Cruise Day 11 – Disembark and head to Frankfurt and Heidelberg (Saturday, July 28)

Sigh… time to leave the ship and say goodbye to Dad, Nan and our new friends. Dad and Nan were spending a few more days in Barcelona, so we said goodbye to them at the cruise terminal then headed in a cab to get in a few hours of sightseeing before we headed to the airport to fly to Frankfurt. So the first unexpected adventure was checking our bags. We headed to one of Disney’s recommended hotels (Eurostar’s Grand Marina Hotel), thinking that we’d just go to the bell desk and check our bags for the day. Well, think again. They would not take our bags since we were not hotel guests. After several other creative ideas, Ann finally got a good one. There were MANY Disney travellers in the lobby checking out to head onto the next cruise. I struck up a conversation with one of them and convinced them to check the bags for us! The Amazing Race has nothing on us!!!

We took the double decker bus around Barcelona, (Bus Turistic) got the mini-tour and overview of the city. This time Jamie seemed to enjoy it (versus the Madrid tour when she was jetlagged and grouchy). We decided to head to the airport a bit early and just eat lunch there – giving ourselves a little extra time after the adventures in Madrid with our cancelled flight. Well thank goodness we did! The Barcelona airport is a DISASTER! We were flying on Lufthansa so expected typical German efficiency. Instead we got a rambling line that blocked people from walking through the terminal (see picture below)… We stood in line for 1 ½ hours to check in, get our boarding passes and check our bags. Ann of course was constantly walking up to the counters to double check and make sure we were in the correct lines – in the process of this double checking I saw multiple people who had not been as conscientious and were sent to the back of a different line only to wait another hour or so. I’ve honestly never seen anything as disorganized as this airport check-in. I’ve read other blogs and heard other horror stories, with all the airlines (not just LH), with 2 ½ hours waiting, missed flights, etc. At least when we got up to the front of the line, we didn’t have any problems with our checked bags (in terms of weight). This is where Jim got a little creative! We had learned that they put the bags on the belt one at a time but appeared to only charge for overweight based on the total weight of the bags. So, when putting the third bag on the belt, Jim used a little knee action to push the farthest bag slightly off the end of the conveyer belt – so our total weight heading from Madrid to Barcelona had been 60 Kilos, after the cruise and shopping, we only had 55 Kilos!!! Way to go Jim!!!

We got to the Frankfurt airport and were pleasantly surprised by a nice Volvo S60 rental car from Avis. This was Jim’s turn to drive (Ann drove in France). Jim was in the slow lane on the Autobahn heading to Heidelberg, going 140 Kilometers / hour. In my mind, this seemed like a nice cruising speed – lots of other cars passing us, but we were making good time. OF COURSE WE WERE, we were going 100 MPH!!!

We checked into our nice Marriott Hotel in Heidelberg, on the concierge level so we had free snacks, beer and wine for the stay. LOVE those perks! We got a restaurant recommendation from the hotel. Italian, but that was OK because we knew we would be eating German food the next day and it would be good for Jamie to be able to eat (of course, we saw a McDonalds first, so we got her something there and she had dessert at the restaurant). This was a great restaurant (Da Mario), some really good food! It’s on the second floor just above the McDonalds…