Good to be Home

10 days after the quilt show ended, my husband and I flew to Barcelona to catch a cruise ship.  For 12 days, we cruised in luxury, visiting ports of call along the Mediterranean.  Because of the weather, several of our ports were changed.  On one day, we skipped the port altogether.  Lots of days of winds of 55 knots, and 11.5' swells on the bow.  wow.  Did it ruin the trip?  Not at all.  We were on vacation, and enjoyed every minute of it.

To begin with, we flew business class, which is nothing short of amazing.  Have you seen business class these days?  With recliners and power outlets and privacy galore?  I still was unable to sleep, but I was more comfortable than I've ever been in an airplane.  SO nice.

 I suspect this is the biggest smile I've ever worn on an airplane.  I've always hated to fly.  These accommodations now have me disliking it, quite the step up from hating it!

 Look at this leg room!!  Wonderful!!

We boarded our ship in Barcelona.  Our first port of call was to be Menorca, but because of weather, we stopped instead on Majorca.  What a lovely island!

 We were there on Good Friday, but we still had the opportunity to enter this amazing Gothic cathedral.  I don't remember what it is called, but it has the largest rose window in the world.  I had to take the picture from an angle, to get any color to show in the image.

This castle was used by Generalissimo Franco to house 600 political prisoners during the Spanish Civil War.  The interior has graffiti etched into the stone.  I guess the good part for them was that they had the room to move around.  The original "jail" in the castle was a pit with a coned roof and no windows whatsoever.  Horrific, to be sure.

 The town center of Palma boasts this 700 year old olive tree.  I took a dozen different shots of this tree, hoping to use one or more of them in a quilt, eventually.

When we left Majorca, our next port of call was Marseilles.  Hubby and I had signed up for an all day tour of Provence, which was cancelled due to lack of sign-ups.  Instead, we visited Avignon.  Stay tuned, and I'll tell you about it in my next post.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get back in the groove of being home.  I miss my cabin steward the most.  No one is making the bed for me in the morning, no one is turning it down for me at night, and I really miss the chocolates and fresh fruits, delivered daily.  It's some kind of life, to be sure!