Yay!! Its time to board the Freedom of the Seas!!  I have loved, loved, loved my time in Barcelona and I will definitely be back but now its time to cruise!

I had worked with my AirBNB host to get a taxi that would fit us and all of our luggage to get us to the port.  I had no idea who he called (this is important later on!) but the taxi was right on time and we checked out of the apartment and headed to the port.

I had all of our documents printed out and ready to go, had everyone’s passport, put luggage tags on everyone’s suitcases to ensure that they all made it to the correct cabin.  Should be smooth sailing right on to the ship and ready to sail!  Nope. That is not at all how it happened.  You see, one of my children left his phone in the taxi and didn’t realize it until the taxi had driven off and we were turning in our luggage.

Remember how I said I had no idea what taxi company our host had used??  This is where that little tidbit becomes pretty darn important.  Also important is the international roaming plan I had added to my cell phone before leaving…FOR JUST SUCH AN EMERGENCY!!  AT&T has a $10/day plan that you only pay for if you use.  Well, I used it.  I called our AirBNB host and tried to ask him what cab company he used but it quickly became apparent that his English is limited to email (via Google Translate…I do it too…don’t judge!) and my Spanish is limited to food.

Fortunately I was able to find a port employee that was willing to help.  She explained the situation, let me know that the host was going to call and find the driver, answered the call when the host called back to tell me the driver was on his way back, and negotiated with the driver when he wanted to charge me 30€ for bringing the phone back.  Now I get that he did give up his place in line for a new fare to come back, and I already had 10€ in my hand ready to give him for his trouble but 30€ seemed excessive to me.  Apparently to my translator as well because they got into an argument about it and I ended up paying him 20€ all said and done.

Now with age, comes wisdom (What? Don’t laugh!) plus the fact that I tend to be a go with the flow kind of person once I am actually on vacation (yes, I know I am an obsessive planner leading up to vacation, but that way I can relax once I’m there.) so I was able to laugh about it pretty quickly after we knew the phone was on its way back to us.  My child, however, is still kind of salty about it so that is why I waited three months to write about it! Moving on…

After a fairly easy check in, we stopped and bought six bottles of wine and headed on board.  I may be pretty laid back about this whole situation, but I was certainly ready for a drink!

Our cabin was ready right on time, which is good considering I had six bottles of wine that I was carrying around! Sail away was fun and we were off, headed to our first port of call, Marseille.  That night, we had dinner at Chops, the steakhouse.  It was awesome as always!

I know this post has been mostly my ramblings but I promise that there are really good port pictures coming soon!! Which ports you ask?  Well I did forget to mention that.  We are hitting some big bucket list cities for me:

Marseille
Nice
Florence
Rome
Naples
One day at sea then back to Barcelona.  All in all an amazing trip!  Marseille is up next so stay tuned!