Spirit of Adventure blog

Barcelona!! (Was the Freddie Mercury song to which I referred in my previous narrative, of course. Not forgetting that he was ably assisted in his tuneful Olympic effort by Montserrat Caballe).

Bright sunshine adorned us again as we berthed during breakfast time on the northernmost of the cruise piers in this wonderful city. Various organised tours went their own ways today to explore specific parts of the city, or in some cases overviews and/or scenic trips around it.

A shuttle bus ran regular trips dropping folk near the bottom of famous Las Ramblas, for those wishing to wander around and explore on their own.

At 4pm on board, our food & beverage team offered a ‘Latin’ themed afternoon tea in the Dining Room, which I was dying to sample (mostly because I had no idea what it would feature) however work commitments overrode unfortunately.

Overnight entailed a hop into French waters, where the scheduled port had been Toulon. However, earlier that day whilst in Barcelona we had been notified by our French agents that the locals had decided to partake in the French national sport of Striking during the following day in Toulon. This meant that our berth was unavailable as the harbour was essentially closed for business.

A last-minute plan of action was formulated and fortunately we were able locate a suitable berth in nearby La Seyne-sur-Mer, a delightful town where the locals had decided that striking was not for them; on that day at least. Some tour bus re-routing and chartering of a local ferry meant we were still able to run all our scheduled tours into Toulon, as well as a ferry service across the bay dropping guests right into the town centre.

With another day of glorious weather on top of our last-minute adaptations, the call went well, and there were lots of happy faces returning to the ship later that day, tummies full of snails, frogs’ legs and baguettes no doubt…

Kind Regards
Captain Kim Tanner