the foodietrails: The splendid MSC Splendida -Mediterranean cruise (part 2)

Moving on to the second in our Mediterranean cruise series. If you haven't read the first part , you can read it here.part 1 and our Rome sojourn during the same trip here
The whole ship of 18 storeys, the innumerable speciality eateries, and casino, spa, discotheques, swimming pools, and activity areas, was like a city withing itself.
To walk you through an average day on the ship, we woke up to a newsletter which detailed the days activities on the ship, as well as a brief account of the anchoring port, if we were getting to a port that day. We also had a theme for the night such as gala formal, or 80's disco, or red white and green, and it was always fun to ruffle up something to wear considering one was carrying a limited wardrobe.

Dinners were always lavish four to five course meals which were served by our very own server, Edy. Edy took a special liking to us and would make these wonderful table decorations every night, ask us about our day, and would obligingly take as many pictures of us as we desired. We took innumerable pics of the food too, but were quick to do them so as not to attract the ire of the other guests.

Day 3: Barcelona
We were completely unprepared for Barcelona, in terms of just how amazing the place is! First we didnt realise the long queues at the sagrada familia, and if you do go, maybe its best to buy your tickets online before hand. Also once inside we were gob smacked by the sheer genius of the place. The high ceilings, the arches, the doorways, the stained glass paintings. We naively planned a half hour tour of the place, and ended up spending the whole morning enamoured by the still unfinished church. To read more about the Sagrad Familia church read here , and to know more about barcelona read here

By the time we came out of the Basilica, we were ravenous and found a lovely eatery called La yaya Amelia close to the Basilica. After the day before's debacle at Marseilles (If you havent read about it, head to the part 1 of our tour) my husband was in no mood to experiment with my MUST have list.
We had a three course meal at the Yaya Amelia, and may I just say it was the best meal we had in all the 7 days, other than some stellar dishes on the ship ofcourse. We had foie gras ravioli, and duck confit, and gorgeous berry pannacottas, and frankly every course was better than the prior one. At 19.5 euros for the three course meal, we couldn't help comparing it to the day befores over 50 wasted Euros. I think after this, the husband decided to pick the places to eat, since he clearly had picked a winner.

The next stop was The Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona. Again we completely lost track of time, oohing and aahing at all the memorabilia, and wanting to spend hours watching the videos and listening to the audios and ofcourse posing with Messi.
As I mentioned before we had only daylight until we were to return to the ship, and well, we missed our bus, got caught in traffic, took a taxi finally, which unfortunately could not take us to the ferry directly, and the last few minutes was us running like Cinderella at the strike of midnught, or like the Hero in the Bollywood movie climaxes as he rushes before his lady love sails away forever.
Longest story cut short, the ship was almost out of the port, they had even lifted the bridge by the time we arrived.
I do not even want to contemplate what could have happened if we were left stranded on foreign lands without our passports...
But Barcelona just has so much to offer!

The next day was our day at sea. We made the most of it by doing fun activities on board. For Tshirt making, I had the fun idea of painting our cruise course on a shirt, duly painted by husband as you see in the picture, also half the other people copied our idea. :)
We took so many dance classes that by the end I didn't know my cha cha cha from my Tango.
We over ate at every opportunity we got at the lavish buffett spreads.