On Saturday, June 17, 2017, Linette and I awaited our ship’s 1pm arrival at the island of Mallorca, Spain.
While we waited, I tried out the rock climbing wall. There were some Irish folks in line that had awesome accents, and then it was my turn. I could barely make it past the inverted part, but I made it and rang the bell at the top.
Then we went to watch the magician teach us 3 magic tricks with which to "amaze our friends."
We had booked a tour to The Caves of Hams (on the other side of the island) through the cruise ship, which was the only thing we booked through them. The rest of the time we went out on our own and saved hundreds of dollars and had random adventures.
As we rode in the bus we saw the cool cathedral there (Le Seu, or The Palma Cathedral), which was built starting in 1229.
The countryside was sometimes dry, but had pretty spots, too.
The tour bus also dropped us all off at a pearl factory where we saw them make artificial pearls and dip in them in stuff to make them shiny.
Linette got herself some pearls. “Happy Anniversary to me!” she said. “You’re welcome!” I replied.
I loved the purple flowers everywhere. My mom says these can grow in Utah, so I’m going to see if I can start making them grow everywhere.
The Caves of Hams were pretty cool.
They had a gazillion little stalactites and stalagmites, set off by colored lighting to help them stand out.
This stalagmite looks like Santa. Or Gandolf. Or a gnome.
There was an underground lake there, too.
They did a light show where they shone lights on the walls of the cave and played classical music while a guy paddled a boat out for a while. It was fun.
And here is one final look at some of the formations in the Caves of Hams.
On the way back we saw some windmills that had been destroyed in windstorms, rebuilt, and destroyed again. They’re mostly for show, since the modern windmills they really use are those huge ones. The bus tour guide also told us depressing stuff about how they used to make furniture here until Ikea showed up and ruined everything.
That night, back on the ship, we watched a repeat performance by “The Four Sea Sons”, who do music by “The Four Seasons”, including really high songs like “Sherry Baby”. They start their show by saying they came all the way from The United States of America! Which seemed a little odd, because we don’t usually say that as such. But partway through their show, they said, “The music is all real, but the American accents are totally fake!” Then one guy says he’s from Liverpool, another from Northern Ireland, and so on.
Then at one point in the show, the lead singer sang the opening line to “Walk Like a Man” which goes, “Ooo WEE oh wee oh wee OH WAAAAAAAH!” really high. Then they asked the audience to all try it, so we did. Then they asked if anyone could sing it alone. So of course Linette raises her hand and points at me and makes a big fuss, so the next thing I know, I’m headed up to the stage.
So they put one of their jackets on me and asked me my name. Well, you’ll recall that when we had dinner with the nice English ladies and were introducing ourselves, I said my name was “Randall”, because “randy” means “frisky” or “horny” in England.
Well, these guys didn’t seem to need that sort of deference, and I didn’t want to just say my name and have them snicker, so I went for the gusto and said my name like Cami used to: “RrrrANDeeeeeeyyy!”
They were all like “Wooooahhhh!” and sort of freaked out. It was an excellent reaction. (But really, what can they say? One of them was named “Dickey”, so….)
Then I had them give me the starting note again and I let fly with the high notes and nailed it. The crowd went wild. On my way back to my seat, someone on our row said, “Well done, mate!” Not sure what I’ll do to get even with Linette. (Maybe I’ve already done it, and I had this coming?)
We were so exhausted by that point in our trip that we went to bed at 9:30pm and skipped any last minute partying or snacking.
Back to Barcelona
We woke up Sunday morning, June 18, 2017, docked in Barcelona. We packed everything up and had one last big breakfast, where we talked with a couple who were going to be going to Israel after they got off the ship that day. She was Christian, but he was Jewish, and he had a brother who had lived in Israel for a couple decades, and they were going to go spend 10 days there, which sounded awesome.
One of my favorite parts about the cruise was chatting with people all the time, and then bumping into them later on the cruise or, in one case, 3 times while wandering around France. We always talked about our family, our daughter who was a missionary in Peru, and so on, and we learned about people from lots of different places around the world and around America.
And with that, we headed off the ship, dressed in Sunday clothes. Linette ran over to our earlier hotel in Barcelona to pick up some sandals she had left there, while I watched the luggage on a very empty instantiation of La Rambla.
Then we hopped on the metro with our luggage to go to church again. We got off and things didn’t look familiar, but we saw the elders and thought, “Ask the missionaries!” and they pointed us in the direction of the church. But then things still didn’t look like the week before.
We saw a senior couple, so we asked them, but they didn’t know either. It turns out that they were on their way home from a mission to Serbia and were looking for a ward to attend, too.
(It turned out that the people we had met on the subway the week before had gotten us off at a different stop and took us to the stake center).
So we met some new people, including a couple from Peru, and a lady and her mom that were also from Peru, so that was cool. Here’s one of the guys from Peru.
After Sacrament meeting, we took one last metro ride to the airport and flew home to Los Angeles.
We picked up our rental car from Hertz with no problem, and drove over to stay with my cousin Karen in Pasadena.
We spent the night at her apartment, and then we both woke up around 4:30 from jet lag (it was 12:30pm in Europe) and had fun sitting on Karen's lovely balcony and reading scriptures until the sun came up the rest of the way.
On the way to the airport we had one last doughnut at Winchell’s to end our vacation.
On the flight to Salt Lake City we talked to a lady from The Netherlands the whole way. It was funny that everyone we talked to on the cruise was always amazed when we said we were celebrating our 25th anniversary. This lady said, “Oh, good, we did that last year.” And people freaked out that we had 5 kids. “Nice,” she said, “We have 4.” And as we talked, we learned that her daughter just went to camp with her church, and that her husband was also from The Netherlands and was a professor, and she just seemed like a really great person with similar values to us, and strong in her church. It was fun to chat with her.
Finally we were home, and Jared and Sienna came to pick us up at the airport.
That night, rather than tell about our trip, we had a Family Home Evening in which we had Jared tell us all about EFY and about his camping trip to Goblin Valley with his friends from the ward (Nathan Laws, Isaac Pugh, Tanner Arnold and Eric Charlesworth). Then we had Sienna tell us all about her ward Girl’s Camp.
I had to stand up and walk around in order to stay awake. Linette wasn’t even trying.
We had fun waking up at 4:30 or 5:00 every morning for about a week while jet lag took its toll. It was awesome getting four hours of stuff done before going to work each morning!
It was a wonderful trip together to celebrate 25 awesome years (and to get my mind off of turning 50). This has been by far my favorite half of my life. And I owe a lot of it to that awesome woman who said, “Heck, yeah!” when I asked her to marry me.
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