We woke up in Alicante, Spain. We've never heard of Alicante, and it's a huge city of about 400,000!
We were going to the Castle of Santa Barbara, which is actually a fortress. The castle dates back to the 9th century at the time of Muslim control of the city. The castle/fortress changed hands several times during the centuries, including Christians and a short 3 year British rule. It was used as a prison where all kinds of torture was given to the prisoners during several wars.
The fortress/castle sits on top of a huge rock outcropping overlooking the ocean and the entire city
This area was where the bakeries and ovens were
We had a pre-arranged tour in English, and were the only ones on the tour. We got to see two places not open to the public - this one being the cistern where water was held during the wars - it was so big though, it only was filled up once. There are no springs in the area and it's a very dry climate, so they had to bring water from down around the mountain when it did rain by buckets up the mountain to pour in here. It was huge!!!!
The 2nd place we got to see was the dungeon area where prisoners were kept
We found a geo-cache here and left a travel bug. It was picked up the next day!
VIDEO:
These cuddly and normal and happy dolls were in the gift shop
So cute!!!!!!!!!
Picture time!
Luggage update! Jacob/Aubrie's 2 pieces of luggage were found! They should be arriving at our next port.
Today, we boarded the ship where we would spend the next 10 days and the next day was a day at Sea.
Before we boarded, I went with Jacob and Aubrie to a huge mall to buy some clothes, as their luggage was still lost. We crossed the bridge to get there and were greeted by a mermaid!
Our ship was medium sized, but smaller than we were used to
Right across from the port
Our home for the next little bit
Obligatory room video:
As we set sail, we went under the bridge. Oh, and it was a little windy as you can tell from Shelley's hair
As was started by Jacob and Hannah, Jacob carried on the tradition of taking tons of posed photos, bringing smiles to all the photographers. He introduced Aubrie to it. By the end of the cruise, all the photographers knew Jacob by name and they all wanted to take his photos ha ha
You can always tell a cruise atrium photo
MSC has a lot of "production shows" and for some reason, they seem to be the rare cruise line that can actually find singers that can sing and dancers that can dance. They were all so good
Luggage update, the airline has no idea where it is.
