VOYAGER OF THE SEAS 14 APRIL 2012 - NEW ORLEANS TO SINGAPORE 42 NIGHTS: 04/30/12

DAY 16 in VALENCIA

Currently in Spain 25% are unemployed which is a huge number for the size of this country. However, come Sunday they still refuse to open their stores, so Valencia was ‘closed’ yesterday. There were 4 ships in port with around 7000 eager visitors waiting to spend their Euro. Finally after walking everywhere we came across a market which was open for Mother’s Day in Spain yesterday, but speaking to many people when we returned to the ship very few found the market.

Valencia is a beautiful city with interesting architecture mixing modern with the old. Just about every street is linked to a beautiful park and there were many out on their Sunday morning stroll. It is a very leafy city with many very old oak trees which are huge with massive trunks. We came across a big ‘swap meet’ of families with their children swapping cards. The ones that you collect not playing cards. Many were Football teams and the idea is to collect the whole team, some of which are very hard to come by. It looked like the Dads were just as excited as the kids were swapping their card collection. Spain is mad about Football/Soccer the kids were wearing their team colours as were some of the Dads. Valencia is a team that does well in their league we were told. As we wandered the city we came across a soccer game of around 18 year olds. Parents anywhere in the world need not worry about getting carried away on the sideline shouting at their team. You’ve seen nothing until you watch a soccer game here. It was in a local park and the Mum’s and Dads were on the sideline……some of the time, the rest of the time they were dashing on to the pitch to yell at the referee. The noise from the sideline was deafening in Spanish….lol. The only thing they didn’t have was umbrellas……. Just as well we thought. J

Tonight is the last night on the ship for those who are disembarking in Barcelona. There are 500 of us who are continuing through to Dubai. Not sure how many are going through to Singapore with us.

The crew performed their farewell finale last night both in the theatre and at dinner.

Tomorrow we will be moving cabins to an aft corner balcony cabin. Really looking forward to that as we’ve not had an aft cabin before but know it will be perfect for our transit of the Suez Canal as we will be able to see both sides of the canal at once. J

I’ll upload some more photos from Barcelona tomorrow.