"Have you heard of Marine City?"

That didn't come out right but it's the Sagrada Familia Cathedral designed by Gaudi.

Jon loves statues too.

Well, it's a small world. I arrived at my hostel on Saturday morning after seeing Jon off at the airport. I'm in an 8 person room. My roommates are all women in their 20s. Most just out of college, some still in college. Three of my roommates are from Ohio. First, they asked me if I knew english and I told them I have a basic understanding of the language. Then, they asked where I was from and I told them "north of Detroit". I can't make this stuff up, Sonia asks me if I've ever heard of Marine City? I think I gave her an astonished look and told her that's where I'm from. Turns out, she is dating someone that is related to Rick Parcell. Rick worked for my parents company, Thompson-Phelan. I'm in Barcelona, things like that aren't suppose to happen.

Anyway, all of my roommates are cool. I went out with Mary, Sonia, and Ashley (from Ohio) and Liz (from Australia) last night and we had a good time. We are going to the beach today and it's out to the bar tonight before I leave for Switzerland tomorrow, if I can find the right train station.

Jon and I walked the entire city on Friday and took in all the tourist sites including the Sagrada Familia by Gaudi. We walked up to the Olympic stadium and botanical gardens. La Rambla is the major street in Barcelona. It's where all the tourists go. There are many shops and street performers. Our most memorable moment was probably when we say an old man walking down the middle of the street completely naked. He was only wearing his piercings.

Welcome to Barcelona, Final cruise pics

The cruise ended in Barcelona. We had a great time on the ship. Here are some pics from the cruise. The Welcome to Barcelona Deck Party was the last of many deck parties on the ship.

We had the same servers and staff for all 14 days of the cruise. Above are our servers Ranzil, from India, and Octavio, from Romania.

We also had dinner with the same group everynight. This is our group. You should recognize the two clowns in the back row. In the front left is Cliff. He's from New York and works for ABC. The others are Ray and Nancy. They live in San Jose, CA. Ray was born in Egypt and moved to CA in his 20s. Nancy is from Chile originally and worked for Delta and is now retired. She can fly Delta for free, 1st class, anywhere in the world. Not bad.

That's me with our stateroom staff person, Brian. He's from Mumbai, India. He was really nice and helpful. We gave him the biggest tip.

We were getting ready for Pirate night on the ship. We watched the world premeire of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Movie was alright but it was free so we didn't care.

This is Rich and Donald. They live in Orlando and work for Disney. Cool guys, we hung out with them during the last week of the trip.

Jon loves our cruise director Rachel.

Our welcome to Barcelona from Disney. It was quite the fireworks display. The cruise was the maiden transatlantic voyage for Disney, so I guess it was a big deal. Rumor has it we will be able to sell some of our stuff on ebay to collectors becuase it was the first crossing.

Gibraltar (UK)

The Defense of Gibraltar, shown above. Gibraltar is a strategic military base occupied by the British. It's a big rock.

Jon half way up the rock with Africa in the background.

The city of Gibraltar from the top. Our cruise ship is out there.

The Rock of Gibraltar that Jon and I hiked up. I think we are the only people from our cruise that walked to the top of the rock.

Cadiz, Spain

There wasn't a lot in Cadiz but we did visit a fort, the park above and the Cathedral below. From 2-5 nothing happened because of Siesta.

Cathedral at the City Centre.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands

The streets of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

Above the clouds at Mt. Teide, about 6,000 feet, site of the crazy bus ride.

The rock of Gibraltar

We are in Gibraltar today. It's basically a rock about with a small city at the bottom. The city is only 3 miles by less than 1 mile. Jon and I walked to the top of the rock after walking through the city. It was about 1,500 feet high and really steep and a 4 or 5 mile walk. We ran into some of the people on the cruise at the top and when we told them we walked up, they gave us this look like we were absolutely crazy. When I think of it we did only see 2 other walkers and they stopped about midway up. The walk down was much quicker but harder on the legs. We can see Africa about 20 miles away and took some good pictures from the top. We also saw little monkeys. They were climbing all over the visitors center and one of them tore a women's bag open. I guess they like to try and steal things from people. For those of you that are wondering with great anticipation, the Boyz II Men concert was good. They are definitely good singers. The lady next to me was really into the concert, probably a little too much. She must have been there biggest fan back in the day. Only three of the singers were there, one guy was missing. We saw one of them on the deck by the pool earlier in the day and I think Jon and I were the only ones that recognized him. Hard to believe there was once a day when that would never have happened. Most of the people knew all the words to their songs though, us included. We are dorks. Tomorrow is our last day at sea then we'll be in Barcelona on Friday and Saturday. Take it easy.