Barcelona Cruise Part 3: Madeira Portugal, Granada, Alicante, and Barcelona

Who knew that this was still in the draft folder?  Sorry about the long delay between part 2 and part 3, I thought it was done!  So, picking up where we left off, we are still on the cruise, getting ready to disembark in Madeira, Portugal.  Madeira is an island, and it famous for the wine that is made here.  

We are going on a bus tour, followed by a gondola ride down the mountain.  Sometimes we take trips, just the three of us, and the whole day we say, "Daddy would have hated this!"  Usually we say this because we are going on a boat, but today it was just the three of us and we said it all day because the road was so narrow and winding. 

Most of the curves were like this, a full 180 up the mountain.

And parking your motorcycle in the middle of the road seems like a good idea.  This was a Saturday morning, so maybe on Friday night, this was a good idea!  Best part, everyone just went around! 

First stop, 1094 meters up.  Remember that we started at sea level from the cruise, so this was up there! 

Yum!

Here our bus is trying to drive down the mountain, and this bus is trying to come up the mountain.  He had to back up about 500 m to a pull off. 

These guys give rides down the mountain in those sleds.  They steer from the back.  We didn't do this, but we walked by them on the way up to the gondola. 

This is the gondola ride. 

Once at the bottom we went into the town and had a chance to walk around.  There was a section that was neglected, so a few years ago one of the residents decided that they should paint all of the doors in an interesting way to attract visitors.  There were about 50 doors painted in different ways, but here are just a few. 

Leaving Madiera.  Check out the road!

Happy New Year 2019!

This guy was grabbing all of the balloons! 

Welcome to Granada! 

This is a bullfighting arena.  Luckily it was closed for the day. 

This ie enough for me! 

We wound up walking up this path that switched back and forth until we came to this view! 

At the top was a fortress, so Pooks and I walked up to see it. 

While up high, we saw this building, so we headed down to check it out. 

It was some kind of government building, and it was open to enter the lobby. 

The Picasso museum was closed, though.  

There were so many amazing buildings and churches, so I was just taking photos. 

Next stop Malaga, Alicante Cruise port. 

We were getting ready for another climb when we met a Spanish woman who told us about an elevator to the top.  Not wanting to miss the experience, we paid our Euro and entered the building.  This tunnel is so long!  It just bores straight into the mountain.

The elevator has two stops, ground and top.  

We were so thankful for technology!  We love elevators.

After taking the ride back down, we walked around the town and hit every church and Zara we came across.

This boardwalk was amazing!  

OK, now we are off the boat and walking around Barcelona.  We decide that we will walk to the FC Barcelona Stadium, Camp Nou.

Walking back to our hotel, which was right next to an Ikea.  

Sunset on our last night.