Mediterranean Cruise - Days 1 & 2

Everything went perfectly with our itinerary.  All flights were fine.  In New York JFK airport we had no idea what we were doing or where we were going and some other EJ people found us and directed us to Gate 3.  We found it, went to grab lunch and while we were there an older couple introduced themselves and we learned they were going on the cruise, too.  After some discussion we found out they were actually going on the Black Sea cruise - and were flying out of Gate 3.  This mean we had to figure out what gate we were actually going to fly out of.  It all worked out, was kind of humorous though.

Our flight to Barcelona was 2 hours less than I thought it was going to be.  I think it ended up being slightly over 6 hours.  We both watched 2 movies.  It was fine.  We landed at 12:30 on our bodies, but it was nearly 8am in Barcelona.  We met the Maritz people and they brought us to a little restaurant for breakfast.  

View of the city of Barcelona, Spain
from the village where we had breakfast.

We had 4 hours there and we were all wiped out and so incredibly tired.  Neither of us slept on the plane and couldn't wait to get to our room to take a nap.  The ship boarding was quick, but our room was not quite ready so we grabbed some lunch first and then went to our room.  We literally brought our bags in and dumped them in the middle of the room, checked out the balcony and then fell on the bed and took a nap.  I felt like I was pretty wide awake and told Dave that I didn't know if I'd be able to get to sleep.  Not sure that I even finished my sentence.  We slept for a couple of hours and were woken up by the announcements telling us it was time to do the safety drill.  I've never felt so exhausted... I did NOT want to get out of bed, just wanted to sleep, but knew it would make it difficult to get to sleep at night if I kept sleeping all afternoon.

We got up, went to the drill and then explored the ship.  Somehow after all of that it was already time to shower & go to the cocktail reception and dinner.  Dinner was at 9pm.  Afterward I was still more tired than I can remember being in a long time.  Felt soooo good to sleep! We've met a lot of nice Jones people already.  Its kind of nice because this was an add-on trip, so a lot of these people are younger or newer in the firm.