Last week I talked about our time in Madrid. This was the longest visit we had to any city on the cruise and was an add-on. It did highlight for me the difference in travel modes. When you stay for a few nights in one place you get a more in depth experience of the place. On the cruise ship, you stop for a day in a city and just get a quick look or a taste of the city. It’s a tradeoff – travel on the ship lets you visit more places and see more things while staying in once place lets you experience that place more deeply, but you don’t get to many places.
Having the Madrid add-on before joining the cruise ship let us have a little bit of both.
We had one full day and two nights in Madrid and then we were off to Barcelona. We took the high speed train. The cruise line had arranged all the transportation for us so in the morning we got on busses to the train station where one of the guides walked so fast that they lost half their group, which included us. Good thing there were two guides, and second guide had a more realistic idea of how fast a group of senior tourists could walk.
I should point out at this point, that we traveled on Viking Cruise Line and their catalog of cruises and styles of travel seems to appeal most to us older types. While there were people under 50 on the trip, most were over 50 and many over 70 so in many places there were conversations about mobility, stairs, cobblestones and exactly how far were we going to walk that day.
And the first question asked on most outings was, “Where will the restroom stops be?”
We were loaded into the first class compartment and were served a Spanish style breakfast that lacked bacon – crispy or otherwise. The interesting thing to me was how much Spain looked like California. Expect for the Spanish style farm buildings, it could have been a train ride from Sacramento to Los Angeles. It’s no wonder that the Spanish decided to colonize California.
In fact, a lot of the Mediterranean looked like California.
We got to our ship, the Viking Saturn, about mid-day and were told that we could access our cabins after 3:00 pm so we went up to the buffet to get something to eat and find a place to hang out until we could get into our cabin. After we’d been sitting a few minutes a waiter told us that there had been an announcement and that all cabins were now open. It was nice to get into the cabin earlier than we had expected.
Viking does things a bit different that other cruise lines. First their ocean ships are smaller than most cruise ships. The average cruise ship accommodates between 3,000 and 4,000 guests, while the Saturn only takes 930. This is nice as the ship doesn’t feel crowded and you got lots of attention from staff. The ship did have a lot of amenities like nice restaurants, a bar, swimming pool, theater, and even a nice place for afternoon tea. It didn’t have water slides or activities for kids.
There were two main choices for dining, the buffet and the restaurant (sit down full service) that you could just show up for. There were two speciality restaurants that you’d have to book a table at. More about that in a later post. Mostly we ate at the buffet on deck 7. We did eat in the full service restaurant once, but most times preferred to graze at the buffet. The food was great. There was wait staff in the buffet area to get drinks, clean up and generally help where requested.
The day after getting on the ship we had a walking tour of Barcelona. It wasn’t exactly the tour we wanted, but it was all that was available when we were able to pick our outings. Turns out that while the cruise boasts a lot of great, interesting tours, there is limited availability. You pick your tours a couple of months before the cruise, but it turns out that people in the higher price cabins get to pick first and us folks in the cheaper cabins get last choice, so Heather and I were disappointed that many of the good tours were unavailable to us.
The most interesting part of our Barcelona tour was seeing the architecture of Antoni Gaudi and getting a walk around Sagrada Famila, the basilica they’ve been building since 1882. Yes, it’s been under construction for over a hundred and forty years. Gaudi was appointed Architect Director in 1884 and worked on it until his death in 1926. It’s still under construction using Gaudi’s design concepts and is expected to be completed in 2026.
Here’s a picture:
The place is massive and there is no way to get it all in one picture. The other thing to mention is that the place is crowded. Barcelona is a crowded city, and the ships full of tourists just add to the congestion on the streets.
After our walk around the construction, we were bussed across town to a medieval section of town for a little sight seeing. I don’t want to sound like a cynic, but it looked a lot like all the other medieval walled cities we saw. I’ll show some pictures in another post.
We then were taken back to the ship where we had our dinner, listened to the port talk for the next day and went to bed. The port talk was an important part of each day. Normally given at 4:30 and recorded for those of us still out on tour to view in our staterooms later. The cruise director gave all kinds of information for the next day’s activities. Things like weather, history of the area, interesting facts, and notes about crime in the area (like pickpockets, scams, etc). Then the tour manager would go through all the tours for the next day with times of departure, the physical difficultly of the tour, what to expect, any special things happening like shuttle busses to port and so on. We always listened to these as they often gave info not in the printed documents we had.
It didn’t take long to fall into a daily rhythm of activity – breakfast, tour, port talk, dinner, and collapse into bed while the ship cruised to the destination.
Our next stop was Marseille, which will be the subject of my next post.
Andrew's View of the Week 
This comment is for me to thank you for being such a loyal follower of my blog!! You have very nicely delineated why I never plan to go on a cruise unless it is one of those river cruises and I even wonder about that. I want to go somewhere and stay there for a while, meet locals, etc., e.g spend a week in Andalusia.
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You might like a river cruise. We did one and loved it. But remember, cruises are the tasting menu – you don’t spend a lot of time in one place.
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Both are such beautiful cities with different experiences to offer. I have spent more time in Barcelona than Madrid, and absolutely love being by the Sea and all Barcelona has to offer.
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We only had a few hours in Barcelona. I would have loved to have spent more time there.
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You didn’t get to see inside Sagrada Familia; Andrew? You missed a treat. It’s totally different than you might expect from the exterior. We spent 5 days in Barcelona and loved all of the Gaudi buildings, and managed a side trip to Girona. I don’t think I would do well on a cruise, on someone else’s schedule, but I understand the reasoning.
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We didn’t get inside. That tour was sold out for the day we were there.
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Sounds like the rhythm of Viking’s ocean cruises is similar to its river cruises. I liked the add-on days at the start and end too, because they seemed to be the one time we were able to wander cities freely instead of touring. The “pay-for” tours were definitely a cut above the ones included in the price of the cruise. And the food was likewise excellent, although the small portions took getting used to. The desserts were the size of petit fours. You could always ask for seconds. After a few days though, we wondered why we didn’t always eat this way, feeling just fine after every meal. American portions are completely out of control, sigh…
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Viking just transferred their basic cruise from river to ocean. The only real difference in food was that on the ocean you get the buffet available for all meals. We only ate in the restaurant once as we liked being able to graze for what we wanted. They still had wait staff to bring drinks, including wine and anything from the bar. I don’t like the portions most American restaurants serve. Most of the time it’s enough food for two meals.
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It is quite the adventure you had. The building is amazing! 🙂 Thank you for the photo. 🙂
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It was an adventure!
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I’m enjoying your travelogue, Andrew. And wow, that basilica is amazing! I knew the old cathedrals often took many generations of workers to complete, but I didn’t realize there were any still under construction today. And how cool that it will be finished in only a couple of years!
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According to the tour guide, this is the last under construction and likely will be the last.
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In Gaudi’s defence, most of the cathedrals of Western Europe, except the modern ones, took just as long asd Barcelona to complete. My daughter spent a lot of time looking at the buildings of Gaudi in Barcelona, and I really wish I had been with her, especiall;y climbing the cathedral towers.
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True, if you compare timelines for building a cathedral, it’s going to be completed maybe 20 years earlier than most.
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Sounds interesting but also exhausting. I’m kinda glad I can just enjoy it from your description while sitting down in my comfy chair at home. 😉
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I’m glad I went, but I’ve been sitting in my comfy chair since we got back … 🙂
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I love how you’re enjoying your retirement, Andrew. Spain looks like California–I never would have guessed that.
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Loving every minute of it.
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Sounds exhausting. I might have done something like that 20 years ago, but as the saying goes, “my get up and go got up and went.” But glad you had fun.
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I’m glad I did it now and not ten years from now.
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Hi Andrew, I enjoyed reading about your adventure. I smiled when you talked about the older folk, 70+. My parents are in their 80s, they went on a South American cruise earlier this year. For them, they couldn’t do many of the excursions, because as you mentioned too much walking. I’ll enjoy hearing more about your trip.
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It was a lot of walking, sometimes a couple of miles, which is a lot the older you get.
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Yes, and if you have 85+ temps.
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True.
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