We planned this trip for two years.
We had such a grand time turning fifty-five at WDW, that we asked our families to come and celebrate with us as we turned 60. We couldnt get any of our family to sign up. They all had some excuse. Terrys family includes teachers, so they had very valid reasons for not traveling at the start of school.
September is a busy month for most professional fund raisers, so it wasnt a good time for my daughter. My son just said no. So it was meant for Terry and I to cross the Atlantic when I saw a voyage on the cruise thread that started on my birthday and was in St. Maarten on her birthday.
We called
Disney cruise and found the perfect cat 6 room, midship on deck six. We booked it and started planning. We started posting on the Westbound Transatlantic meet thread. By the time we sailed, we were traveling with 300 of our closest friends.
When we cruised on the Wonder in 2008 and rebooked, we were able to upgrade to a perfect cat 5 cabin midship on deck 7. A few month before we left, Terry noticed an offer to upgrade to a cat 4 room midship deck 8 for $55 each. So we ended up in cabin 8040. Score!
Neither of us slept well the night before we left. I couldnt wait to pick Terry up and bring her and her luggage to my house so Al could take us to the airport. When Terry got in the car I asked her, do you have your passport? Drivers license? Credit cards? Underwear? When she said yes to all the important things we excitedly drove to my house.
As we printed last minute things like Terrys calling cards, she shot out her seat and screamed, I cant believe it! I left the door magnets!
With a quick call to her daughter, and a small amount of begging my daughter, we convinced them to meet halfway so we could spend the last few minutes packing the car. There was no way we could go in any peace without our fish extender and door magnets. Terry had worked too hard on them not to have them for our two week trip of a lifetime. We were turning 60!!
Al got us to the airport with plenty of time to spare. We got through security with nary a snag and got to our gate with all of our carryons. Woo Hoo! Vacation had begun. The first disser we ran into was Melody and her daughter-in-law Amy and son Dave. We also met a lady named Lynne. We were all transatlantic pirates.
We got on the plane and for whatever reason, our oxygen masks fell out.
The flight attendant kept asking if we had gotten them down. We kept saying no. Finally Terry told them her Pal Mickey did it. They sent the maintenance man out to stuff them back up.
We were getting ready to pull back when they came on the air and asked everyone to look at their passport. Some guy had lost his. This was repeated a few times until they finally found it at the front counter. YAY.
As soon as we left the gate we pulled to the tarmac and stopped. The pilot came on and stated that we were sixth in line and the tower wanted him to cut the engines, but he was going to try and reroute us. My heart sank. How long would we be stuck on the tarmac? About an hour later he came back on and said we were going to be rerouted through New York. We were on the way!
We arrived in Barcelona two hours late. I didnt care. We were there. We got all of our luggage! It was all there! YAY! So we got in the taxi line. No one wanted to take us. Finally we just started tossing our luggage in an empty cab.
Big mistake. The cabbie didnt speak a word of English. And when we told him the name of the hotel, he didnt know what we were talking about. Crap. Terry's confirmation paper had the phone number, but no address!!
She and the cabbie went to speak to the head cabbie. They came back and the driver called the hotel. He said, Just Praktik, No Ramblas! Just Praktik. We didnt care what he called it so long as he got us there. So he rode all around the city and finally came to the hotel. Here is the sign. You be the judge.
Anyway, we got there! YAY! Our room would be ready in an hour so we walked next door and got some tapas and sangria. Yum.
We got back to the hotel and our room was ready. We gathered all of our luggage together and shoved it into the elevator.
There were no porters at this hotel. We got to our room and I made a huge mistake. I had planned to go to Monesserat to see the Black Madonna and hear the choir sing at 1:00. It was after 1:00 by the time we arrived two hours late, ate and waited for the room to be ready. But we still wanted to go to La Ramblas and walk around. But as I said, I made a huge mistake. I sat down. And the jet lag literally knocked me right over. I was asleep in less than two minutes.
Seems Terry fell asleep right afterwards. We woke up starving and ready to go see our friends at the Hard Rock Cafe. I was so tired, but we were determined. So we got up and went to the HRC. We meet so many nice people. Almost 100 dissers were there.
We could finally put faces to all of the names we had corresponded with the past two years. This was going to be a fantastic voyage.