18.06.18
Time to disembark and head back to some African Mayhem! Our disembarkation time was 9.15 and as per the Pullmantur that actually meant we had til closer to 10am to get ourselves ready!! (Not really, I’m exaggerating slightly but definitely the Germans and Japanese on board would have been getting frustrated with the lack of timeliness 🙂 )
Anyway we finished off our last morning with a nice brekky up on the pool deck (and me uploading blogs) before we packed up our stuff and headed off the boat. The awesome thing about the Barcelona port terminal is that you can pay to have your bags shipped from the port to the airport~ so for the cost of 30E we had both of our bags transported for us, leaving us free to spend the day in Barca before jumping on our evening flight back to Morocco.
To kick off our day we walked off the ship and headed eastwards towards the Picasso Museum. Picasso lived much of his life in Barca and when his wife died she bequeathed much of her collection to the city of Barcelona~ hence the Picasso Museum. The museum houses much of his early works (no cubist/ surrealist stuff in his early works)—landscapes, portraits etc~ of which I was quite surprised that he was actually a very talented artist of what I would call “normal” art. It also has some of his later works that are much more what I call “Picasso’s”. In particular, they had a special exhibition on Picasso and food and showcased much of his still life works (cubist style), and plenty of cubist portraits of his wife, also had some of his pottery.. (of which I never realised he wasn’t just an artist he was also a ceramist!) The Picasso Museum is housed in an old palace and so not only was I admiring the art works but also some of the rooms! A bit like the Louvre.. the rooms are as impressive as the art that adorns the walls!
From Picasso we headed northwards to finally check out Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia. Wow! Now that is what I call a piece of architecture!! Must have been on some pretty good stuff when he started pencilling the design for the cathedral.. For those not in the know it is a gothic? cathedral that was first started in the 1800s and is still undergoing construction. Apparently his masterpiece will finally be finished in time for the centenary of his death in 2026.. I’ll see it when I believe it! Although it is still under construction it is a pretty impressive building.. reminds me a bit of the sandcastles you can build on the beach when you dribble wet sand through your hands to make those fairy tale spires. We didn’t have enough time to do the tour (nor the inclination to part with nearly 100E) so we’ll save up the interior for next time we return to Barcelona.
By the time we had oohed and aahed at Gaudi’s masterpiece we were both lathered in sweat and decided to jump on the metro and head back downtown to have some lunch (still haven’t had Paella yet) and a cold beverage or two in a shady covered space. Seafood Paella consumed + a huge glass of Sangria each and we decided it was time to start wandering our way back up the La Ramblas towards the metro stop to head off to the airport. On way we ran into the central marketplace (which we had seen on our first night in Barcelona but it was closed) so we detoured to check out the yumminess…. In fact, it looked so yummy that both of us were a bit disappointed that we had just eaten seafood Paella cause some of the cold meats and cheeses looked AMAZING!– mental note to partake next time when in Barcelona.
Trip from Barca back to Casablanca wasn’t without hiccup.. To start with, arriving and getting our bags was slightly tense when we realised we had lost our ticket to pick up our bags…… Fortunately S’s passport was enough proof for us to get our bags (phew!).. so first problem solved. Check in etc was fairly smooth so no issues there either. Found ourselves a spot to plonk ourselves and book some more accommodation/ trips in Morocco—again no issues , accepting that we were cutting it a bit fine to get from where we were sitting to the gate…. Which we realised when we got up to find our gate was no where near where we were sitting! Christ, we hadn’t even gone through passport control!!!! Now stressing to the max (as the plane was already boarding) we ran from passport control all the way to our gate (which was at the other end seemingly of the terminal).. arrived hot and bothered but at least sitting in our seats!
Plane takes off, again no issues.. Dinner comes and goes—again no issues.. I doze off—no issues until on descent I get rudely woken to this very loud keening sound! The dude sitting in front of us is having a melt down on the plane!! No joke, the guy sitting in front of us is uncontrollably crying and screaming something… Not a great way to get woken up~ especially on a plane—where for a second I thought the worst (ie Allah and a bomb)—no clue why the guy in front was in melt down mode but thank goodness the air hosties got him slightly calmed down and hurried him off the plane super quick when we finally landed..
Get off plane and join the interminable line up for passport control… seriously, forty five minutes to an hour later (I’m not a 100% sure when we joined the queue) and we FINALLY got through passport control and could pick up our bags.. by now the time is well after 10pm we’re both buggered, filthy (from walking around all day in the heat in Barca) and our tempers are pretty short… eventually we found our bags (they’d been cruising around the baggage carousel for ages) and headed to find a SIM card—which proved to bloody hard so we eventually just walked outside (before one of us bit the other’s head off—which probably would have been me), found a taxi and headed back into Casablanca to our hotel… Thank god for hot water!