Nineteen and a half months.  Today is the day we have been waiting for….finally!  We will be reunited with our Azamara Quest and with so many of the crew and staff who safely shepherded us to Oman so we could come back to the US at the beginning of the pandemic.  Not to mention Zoe and Kayla and Galen – our favorite dancers in the world. I’m going to cry just thinking about it!

We are up and out early so we don’t have to worry about traffic – either here in Girona or on the road back into Barcelona.  Everything works beautifully, we get the car out successfully, double park in front of the apartment, drag the bags down, and voila! We are on our way.  The traffic is light, we barely hit any backups, and before we know it we are dropping off our bags at the World Trade Center for the porters to take on the ship.  On the ship!  Yay!

We are super early, but we had planned on that, our check in time is at 2pm and we wanted to be able to drop off the bags, take the car back to Sixt off Paral-lel and go to lunch before we wait through our COVID checks and check in on the ship.  It is easy to return the car (because of course, we’ve done this so often, we could do it in our sleep!), and we are quickly heading off into town to find lunch. Unfortunately our plans are shuttled when we get to Bar Kioska, the cute little bar/restaurant we found a few years ago, and they are shuttered up tight.  Hmmm…..they have no web site and everything I found said they were open at noon, but, obviously “everything” was wrong.  Pooh.   So, Plan B. 

Backtracking into the University area, we stop at one of the restaurants we passed on our way to Kioska, Buenissimo.  Good menu, outdoor seating, we’re in.  Wine, beer, a huge Caesar salad with chicken and Huevos Rotos (fried eggs on top of French fries with little chorizo links strewn about) – perfect sailaway lunch!

Now it is time to head back to World Trade Center and board our lovely little ship! 

A quick 15 minute walk later, we are checking in, getting our COVID testing codes, getting swabbed and then waiting on pins and needles to get our results.  I mean, we’ve been careful about everything – but you just never know!  Soon though, we get our emailed results:  negative!  Yay – we can complete our check in and board.  Sweet relief!

Once on the ship we are sent directly to our muster station for a very reduced presentation – by none other than Galen!  So sweet – it’s like seeing your long lost friend (or son in our case).  Quickly done with that, and fake hugs and fist bumps for Galen, we are off on our mission:  upgrade to the aft balcony cabin that shows still available!  We’ve already made our dinner reservations (including the Explorer’s Dinner for the Chef’s table) while we were waiting for our PCR tests in the terminal (excellent way to maximize time in the waiting room!) so now, this is our only to do on the ship.  At Guest Relations we ask about the cabin, and Ferdinand (who will become our best buddy all throughout the voyage) tells us he isn’t absolutely sure it is available, he probably won’t know for a few hours after check in is complete but he will call us if there is an opportunity.  Ok.  We’re good with that! 

So it is on to our room, where our luggage awaits.  But we don’t want to unpack, just in case we get the new room, so we grab our gym clothes out of the bags and leave everything else packed.  Then it’s the gym and meeting sweet Jessica, the Gym manager (who’ll we’ll end up close to by the end of the trip!) and then back to our unpacked bags…..and success!  Carlos calls and offers us the upgrade.  Yay!  We are so excited – we love aft cabins and especially on this sailing when we get to sail up the Guadalquivir river to Seville. 

We grab our bags, move them down to our new room and are unpacking in no time.  It seems like just yesterday we were packing up to leave the Quest in March 2020….and now…..we are back and it is like we were never gone.  Can’t wait for the rest of this journey to begin….

Beginning with tonight and Zoe’s big welcome show – which is fabulous and wonderful and tearful (for both of us!).  And then it is off to bed to get ready for our first port of call – gosh, that sounds so great – Palma.