The Cruise Line is Holland America, and the ship is the MS Eurodam with 11 decks, holds 2100 passengers, is 935 feet long, and can do around 24 knots.








Our itinerary is: fly from LAX to Barcelona transferring directly to the ship; cruise to several Spanish ports along the Mediterranean (Valencia and Cartagena), sail through the Straights of Gibraltar (with a stop in Gibraltar), around the Iberian Peninsula stopping at several ports in Spain (Cadiz and Vigo) as well as Lisbon, Portugal; traveling through the Bay of Biscayne to Portland, England; across the English Channel to Cherbourg, France; up to Brugge, Belgium, and then through the North Sea to our final destination Copenhagen, Denmark. We'll stay in Copenhagen two nights before flying back home. The cruise itself is 12 days long - total trip 16 days.

Can we handle a 12-day cruise (our longest yet)? Can we survive the flight over in economy class? Will we win the battle against 2000+ passengers for access to the breakfast buffet?..and my first day on board the ship, I discovered that our "Drink Package" which included 15 free drinks per person per day (including alcohol) is not like roll-over minutes - if you only consume 5 drinks one day, you cannot have 25 the next day. *SIGH*....A true test of our survival skills.


Saturday, May 16, 2015

Day 1/2: April 25/26 - Traveling to Barcelona

The start of the 16-day trip was not uneventful.  We awoke at o’dark 30 Saturday morning to make our early morning flight.  Our boarding process at LAX rated a D+ score, as the captain required all of us to de-board the plane, wait for an hour while we ponder our poor performance, then re-board the plane.  The second attempt was apparently acceptable, although I failed to notice any marked improvement...and the captain gave us no pep talk during the time-out. 

The flight was not even 5 minutes into its flight when the passenger next to Diane had to use the barf bag.  YUCK.  The flight attendants were of little use.  Diane attended to the poor soul who required multiple bags before upgrading to a small kitchen trash bag before finally getting it together the remaining portion of the flight.

The second leg of our journey out of Newark, NJ had a rather large women in a window seat next to Diane take up all of her seat, and half of Diane’s.  On top of that,  a flight attendant knocked my elbow spilling hot coffee all over Diane - scalding part of her, staining her clothes, and smelling like coffee.  For the rest of the trip, I looked at her and thought “mmmm…Italian Roast"…while she, who hates the smell of coffee, thought “what's that skunk smell?”  What a way to start a vacation.

Not to be out done by the coffee spill, a man at the airport also waiting for the transfer bus to the ship spilled his coke, getting not only Diane’s other leg, but what was worse… her new purse…(later that same day)…a lady in the ship's elevator couldn’t seem to keep her glass of iced tea upright, and managed to spill some onto Diane.  Hopefully, things come in three’s,  and that should be then end of attempts to liquidate Diane.  


We successfully  - and eventually - arrived in Barcelona early Sunday morning, waited a sufficient amount of time to transfer to the port terminal and then waited a sufficient amount of time to finally board the ship - some 22+ hours travel time.

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