Many times I have used that pricelessly descriptive word 'lollygagging'. Today was made for it. All we had to achieve today was i) find the ferry; ii) get on the ferry; iii) eat some kind of lunch; iv) get off the ferry; v) find the exit road leaving Barcelona to the north, the AP-7; vi) find our overnight hotel near Junction 13 thereof.
Breakfast was drawn out as much as humanly possible, much of it spent identifying all the new boys & girls in the hotel, and which country they might have come from. Packing took only a few minutes more, including getting bikes from the lock-up, and we were gone by 1130. Nice job, Josep & Hotel Villa Singala, nice job. Alcudia is ten minutes up the road, and check-in deadline was 1230. Ample time.
Again the signage was less than definite, but we cracked it, mainly by steadfastly ignoring those boat icons we had followed so religiously in Barcelona last week. On arrival in the marshalling yard, with 20 minutes to go to deadline, there was ONE car ahead of us. By deadline, there were still <20. Where, then, did all those dozens of people come from, who were already finishing up their lunches as we got on board? Oh, by the way, again we had to endure the nonsensical party game, whereby passengers get out of the car and traipse through the Ellis Island embarkation shed, while the driver takes the car on board. The shed on this occasion, though, was a high-tech clone of an airport departure lounge, with all the x-ray and similar technical wizardry of such a facility. Was it used? Of course not. It was completely ignored. Surely any self-respecting terrorist would have left all the armaments in the car anyway, wouldn't he, to be driven aboard utterly unchecked? Or am I missing something?
The crossing lasted 6h 30m. It felt like it. Paella and meat balls put a dent into the first hour, but after that ..... Yawn! And it was very, very hot, stuffy and airless in our assigned lounge seats. Many trips to the open air were needed.
We actually left Alcudia 10 minutes early, and picked up further time along the way, docking at Barcelona almost one HOUR early, 1935 instead of 2030. Good job too, as the road signs to get cars out of town and on to the AP-7 northbound were again dire. We fluked it, guessed a lot and arrived at the Mercure Granollers off Junction 13 by 2045. Tapas and two pints for dinner.
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