Have you ever traveled without knowing much about a location or an itinerary? Decided on a place just on the go? I am not that kind of a person who travels without doing these three things – research, research, and research.
But, when in February 2018, I had called up my friend to ask him casually where all he had plans to visit that year, he gave me a list of countries like Japan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Spain, etc., I remember telling him that I wanted to go somewhere but didn’t know where to go and asked for his suggestion. He told me, let’s try the cruise trip in Spain.
Did I know what I was getting into? Not at all. Even though I prepared my mind and packed my stuff, but I did very little research on the places and the to-dos of the trip, which’s till date the biggest in my life. I told myself we will figure out and somehow, I trusted my friend in that.
On 30th September 2018, we started our five days of cruise trip to cover the Balearic Islands with one of the most popular cruise lines in the world, the Royal Caribbean International, in ‘Vision of the Seas’ from the Port of Barcelona. In one of my previous stories, I have already explained what Barcelona meant to me and the kind of impact it had on me. From there to an insanely swanky cruise, which I wouldn’t have gone for if I had ‘researched’ about, was unimaginable. It was like a five-star hotel on water. I can say it took me all five days to absorb what it had to offer, and since it was one of my first experiences having such kind of treatment, I felt overwhelmed all the time.
The ship was massive and had so many levels that till the end of the cruise I was confused about the directions. We had got sea-facing rooms so anytime we looked out, we could see the vastness of the waterscape. Every morning, we had a hugely laid out breakfast buffet, same happened during lunch and dinner in the ship. Sometimes, our lunches used to be at the ports we got dropped for sight-seeing. Ours was also a party-cruise, every night till the next morning, there would be parties with music by some very famous DJs of Europe (about who I did not have much idea though).
On the second day, we reached Sète – a small port in France, where I witnessed a beautiful sunrise in such different hues of the sun. Sète has canals and streets crisscrossing across, and in the half-day walk across the town, the only thing we did was sit in cute bay-side cafes and have cold coffee, brioches, croissants, and rosé. The cool, blue Mediterranean breeze made it all the more worthwhile.
On the third day, we reached the ultimate beach party destination – Ibiza! My knowledge about Ibiza till then was related to one ex-Bollywood couple who were found chilling there. As soon as we reached Ibiza, we told ourselves we will rock it, but turned out we could not. We did Ibiza like one would see any other place. We started with walking down the cobbled path in Dalt Vila, which is a fort in old Ibiza, from there we walked aimlessly and sat in a cafe for a plan. We decided to visit a famous church which is like a half-hour drive from the port. On that sunny Mediterranean summer afternoon we went around the Balearic towns, to visit a church in Sant Josep. When we reached, we saw the church was closed, we waited for few hours and when the church would have opened, we took a cab back to Ibiza. Once we were back, we may have eaten again and got tired enough to go back to our ship. That’s how we did Ibiza, that place remains grossly unexplored by us, and there’s always a chance to visit it again.
On our fourth day, we reached Palma de Mallorca, the capital of Balearic Islands. After what we did in Ibiza, we decided that we will cover every tourist spot in Palma, so we took the hop-in-hop-off tickets and checked out all the places from Pueblo Espanol to Placa de Espanaya to Palma Mallorca Catedral. With Palma, our cruise trip ended and the next afternoon we reached Barcelona Port for the next leg of our journey.
Every evening when we would be back to our cruise, I would find myself some time, to stand in the balcony or along the side-rails and look at the blue of the Mediterranean Sea. Having seen the other seas up, close and personal, I can say nothing comes close to the blue of the Mediterranean Sea—the typical Mediterranean blue—it’s for REAL.
Moments to Stories 
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