56 - Barcelona Pitstop

Everyone knows that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but it's not necessarily the most fun.  So, we had to fly back the US anyway and the closest major airport was in Barcelona therefore, we decided to take a couple of days and explore the Catalonian capital.  

We took a two-hour bus ride from Sant Carles to Barcelona and set out to explore for the next three days.  Everything we found in this gorgeous city was wonderful.  We had a fabulous Airbnb right in a great location right in town and an easy walk from several subway stations and bus stops.  Our room had a great balcony overlooking a beautiful tree lined street. We also had a great view from our balcony of the moonrise on our first night!

While we knew we wanted to see all of the famous sites (we made a list from friend recommendations and research), we also spent a fair amount of time simply wandering around in awe of the architecture and testing sangria and wonderful Spanish foods.

Barcelona is well known for the architectural wonders designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi.  Our first stop was his minor basilica Sagrada Familia.  We were awed by this huge church that is over 140 years old and supposedly only three quarters finished.  The lines were long and since we didn't think to get tickets in advance, we decided to wait and go in another time. I'm assuming, that we'll fly back into Barcelona and we loved it enough to want to go back, so I think we'll get tickets and try to get there early.

Next on our Gaudi tour was Park Guell.  This huge garden park was filled with beautiful architecture and amazing panoramic views of the city.  We loved it.

We went to see the Arc de Triomf with its huge promenade and beautiful park.  The Arc was built as the gateway to the 1888 World's Fair.   It was a great place to meander. 

Next, we went to see the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau.  This is the oldest hospital in the city and was founded in 1401.  It was operational until the 1930's.  We were only able to view it from the outside but the huge gothic building was gorgeous.

We then headed to La Rambla and as the name would seem to imply, it's the perfect place to simply ramble around. It's a wonderful pedestrian street full of beautiful architecture and fun shops.  It's definitely the touristy section but it's still pretty cool.  Right off La Rambla, we found La Boqueria (the amazing indoor market where you can buy anything from food to jewelry or just grab a bite to eat or something to drink. Several friends had told us to not miss this and we agree!

From there we walked down towards the waterfront and admired both the Christopher Columbus monument (it's over 150 feet tall), the gorgeous park like setting along the water and the Cathedral.  Again, one could spend days just admiring the architecture.

We next found two other Gaudi designed buildings Casa Batllo and Casa Mila both on Passeig de Gracia (a famous street full of still more amazing architecture).  We again just wandered around admiring everything. It's so amazing.  You are completely in the heart of this huge city yet surrounded but beautiful park like settings.

Next, we decided to take the Port Cable Car to ride up to Montjuic for more amazing city views.  Neither disappointed.  The ride was beautiful and we had the car mostly to ourselves so we had fabulous views.  

The cable car actually drops you off about 1/2 way up the mountain so we hiked the remainder up to the Montjuic Castle, an old military fortress.  The hike allows you to wander through forest like areas and immaculately maintained gardens.  It was beautiful to feel so distanced from city life yet be only a 10-minute cable car ride away.

Here are all of my pictures from Barcelona if you want to see more:

Barcelona Pictures

Finally, our time was up. While we definitely could have spent several more days exploring, we'd made plans to meet my sister Cathy and friends Dan and Daniel in Italy for a week of exploring by car.  Then meet up with Dan and Alison from Equus for us to finally (we'd rescheduled 3 times due to Covid) take our houseboat trip around Venice.  But, we'll fill you in on that next time.

Until next post!

55 - Last sail of our first Mediterranean season

We arrived in Cartagena and were immediately enamored by this adorable city.  The marina is located right in front of the downtown area so we were able to walk everywhere. We explored several roman ruins, one of which was reported to date back to 200 BC.  The roman colosseum was in amazing condition and while it wasn’t open, we were able to get really close.

 

Thanks to our friend Malcolm, we found an amazing bakery and a couple of great restaurants.  We also met up with some friends we’d first met in Lagos and even met the owner of another Cabo Rico (first one we'd met n Europe).  We loved everything about this city. We even contemplated leaving the boat there for the winter but they couldn't accommodate her out of the water and we didn’t want to leave her in the water while we were gone.  

So, reluctantly, after about a week, we left this wonderful city and continued northwest towards the town of Sant Carles de la Rapita about midway in between Valencia and Barcelona.  we been told great things about this town and we were able to make reservations for the boat to be pulled for the next few months.

We had mostly good sailing during the day and easily found anchorages every night.  The anchorages were perfect as long as we had wind keeping the boat pointing in the direction with the incoming swells.  But, invariably, every night (at least it seemed like it) the wind would die sometime after midnight and the boat would flounder in the swell, tossing us from side to side.  Needless to say, we picked up anchor with the sunrise every morning and took off. 

When we're sailing, we keep a daily log of our Latitude and Longitude (we were better about it on our Atlantic sail but we still tried to remember) so we were excitedly watching for our first crossing of the Prime Meridian - the Longitude line from west to east.  I even got a picture of our chart plotter.

One of our favorite anchorages was Cape Negre.  We dropped anchor early to wait for the wind to fill in.  We took the dinghy touring the area (and ended up picking up a ton of plastic garbage that was floating everywhere).  Nevertheless, the scenery was gorgeous.  We loved this area but the swell kept us from staying too long and thankfully the wind picked up as predicted.

About half way there, as we were sailing along minding our business, we got a radio call from the Aduana (customs) asking permission to board our boat.  We pulled in the sails and fired up the engine.  They spent about an hour on the boat filling out paperwork – thankfully they spoke really good English because I think we’d have spent a couple more hours if we’d had to rely on our trusty Google Translate.  Anyway, I think we passed. 

We sailed on and made Punta de la Banya which is the bay just outside of Sant Carles de la Rapita and found the best anchorage we’d had in months (maybe even ever).  The bay area is 6 miles long by 2 miles wide and deep enough to anchor just about anywhere.  We dropped our anchor just in time for a beautiful sunset followed by an amazing lightning show and a quick downpour that was fabulous enough to rinse the salt spray off the boat and stop in time for us to open the windows for the best night’s sleep we’d had in a week.

The next morning, we put the dinghy in the water and went exploring the marsh land surrounding the bay.  Well, the anchorage which was already amazing, turned phenomenal.  We happened upon a flock – we had to look it up but it’s called a Flamboyance - of flamingos!  I had never even seen one in the wild and we found hundreds of them.  I was completely in awe.  We loved this anchorage so much that we decided to stay out several more days.  We played with the paddleboard, took the dinghy into the marina to tell them that we’d not be arriving for a few more days and ran into to town for a few fresh groceries.  We had an amazing time and even got to see the local sea salt operation in progress.

Finally, we needed to get the boat into the marina to work on a couple of things and get her ready to be pulled out the water for the winter – we needed to leave Europe as our time was expiring plus, we wanted to go back to the US to get a few things done and see our families. 

We spent about a week in the city of Sant Carles de la Rapita.  We completed a few odd jobs on the boat, arranged to have a few more done while we were gone and made some amazing friends.  Finally, it was time to have the boat pulled and secured for the next couple of months.  We were very happy with the marina and the town itself was delightful.  We, of course, found some great tapas restaurants too!

At last, with the boat secure, we were ready to leave Sant Carles.  We’d booked a boat trip in Venice with our boat buddies Dan and Alison from Equus.  Thanks to Covid, the trip was rescheduled 3 times but it looked like the third time was really the charm.  So, on our usual roundabout way back to the US, we took a bus from Sant Carles to Barcelona (spent almost a week there) and then flew to Venice.   I’ll fill you in on those, next time!

                                                                                            Until next post!