Spirit of Discovery blog

Friday was spent trundling at a gentle speed up the eastern coastline of Spain, passing cities such as Cartagena, Alicante & Valencia as well as the Costa Brava.

There was a Mistral blowing in from the north-north-east, making for a chillier ride on the open decks which came as a bit of a shock after yesterday’s tropical feel in Malaga. Thankfully, with tempting culinary events involving champagne and chocolate inside the ship as well as all the other daytime activities, nobody need worry about the chilliness outside.

Barcelona was our first weekend stop, and the morning dawned with those chilly north-easterlies still blowing. Pleasingly, the weather brightened by mid-morning, bringing a drier day for exploring.

Organised trips went their various ways, ranging from city tours to mountain-top monastery visits and museum tours, but my favourite sounding one was entitled “Secrets of Barcelona.” Naturally intrigued, I asked our Explore Ashore Manager where this trip would be going, to which he replied, “Captain, it’s a secret.” And that was that.

Fortunately, I had other plans today as a friend of mine is based in Barcelona for work, so I popped off to a lovely little tapas restaurant called La Flauta to visit him for lunch.

I roamed idly in the general direction of the city centre in anticipation of our agreed rendezvous, passing the cathedral en-route whilst transiting the many hidden backstreets this city has to offer. Perhaps these were some of the secrets of the mystery tour?

Becoming hungry and, at that stage, completely lost, I consulted my mobile telephone for directions to La Flauta. It indicated a number of restaurants in the vicinity supposedly sporting said name, prompting a brief but confusing series of phone calls with my friend and another local mutual contact who had organised the lunch…

You’ll be relieved to hear that I finally found the correct restaurant and was treated to a delightful range of tapas as well as a jolly good catch-up with my mate.

21:00 was our scheduled sailing time from this fantastic port and with, presumably, fewer secrets now between the city and our guests, we set sail for the Balearic Island of Mallorca.

Kind Regards
Captain Kim Tanner