Before embarking on our cruise vacation, we had an extra day or so to explore Barcelona, the city the ship would be leaving from. We arrived on Monday afternoon, September 1 after flying from Cincinnati to Washington D.C., continuing onto Paris as I mentioned yesterday, and finally a quick hop over to Barcelona. The first day we settled into the hotel and headed out into town for dinner and a little sight seeing around La Ramblas, the main street in town.

The next day we had to board the ship, but we woke up early enough so we could go out in Barcelona again before heading for the port. We went down the La Ramblas area again and then headed up to the top of the hill called Montjuïc, which had outstanding views of the entire city. From there we headed over to the La Sagrada Familia, which is the most famous building in town. This church is massive and has been under construction since 1882, with estimates for completion in 2026. Once spending a bit of time there it was time to head for the ship and start our fabulous cruise.

Well we are back in the good ol’ USA after a couple of weeks in Europe. Overall, it was an amazing trip, but at the same time it’s good to be back at home. The cruise went very smoothly, minus the last day at sea, which was cold, windy, and stormy. That weather led to a rather rough ride through the Mediterranean. And we did have a change to the itinerary, skipping Tunisia and instead heading to Palermo, Sicily, more on that later. I have nearly 1000 pictures that I’m going to slowly sort through and add to the site. Today I present the first few shots of our trip and some from a few hour tour of Paris.

And if you’d like to view photos of our wedding, those can be found on our photographer’s website. Thanks once again Joe, the pictures are awesome!

We are just leaving Cannes now on our first stop of our cruise. The sunset is beautiful and the long islands are very tasty! We had a great day today exploring Monaco first, then a brief stop in Nice, and a little sightseeing in Cannes on the way back to the ship. Our stay in Barcelona was very nice, but cut a little short due to overall exhaustion from our trip overseas. And we did have a few hours to spend in Paris on our layover and were able to see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, among other sites. I’d love to start sorting through pictures and uploading some, but I think we forgot to pack the cord I need to transfer them. I’m going to see if one of the shops onboard has anything I can use. I hope everyone who was able to attend the wedding had a good time. Talk to you all after the cruise!