I haven’t posted much lately, as “life has been busy.” We weren’t sure we would like cruising; we gave it a try on the Viking Star “Into the Midnight Sun” to Norway, Scotland and England in July 2018. We loved cruising on Viking! Here is the link to the start of the series I posted on that cruise: https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-658415-1.html We booked the Viking cruise “Mediterranean & Italian Sojourn” from Venice to Barcelona while crossing the North Sea on our 2018 cruise for a June 2020 departure. We added a pre-cruise of two days at Lake Como and one day in Verona. Then COVID cancelled everything. We postponed the cruise to 2022, but in the reverse order. Viking made us an offer of a full refund or an additional 25% cruise credit. We took them up on the offer and added a Rhine cruise and additional pre- and post-cruise extensions (plus some extra cost of course) that almost doubled our (now two) cruises from 17 to 33 days. There was a one-day gap between the post-ocean and pre-river cruise that was “on our own.” We rented a car and drove from our post-cruise extension in Venice to our pre-cruise at Lake Como and did an overnight in Sirmione at Lake Garda. We visited 9 countries on this amazing adventure. This was our third trip to Europe. Our first European trip was the summer of 1973 and was 11 weeks (!) long. We were both almost finished with our university studies and had been married for two years. With busy careers and raising 5 children, private schools and university, it took us 45 years to get back to Europe, then another 4 years until this adventure. We spent a month driving around Italy last year, which will be the subject of another series after this one.

With such a long trip, there was much preparation to get done. I’m an adjunct professor at San Jose State University, and the fact that it was the end of the school year with final exams and grades due just before departure added more to the time crunch – and some stress. I had waited almost too long to get some Euros; the Memorial Day weekend didn’t help matters either and we picked them up on our way to the airport. That was close! Our son in law drove us the 45 miles to the airport in San Francisco (SFO) and got stuck in traffic on the way back home; thanks for the ride, Brad. We arrived at 4:45 for our 8PM departure. We weren’t sure about the meal service on our flight, so we got a light meal near our departure gate. We departed SFO on Swiss Airlines to Zurich, a Boeing 777-300ER for our 5,230 mile flight. We had an excellent dinner on the flight. The flight was good, except for the lack of legroom (I’m 6’1” and my wife is 6’ tall, so legroom is often an issue). We had a beautiful sunset soon after we took off. I had the middle seat and my wife had the window on the left side of the airplane. We had a nice young lady (a 34 year old nurse as I recall) sitting in the aisle seat and that made the flight more pleasant. We didn’t sleep very well or very much on the flight.

We saw daylight somewhere near Greenland, but couldn’t see anything due to a solid cloud cover. We arrived on time in Zurich at 3:50 PM local time the next day. We had a Swiss Airlines flight to Barcelona on an Airbus 321, departing at 5:30 PM for a 7:15 PM arrival. I was concerned about the tight connection, but we cleared customs quickly (Swiss efficiency!) and made it to our departure gate about 30 minutes before boarding.
We arrived in Barcelona and it seemed that we were at the opposite end from baggage claim of the very large airport. A wrong turn on the way didn’t help either. All of the bags had been taken off of the baggage carousel when we got there, however we spotted a gentleman with a Viking sign with our name on it. He had our bags on a luggage cart waiting for us. He walked us a short distance to a waiting car and driver who took us to our hotel, the Nobu Barcelona. Typical excellent Viking service! We were tired, but happy to be in Barcelona, a city we had visited once before, on our first trip in July, 1973. It was worth the wait as you will see. The hotel was beautiful and we had a great corner room on the 12th floor.

By the time we got somewhat settled in our room, it was getting late and we were tired, but hungry. The hotel concierge recommended a tapas restaurant about 5 blocks away, we walked there around 9:45 and had a great dinner.

I took 2 cameras with us on this trip, a Canon EOS 90D DSLR and G5X Mk II, and both of us had our phones (mine a Samsung S20 and my wife an iPhone X). I took my then almost new Canon EOS 80D on our 2018 cruise and upgraded to the 90D just prior to this cruise. Based on our experience in 2018, I bought the compact G5X prior to our (cancelled) 2020 cruise to make life easier when out and about. The G5X is a 20MP camera with a 1” sensor, an excellent 24-120mm f1.8-2.8 lens, a pop-up viewfinder and it will fit in a shirt pocket. I’m really pleased with the results and used it almost exclusively when we were out and about. I used the 90D mostly when we were on the ships. Based on my lens usage on our 2018 cruise, I only brought the 18-135mm lens with the 90D. Since it has 32.5MP, I can crop and “digital zoom” if I need more reach and not have to carry my 70-300FF lens. It’s a vacation with photos and not the other way around. A few of the photos were taken with our phones as well; the best camera is the one you have with you!

My next post will start our full day in Barcelona. I hope you enjoy this series.