Day 1, July 23
A beautiful new city to explore
.. Part 2
We went through customs and looked for our driver. Yes, we had a private driver. First mistake of the trip.
Now, dont get me wrong, having a private driver was awesome.
It makes you feel very special if you walk out there and there is someone standing with a sign with your name on it. To be honest I would never have thought of it, but since this was our first cruise in the Med and I had not given the whole thing too much thought, I let some of the people on FB get to me.
There was talk that it could be very hard to get a taxi in Barcelona and that private transfers were the way to go. It took me a long time to make my mind up and book private transfers, but I caved in in the end.
So, on with our arrival. We left the customs area and there was our driver, who whisked the luggage cart away from Tom and told us to go ahead. Hm, yeah, but where, we had no idea.
He finally got ahead of us and led us outside and to his car, a lovely black minivan with darkened windows, which was parked right next to that LONG line of taxis.
See, here is where I had gone wrong in booking the private transfer, it was about twice as expensive as the taxi would have been and I had booked two more legs that way. Money out the window.
So we sat back in our car while the driver secured the luggage and off we went. It was quite a nice drive, even though the traffic in the city was horrendous and our driver seemed to need to squeeze the car into the smallest of available spaces to overtake other cars. After about 15 minutes we had finally made it into the street where our aparthotel was and right before we got there our driver had to break hard and then there was that bang. He had driven into the car ahead of him.
Take that for the start of your vacation!
He jumped out and the two men looked at the damage, then we drove to the corner, where the driver made sure we got into the house alright, before heading back to figure out the damage.
We were told that check in was on the first floor, so since the elevator was very small
I got in with two pieces, pressed first floor and off I went. It was a bit of a chore to unload both pieces as it was pretty narrow there and then I looked around check in, nowhere to be seen. Tom was getting off the elevator a few minutes later and then we discussed what to do. And while we still did so we heard someone come up the stairs. An employee of the aparthotel had gone looking for us and welcomed us now right here in the hallway, explaining that there was kind of an "inbetween" floor, which counted as the other first floor. He let us know that our apartment would be here on the regular first floor, but it was not cleaned yet, so he apologized for that, even though we were a bit early and check in had not even started yet. But he led us into the apartment where a house keeper was already at work and showed us around and we were floored by the sheer size of the apartment.
It was huge. A bedroom with two single beds,
then the hallway led into the living room/kitchen/dining area,
a large balcony going along the whole length of the room and the next one
and from there another hallway led into a master bedroom
and around the corner was a desk which looked out into a light shaft, so it could be used as an office
and around another corner there was the huge bathroom.
We were asked if we would mind leaving our luggage right there, and there was nothing against it, so we put everything together in one corner and headed down to do the actual check in. Another easy process, as we had done online check in. Once we were checked in the employee gave us maps of the area and told us where we could do some shopping to stock our fridge and he told us that he would send up a bottle of wine as a little apology for our apartment not being ready yet. So, after check in we headed outside to check out the area and were pleasantly surprised that we were right in one of the shopping areas on Rambla de Catalunya.
To be continued ..........
falling asleep now, but I'll be back to read - looks like a great adventure!
I'm already pretty excited, I don't need any help with that!
Enjoy the time you are going to have the ship "to yourself". 
Impressive airport food at Frankfurt and nice airplane view of Barcelona
