TRAVEL THERE: FLAMENCO ONBOARD THE CELEBRITY EDGE
As we planned our shore excursions, we were disappointed when a Flamenco tour on Mallorca was cancelled. My bestie, Deborah, adores all dance and Flamenco is a particular favorite of mine. If we’d known Celebrity had something Flamenco-flavored planned for us, we’d have been a whole lot happier, but the Flamenco show was nice addition to our final day. We discovered that along with other perks, like the wine tasting at the Monaco Yacht Club and a private tour of the Prince’s Palace, cruising with the Celebrity’s CEO offered some nice treats.
A Return to the Ship
After the Tapas tour all of us tired tourists returned to the boat. Jim and Melanie went to the buffet and then on to their cabin. The rest of us hurried to our cabins to get ready for dinner and the Flamenco show which was held on the pool deck.
I have mixed reviews. It was nice to get both the Tapas Tour and a Flamenco Show, but in truth, I think I would have been happier to have had the original Flamenco Show we had planned. I think it would have been more dramatic to be in a darkened room, with a formal stage and better acoustics. As it was, the music was over-amplified and the Flamenco dancers had to contend with dancing among tourists clumped about taking pictures. It sort of compromised the mood. No fault to the dancers or the musicians, though. They did a spectacular job in a challenging atmosphere.
Since I failed to journal my final day, I’m not sure where we had dinner. I keep turning it over in my mind. I am pretty sure Bill and I ate alone. Perhaps it was in the Cosmopolitan or the Cyprus. Perhaps we just went to the buffet. Obviously, it was unremarkable since I can’t even remember which it was. I was just about over eating anything by that point. Way too much food on this trip.
If you are a cruiser, then you know this was the evening I had to place most of our belongings out into the hall to be picked up and select the few items we’d keep for our carry-on bag. This is always a challenge for me. You have to balance what you might need with what you can actually have inside a carry-on. I’m always a little stressed out about it, which in turn stresses out Mr. Bill. Not enough that I want to quit cruising, but enough that I wish there was another way to end a cruise.
Embarkation in Barcelona
The next morning we woke up in Barcelona. Just as with Rome, I wasn’t going to get to see anything. Jim and Melanie would be spending several days there, but the rest of us were going back to the real world. Deb, Bill and I were among the first to head out. Viktoriya’s flight was a little later.
For we three amigos it was one travel mishap after another, from the moment the bus dropped us off at the Barcelona airport. Somehow, we got separated from Deb in the security lines – the eternal security lines, I might add. We kept looking at the line ahead of us and looking at our watches, wondering if we were actually going to make it and wondering if Deb was having the same concerns. When we got to the plane, Deb had already taken the seat I had intended for Bill. The Air Canada website did not exactly make seat selection a user-friendly experience and Bill was officially assigned a seat in the middle of the row, but I knew that wasn’t going to work. Before the plane took off, he was on the aisle, but there were a few tense minutes as his claustrophobic mind contemplated a transatlantic flight mid-row.
Our return flight was actually on Qatar Airways, not that it really mattered to us, but they ran into some delays in leaving. That worried us a little, because we had a pretty tight layover in Montreal, but the delay was small, so we weren’t too worried. We should have been very worried. It was a smooth flight, the food was fine and we made it to Montreal fine. We were a little tired by then, but ready for the next leg.
So, the small delay in Barcelona and a head wind did slow us down a bit. Add to that a busy Saturday at a busy airport and you have a long layover. See, I’d worked hard to get us the cheapest possible flights and in doing so, created a mess. From Montreal, we had to fly to Toronto, spend the night and then fly to Dallas. The savings seemed so great when I booked the flight.
There was no happy chattering among travelers. We all stared at our phones, tried to stay hydrated and ate junk food. We told ourselves that the delay meant our luggage would have time to catch up with us. We really just wanted to go home and I was sort of wishing that I actually lived alone, because I was thoroughly tired of the entire human race.
Come back next week and I’ll tell you what happened next.
jane sadek 