Traveling to Barcelona and What I Packed

It was a long day of traveling getting to Barcelona. We left LAX at 9:25 a.m., which meant leaving our house at about 6:30 Saturday morning to get the car parked, get through ticketing, security, and all the other madness that is air travel these days. Our flight was on time and we were on our way!

We landed at JFK in New York at 6:00 p.m. and quickly looked for a hot meal before our 7 1/2 hour flight to Barcelona. It was Sunday morning when we arrived in Barcelona and this is how we looked:


For some reason, the embarkation process in Barcelona did not go well. It was three hours from the time we landed until we were finally in our state room! We were wiped out but so excited to be there! We had a couple hours to nap before the safety briefing and then we sailed away.

We were in room:


I forgot to take pictures before we took our nap!




I think the Do Not Disturb sign is really cute:


Other side:


The room was good size with 3 closets, plus drawer space. I cannot stand trying to live out of a suitcase!

I wanted to blog about what I packed. You may not be interested, but I don't want to forget for the next time I take a 2 week vacation! (This was our second 2 week vacation in 20 years, so they don't happen often.)

I knew I would need to keep the packing light and I actually succeeded. When we checked in at LAX my suitcase weighed 37 pounds and Les' suitcase weighed 41! So here's what I packed clothes wise:

3 dresses for dinner (basic black, purple and navy)
2 jackets and 3 scarves to go with my dresses
3 skorts (these were the perfect choice for excursions and walking on a breezy ship)
7 tops
1 jean skirt (I wore this on the plane)
3 pairs of shoes - tennis shoes, casual sandals, dressy sandals
1 jacket (I only wore this on the plane going - it was warm the entire time!)
1 fleece vest

I wondered if I was packing too much or not enough, but it ended up being perfect. I wore everything at least twice. I knew we had our first Day at Sea at the one week mark and I could do laundry, so I planned for one week.

Laundry was an adventure! There are only 3 laundry rooms, with 3 washers and 6 dryers each, on the entire ship available to cruisers (obviously there are more for crew members with all the sheets and towels that have to be washed.) I don't know what they were thinking! We decided to check out the laundry room on Friday night and found 2 washers open. I decided to go ahead and get it done Friday night instead of waiting for Saturday. I'm glad I did! By the time I was finished, people were waiting, with all machines going. I heard there was a line going out the door the entire day on Saturday.

So you'll be seeing a lot of the same clothes in my pictures and that's why!