Barcelona is a big, beautiful city. We had a great time here. There are a lot of old buildings, incredible architecture and loads of history. Walking through the Gothic Quarter was so much fun. The ancient narrow streets there were our favorite.

Montserrat was amazing and bigger than we imagined it would be. The very steep climb to the top on the “rack railway” was a little scary but the view was worth it.

Somehow we managed to figure out the metro (which the kids loved), walked innumerable miles (which we made up for at the bakery) and even speak a bit of spanish. We’d love to come back. Adios.

After a long, but calm and uneventful Atlantic crossing, we arrived in Barcelona, Spain yesterday. So far we’ve done lots of walking to explore this great city. Everyone is well and well fed after all the buffets on the Disney Magic. The video shows our time on the cruise, and the stops (in order) are Disney’s Castaway Cay, Madeira Island and Malaga. Malaga was really great and we climbed a HUGE hill to get to a fort that was built about 1000 years ago. Thomas wants to go back just to see this again. Malaga itself is the oldest city we’ll visit on the whole trip and was first established 2800 years ago. We passed through the Strait of Gibraltar at about 2:30 in the morning and then entered the Mediterranean Sea.  The kids were real troopers and got up so they could see Africa on our right and Europe on our left, separated by only a few miles. We also saw the Pillars of Hercules outlined in the dark.

Great trip so far! The weather has been perfect and the seas are calm. We’re still 3 days out from the island of Madeira, our first landfall since we left Castaway Cay (Disney’s Island) in the Bahamas. Lots of food, lots of relaxing and lots of sleeping late. The kids are having a blast in the kid’s club, in the pools and watching lots of movies – we’ve seen the Lego Movie about 5 times so far. They seem to manage to have dessert with each meal. Denise spotted a whale yesterday, otherwise nothing much to see out here except for beautiful deep blue water. We got up this morning at 0430 today to watch a possible meteor shower, but had to settle for one little flash that I managed to miss. We miss everyone and we’ll put some videos/pictures up when the WiFi is not so slow – at least we have some access here.

We’re in Florida! Uneventful drive with a stop in Charleston to see our friends Heather and Chuck.  They took us for some great southern bbq.  Thomas and Frances survived a couple of long days in the car and had a blast in the pool as soon as we arrived at our hotel.  We are all ready to set sail tomorrow.

Trying to finish up all the last minute details. Cleaning house, paying bills, gathering our gear. Learning how this blog thing works. Can’t wait to take off!