Hotel Duquesa

When we arrived in Barcelona, the customs line was dreadful. It was very, very long. We waited about 1½ hours just to get through customs and then when we got downstairs our luggage still was not there, so we weren’t too tickled about our Barcelona Airport arrival experience. We got our luggage, we went to the cabstand, and we had such big suitcases that we had to put a suitcase in the front seat! We tried to talk with the cabbie and we remembered enough simple phrases to signal our interest in Spain. We arrived at our hotel, which was the Hotel Duquesa de Cardona. It is a boutique hotel that was located along a maritime promenade in the gothic quarter, a five-minute walk from Olympic Park and one kilometer from Barcelona’s Las Ramblas Boulevard.

Carol checks in

We really liked the hotel. It was small, but quirky. There were only 34 guest rooms, so it wasn’t huge. You didn’t have to worry about running into a lot of people and the style is referred to as “mordeniste” with flat screen TVs, marble bathes, Turkish towels, mini bars, bathrobes and slippers, and high speed internet. We booked it because it was near to the pier where we would depart for our cruise. When we got to the hotel, we found out that Marjorie LaRue, our third companion for the cruise and one of the “Fabulous at 50”, had already checked in. We dumped our stuff, met with Marjorie, put on our tiaras and headed for a walk (although we didn’t wear our tiaras for our walk). We found a little bar and stopped and had sangrias, sausages, cheese and we ordered salad and the salad was different than what we expected. It was tomato, egg, tuna, green and red pepper, and olives. Nobody else in our group was very excited about it, although I thought it was pretty decent, just a little heavy on the oil from the tuna. We also had assorted meats, which were ham, salami and I’m not really sure what the other meat was.

After we had eaten, we walked along the docks where there were vendors selling jewelry, puppets, clothing and art. We popped for a second into the Museum of Catalonian History and took pictures all the way around.

Band Playing in the Park

We also saw a little band playing in the park. On the way back to the hotel we had worked up an appetite so we stopped at the Sailor Restaurant and had a fabulous meal alfresco. We had chicken paella, jambas, which are huge, shrimp. I had lobster piaya and green salad and we shared a pitcher of sangria. My favorite thing of all was the fact that they had chocolate mousse for dessert and boy, oh boy, was it yummy. Our waiter, whose name was Moisus, surprised us all after dinner with shots of schnapps. To Carol and Marjorie, he gave green apple, and to me he gave peach. Fortunately, the hotel wasn’t very far like two doors down and we headed back to the hotel to plan our next day’s outing and transportation, as well as to print Marjorie’s sea pass.

Lunch Counter

The sea pass allows you to expedite your boarding of the cruise ship. If you don’t print it out in advance, you have to stand there and fill out a really long form and all that and Marjorie had completed the process, but just not printed it. What we found out after several attempts to try to get it to print and then calling Royal Caribbean was that you couldn’t print the sea pass 48 hours before the trip. Before going to bed that evening, we called downstairs and asked the night clerk if there was a restaurant nearby for breakfast. Clearly something got lost in the translation because he brought us up a room service door hanger. But at the time I have to say that he was a little bit distracted by two lovely young ladies who were keeping him company down there.

Carol Gattis, one of my cruise buddies, and her husband Jim picked me up at my house to head to the airport for our departure on our Fabulous at 50 cruise. When we arrived at the airport, we saw a couple of people we know from the U of A community – Tené Green, an alum of the University of Arkansas School of Law and Rick Stockdell, the KUAF station manager with his wife Beth. We were so excited we could hardly stand it. We checked our luggage with the skycap who was excited with us, and it was all uneventful. We flew into Chicago and while we were on the flight we reread our excursions, our excitement building all the time. I have to say on the flight from Fayetteville to Chicago we did have Grumpy from the seven dwarfs as our flight attendant, but we ignored him because it was all good in the neighborhood.

Things picked up tremendously when we arrived in Chicago and were met by a man on the jet bridge who we came to know later was named Ron Whitaker, “Cynthia Nance?” he asked. I said, “Uh Oh.” “No,” he said, “it’s something good! Would you like to go to the blublublublublu (that’s what it sounded like, I didn’t understand it at all).” The next statement was, “I have a cart waiting.” Not knowing where we were going, but willing to go, we both said, “Yes!” and we hopped on his cart. He took us through the airport, at a pretty break neck speed frankly for the number of pedestrians, and we arrived at the Flagship Lounge. What a pleasant space it was. A woman checked us in for our flight and explained that there was a complimentary full bar, including champagne, light lunch, a quiet area, free computer room and access, and lounge rooms and reading material with a sauna bathroom. Ahhhhh . . . so that was where we waited for the 4½ hours for our flight from O’Hare to Heathrow.

The flight itself was fantastic. We had been able to upgrade to business class where we felt quite pampered. The flight attendants learned we were headed to the Fabulous at 50 cruise and had a lot of fun teasing us in terms of being the party row, which I have to say we really were. Each seat in business class was like a private vehicle with a control panel that did everything from operating the private TV screen to the phone and then moving the seat every which way you could imagine. We received a little travel bag with footies, an eye mask, toothbrush, comb and some other stuff I can’t remember. We also were given Bose noise reduction headphones for our listening and quiet pleasure. It was pretty awesome!

The food was outstanding. We each had a filet mignon served with risotto and mushrooms. The flight was late departing due to turbulence, but the pilot was able to make up time in the air. Breakfast was a cheese omelet with potatoes, sausage, juice and coffee. And though it felt like a guilty pleasure, but I was able to read Vibe magazine from cover to cover, along with the New York Times.

Heathrow airport was pretty crazy. We had to walk up, down, around, under, over and across to get to the next gate and then hop on a bus. It was noisy and busy and after wearing the Bose speakers that had been provided in business class, we felt a little bit of a noise overload. We walked around and took a few pictures in Heathrow. Our departure from Heathrow to Barcelona was late because departed from a makeshift area where we had to wait for people to exit from an different international flight before we could use the same area to board our flight. Once we were underway, we had a 2 hour flight to Barcelona during which we were served an unusual looking– and tasting– ham and cheese sandwich for a snack.

One of my most favorite things in the whole wide world started my day, bright and early Tuesday morning, and that is my annual mammogram. Those of you who have endured the pleasure of a mammogram understand what I mean, but that said, I know it’s very important to have it done. I’m also very grateful to have health insurance to enable me to do that, even though the process itself is not a pleasant one.

Afterwards, it was time to head back to the law school for a 10:00 a.m. courtyard meeting with the artist, Jesús Moroles, who was in town. Many of the folks who had worked to bring the courtyard to life attended the meeting as well, including Steve Marshall, Thad Kelly, Mark Dilday, Jason Huckleberry, Lynn Stewart, Dan Street and Dennis Wewers. The reason for the meeting was to discuss outstanding concerns about the landscaping, last minute adjustments to the lighting of the courtyard, scheduling the refinishing of the concrete, future shipments of granite, and furniture to complete the granite tables. I am gratefule that everyone was able to be there to attend that meeting so we could finish up those last remaining details. After the meeting, Jesús and I went to lunch at Mama Dean’s. That was a lot of fun. It was the first time I got to spend quiet time with him and we had a delightful visit over great soul food.

At 3:30 p.m. I met with Teri Stafford for our weekly development meeting, and I have to tell you folks, that Monday and Tuesday were very distracted days for me because the next day I was to depart for the Fabulous at 50 cruise–and boy was that in the forefront of my mind. I spent Tuesday evening taking care of last minute details, packing, looking through the itinerary again, and double checking for my passport. I wanted to be certain that everything was all set for my departure for the Fabulous at 50 cruise on Wednesday morning.