renovated to become a museum. Ann and I went our separate ways while visiting the Castle and she found an impressive art collection which was the highlight of her day. You can read more about the castle at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Santa_B%C3%A1rbara .
As the bus drove the group back to the ship, we asked our tour guide to drop us downtown at the Esplanada de Espana because we wanted to spend more time by ourselves in Alicante. After looking around for a while, we stopped at a restaurant on the Esplanada where we enjoyed a very good Spanish lunch, sharing an anchove paella and a Andalusian omlette, washed down with rose wine from Navarra.
In contrast to the excellent guide we had an Alhambra the day before, our guide in Alicante was very poor. She had a poor command of English and her voice didn't project at all, so we missed much of what she said and, when we could hear her, it was painful to listen to. (Later I spoke French with her and she admitted her French was better than her English). We discussed the day's experiences over lunch and concluded that this is the last bus tour we want to take for the foreseeable future. Our time would have been better spent on our own in Alicante. The challenge for these very short visits to ports of call is that there is almost no time to arrange something by yourself once on shore, so we depend on the MSC-arranged excursions to help us make the best of the visits to the ports. So, on balance, we have found them to be enjoyable and informative, but the one in Alicante wasn't up to scratch, unfortunately.
Our last dinner on the ship was another formal "gala" affair. Our choice of main course was baked lobster, which was very good, followed by MSC's signature "baked Alaska". Following the excellent dance and music show in the theatre afterwards, it was back to our cabin to pack our suitcases. We had to leave them in the hallway for a 2am pickup, and only keep with us that which we needed in the morning. After a night of smooth sailing to Barcelona (226 nautical miles), the ship docked this morning at 7am with a view of sunny Barcelona from our cabin balcony. We disembarked after breakfast and took a taxi to the Eurostars Grand Marina hotel located at a large marina complex about 3km from the ship. (There is a lot of ferry and shipping traffic in and out of Barcelona to the Ballearic Islands, as well as to Italy and North Africa). Luckily, the hotel was able to assign us a room as soon as we arrived about 9:30am.
Our day in Barcelona was spent walking the Rambla, a main pedestrian street, and doing a bit of shopping. Later, we walked back to the waterfront and headed east past a huge marina full of sailboats and luxury yachts, and found a restaurant for our my last dinner in Spain for a while. (Ann had eaten lunch earlier, so only wanted to sample my the excellent local wine that I ordered with my dinner, which featured baked hake prepared "in the Basque way". We wandered back along the beautiful waterfront, stopping into a Starbucks for a relaxing coffee while we watched fishing boats returning with the catches, with hundreds of noisy seagulls wheeling overhead.
The next 2 days is the boring part - getting our bodies safely back home to Ottawa. It was a challenge to find a reasonably priced, one-way flight back to North America. Last year was IcelandAir but it doesn't fly to Canada until April. In the event, I found that Aer Lingus could get us to Boston cheaply, so that's what we are doing tomorrow. We depart at 10:50am, stop in Dublin, then fly to Boston for arrival about 5:30pm. We could have continued to Ottawa, but decided to spend the night in Boston before flying on to Ottawa on Porter Airlines (our first experience with them).
We have really enjoyed this cruise, although there were some aspects in which we were disappointed. One was the fact that our dinner companions were not up to those we had last year. Of the 2 couples assigned to our table with us, one moved to their own table after a couple days and the other couple only appeared about half the time because they didn't like the early time of the first dinner sitting (5:30pm). (They went to the cafeteria instead). So, most of the time, Ann and I were by ourselves at a table for 6. We had looked forward to meeting other passengers but this happened at other times over lunch or at other venues. This is probably our last transatlantic cruise - we've been there, done it twice. We don't have any specific plans for future cruises, but if we do, it will likely be in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean.
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