RCL transatlantic cruise and final thoughts on Berlin and Poland adventure

Phillip and cruised on Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Sea for fourteen days. We didn’t purchase the internet package, so I made no posts during our cruise from Barcelona. With ten sea days in a row (no port stops), the cruise was uneventful, except for the first night when someone went overboard. We heard the alarm sound repeatedly at about 11 pm, “Oscar, Oscar, port side!” We had a port side balcony room, so Phillip and I saw the rescue. Lighted life preservers, five of them, were thrown into the water near where the overboard person may have been. The ship had to turn around to return to the area marked by those lights. An open lifeboat was deployed and a searchlight from the ship tried to light up the dark sea area. Within about 45 minutes of the alarm, Phillip watched as the crew in the open lifeboat found and pulled a man out of the water and brought him back to the ship. Captain Rick announced the successful rescue, and that the passenger was taken to the medical bay. No word after that and we never heard how the man ended up in the water. 

The day after leaving Barcelona, our ship stopped in Valencia, Spain. The pier was in a commercial port area, so free shuttle buses were provided to get the cruise passengers off the pier.

The shuttle bus only took us to end of the shipping area, dropping us off in an industrial area. The actual town of Valencia was quite a bit farther inland. We walked about a kilometer, to the first grocery store we found; saw nothing of interest; bought instant coffee for our room; and walked back to the shuttle bus stop, riding back to the ship.

The second port stop, on day 4 of the cruise, was Cadiz, Spain, located on a narrow peninsula. This time, the pier was adjacent to scenic and shopping areas of the city. After leaving the pier, Phillip and I walk about three blocks across the peninsula to the rampart walls.

We strolled along the top of these ramparts where replica canons rested in the openings of the stone walls as the real canons had two hundred years ago.

Around the tip of the point, piles of rock kept the heavy waves from beating against the walls. We watched as the incoming waves sent water thru a hole in one of the rocks.

We wandered thru Cadiz, making our way back to the area near the ship. Many businesses were closed because we were there on a holiday, November 1, All Saints Day in this Catholic country. We did see a display of painted skulls.

Very vivid paint on them.

Our other port stop, at the end of our cruise, was Nassau, Bahamas. We have visited Nassau numerous times already, so we didn’t even get off the ship. Four other cruise ships were in port at the same time we were, so crowds at the market would have been enormous.

We previously cruised on Symphony of Seas in the fall of 2021, while passenger levels were still low, about 35% of capacity, due to Covid restrictions. For this cruise, everyone was back on board; we cruised with over 5000 other passengers. Some views from around the ship during our two-week trip:

Artwork that resembles a VW Beetle rolled into a ball, quite an attention-getter.

One of the best parts of a transatlantic cruise is the absence of jet lag upon arrival. We change time gradually and therefore our bodies adjust gradually to the time difference. We returned home on Monday afternoon, ready to prepare for Thanksgiving and our next cruise, to Antarctica, eight days later.

Summing up this adventure, Berlin is a must-visit location for history buffs; Poland had a lot to offer, with Wroclaw being our favorite stop because of the dwarfs; Krakow, like Berlin, is full of history and has a wonderful market square; and Warsaw is a large city that we would spend a few days in again when we travel in this part of Europe. The food in Poland is delicious, the best beer is still in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and friendly, helpful people can be found throughout Germany and Poland.  

Barcelona: Food, Sights, Green Pigeons

We flew to Barcelona on Thursday, arriving at our hotel around 8 pm. We were quite hungry and asked the hotel receptionist for a nearby recommendation. I had looked up one restaurant, and it was at the top of her list! So, we walked the ½ km there where I had three tapas that the receptionist had also recommended: bread with tomato (my favorite of the three), Spanish omelet (full of potatoes), and roasted potatoes with sauce.

Phillip ordered a paella, but with chicken, not seafood. The lady seated next to us had one with seafood and the shrimp were unpeeled and whole (with heads). Phillip prefers his shrimp more processed, so he went with the chicken. What he forgot was that a chicken dish has bones, so he did have to pull the chicken bones out of his paella. He did say it was flavorful.

We walked almost seven miles on Friday, making up for the skimpy walking day because of the flight on Thursday. Getting out of the area where our hotel was took us thru what we would consider alleys, but which are actually main streets in the center of old town Barcelona.

Barcelona, just like Vientiane, Laos, and other cities, has its own version of the Arc d’Triumph, named Arc de Tromf.

As in other European cities, statues grace many of the traffic circles of Barcelona.

Modern art is also represented here.

Parks are also common. One of the central city parks is Ciutadella Park, lots of people, statues, and tents where people were sleeping. The area wasn’t smelly or nasty, so they may have been backpackers, not homeless, who were allowed to camp in this major park.

In this park was a pool surrounded by dragon statues and a memorial of some sort. Not sure as Google maps told me it’s Neptu, but Neptu is also a Neptune statue closer to the marina. Oh well, it was nice to look at, even though the pigeons never moved from the top of the dragons.

The south end of Ciutadella Park contains Barcelona’s Zoo. Although we could have visited for just 10 euros (the senior rate!), we wanted to see more of the city. About 100 feet outside the zoo gate, we saw ten green parakeets. One of them was wearing a necklace, probably for tracking. Zoo escapes, most likely. Thankfully, they were parakeets, not monkeys, that escaped their enclosure.

We walked around the zoo, between its exterior wall and the train station. Sounds kind of boring, but it wasn’t because of all of the graffiti on the zoo wall.

Hundreds of feet of this art, to be expected as Pablo Picasso was from Spain and lived in Barcelona for a while as a child.

Phillip and I did not go on the sand of Barcelona beach, but we did walk along the malecon.

We made our way back to the Las Rambla area of the city where our hotel is located, passing another striking piece of art.

Las Rambla is a set of five streets that run parallel to each other, full of shops and the cross and diagonal alleys. The original use of Las Rambla was somewhat of a sewer system, giving a path for wastewater to run from the city to the sea. In the 15th century, the area was turned into roads, making room for markets and squares. The buildings in Las Rambla are very similar to French buildings, and much better looking than the Communist area buildings we saw in parts of Warsaw and Krakow.

Today, Saturday, we walked again around Barcelona. While researching locations near the hotel, I clicked on a park a few km away and saw pictures of green birds. That park became our destination today as it is where a colony, informally called “green pigeons” but actually Monk parakeets, have nests. Green pigeons were first seen in the parks in 1985 and now there are an estimated 2000 of them in Barcelona. They were probably released from local bird markets and found Barcelona to their liking. They live peaceably with the regular pigeons and doves. The nests were huge, and the birds were noisy, but it was fascinating to watch them work on the nests. These green birds were bigger than the parakeet-sized birds we saw near the zoo.

A local man, apparently known to the birds, brought food and water for them and the three varieties of birds politely came to him. It was a totally different scene than when tourists feed pigeons and all the pigeons for 20 meters crowd in to get their morsel.  

Tomorrow: boarding the Symphony of the Seas for our 14-night cruise to Fort Lauderdale. One night in Florida, then we fly back to Texas. 

Warsaw: Cooking Class, the Little Insurgent, and Autumn Colors

Phillip and I are now in Barcelona, but I need to share our last days in Warsaw. We like Warsaw and would return if a flight took us there, but Wroclaw and Krakow were our favorite stops in Poland because of the dwarfs in Wroclaw and the friendliness and number of things to see in Krakow. Food and plenty of museums are what we will remember about Warsaw. On Monday, we had a great cooking class, learning to make pierogis.

It was a hands-on class with Nina, the instructor, giving us tips such as how long the dough must rest (at least 10 minutes, 20 is ideal, and no more than 30), what to do if we have a blow-out when we fill the pierogis, and the importance of thoroughly squishing the edges to seal the pierogis before making them fancy with a fork or special crimping. Four students for the class, so four different fillings for the pierogis that we ate after cooking them! Delicious….

Warsaw has a lot of museums. We walked to the POLIN museum. POLIN is one of the larger museums focused on Polish Jews, from their arrival in Poland thru their decimation during World War II.  During the Middle Ages, Jews became merchants and bankers because, due to religious intolerance, they were prohibited by the local rulers from owning land. Some Polish rulers integrated Jewish people into society, however, over 90% of the Jewish population in Poland was killed by the Nazis in just five years.

While the weather was good, we walked in the Stare Miastro (Old Town). Warsaw’s Old Town was actually almost totally destroyed during WWII, but the reconstruction after the war was so accurate that the Old Town got a UNESCO World Heritage site designation.

Some pieces of the city walls from medieval times remained.

The center Market Square was much smaller than that of Krakow and Wroclaw.

The Square was graced in the center with a mermaid statue. The mermaid as a symbol of Warsaw dates from 1622, when she appeared on a Warsaw coat of arms. The legend is that the mermaid decided to stay after stopping on a riverbank near the Old Town. Fishermen noticed something was creating waves, tangling nets, and releasing their fish. They planned to trap the animal, then heard her singing and fell in love. A rich merchant trapped and imprisoned the mermaid. Hearing her cries, the fishermen rescued her. Ever since, the mermaid, armed with a sword and a shield, has been ready to help protect the city and its residents.

Tuesday, we walked in the largest park in Warsaw, Lazienki Park. We didn’t go far enough in to find its peacocks, but the changing leaves were beautiful.

We saw the Chopin statue in the park. I had to use Google to find that it is a willow tree represented with Chopin in the statue, that he sat under the trees in the park to consider his musical compositions. Looks like an alien or a ghostly hand to me.

And like Berlin, the trees were reflected beautifully in the water in the parks. This is from another park, Ujazdowski Park.

Saxon Park had trees that showed the changing to autumn.

Just east of Saxon Park, we found, near the Presidential Palace, Poland’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with an honor guard and an eternal flame.

The following day, we returned to Stare Miastro so that I could take a proper picture of “The Little Insurgent.” In addition to mermaid statues in the souvenir shops, we saw replicas of this guy. At one of our many museums (we were in more than I’m describing), we found the story of the Little Insurgent. During WWII, twelve- to fifteen-year-old boys volunteered to join the Resistance effort. They were mainly couriers and sentries, and their contributions were vitally important.

Also, during our second visit to Stare Miastro, we visited the wishing bell. According to a legend, it grants wishes, but you must walk around it while keeping your hand on its top. So, Phillip did!

I had to get a picture of this guy… he looks to be straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I was afraid he would boom out “None shall pass!” as I neared for the photo.

On Wednesday, we went to the Warsaw Rising Museum, the museum that was most educational because it had interactive displays even though the subject matter was the failed Polish uprising against the Nazis in 1944 that led the Nazis to kill 200,000 residents and destroy most of the city. Many displays of weaponry.

The museum had a mock-up of the sewer tunnels used by the Little Insurgents. Visitors could crouch down and walk thru, getting a sense of the confined spaces, but not the smell, that the boys endured in their resistance efforts.

In addition to a 3-D fly-over movie showing the totally destruction of Warsaw in 1944, authentic film clips were used to show how the weapons were used. The video behind this anti-tank device showed how it was used to sneak up on German tanks and disable them.

We didn’t just visit museums and Old Town; we also went to a market. I’ve mentioned the mushroom soup that Phillip loved, here are the mushrooms. Vendor after vendor had stalls selling all manner of mushrooms!

On our final evening in Warsaw, we managed to visit a restaurant we’d passed several times. It always had a line of local people, the sure sign of good food. We hadn’t eaten potato pancakes yet, so I ordered mine with stew and Phillip had his smothered in mushroom sauce. As it was chilly and raining, I also ordered mulled wine. All was indeed delicious, but very, very filling!

We board our cruise ship on Sunday, but we will be wandering around Barcelona for a few days…