We Slept the Day Away…

September 21,2025

Happy to be traveling back to a favorite city. Our first visit to Barcelona was in 2015. We spent three days before a cruise and loved the city so much, we returned the following year on a land vacation. Since then we’ve been back five times. I decided not to return to a hotel that we loved in the El Born neighborhood because they refused to return my deposit during Covid. Anyway, I did tons of research and landed on Seventy Hotel in the Eixample neighborhood. (Pronounced Aye- sham-plah). Seventy received a Michelin Key last year …and our initial impression…it is well deserved. We booked this trip last summer, while we were on Crystal’s Symphony. At the time Crystal had an attractive promotion …book at least one year in advance and receive a 20% discount. We booked an eighteen day Mediterranean cruise, with multiple overnights and three days in Morocco…including an overnight in Casablanca. 😊

For the first time in sixteen years we left on a trip with out arranging for a cat sitter…felt so weird. #imissfreddieandfluffy

Here’s Timmy ready to go …a full two hours before the driver arrived…like a little kid.

First selfie of the trip.

So I hesitated about posting this…but it is what it is and it was part of the trip…another weird part. Here goes…We have TSA pre-check…but when we approached Security at JFK…the pre-check line was ridiculously long…like crazy long…we’d never seen a TSA pre-check line so long. So, logically we got on the American Airlines Business Class line…there were only about 5 people on that line. When we get to the head of the line, the Security person reads my boarding pass and says “WRONG LINE! You need to go over to Pre-check!” I smile and politely point out that we are Business passengers and this is the Business line…she gets huffy and says some crazy s*** about how TSA Pre-check overrides the Business class designation. What the actual heck? Anyway, I know better than to challenge someone with the power to prevent me from boarding my flight, so we walk over to Pre-check …whatever…we were plenty early so in the end those 20 minutes mattered not a whit…but still…arrrrgh.

First selfie in the AA lounge. The lounge is nice…lots of comfy seating, plenty of outlets and charging stations. Limited food options, but very nice hummus and salad and Piper Heidsieck.

We watched them load this plane and saw it take off. Quite a beast.

We really like the configuration and roominess of the seats …and tons of storage space.

Salmon on quinoa with roasted vegetables…not horrible.

Timmy had steak. He did say the little polenta cake was tasty. The 7.5 hour flight was uneventful, I slept for a bit…Timmy, not at all.

Yogurt and fruit for breakfast.

Our driver was waiting for us, helped with our luggage, delivered us to the hotel and we were in our room by 8:44am when this photo was taken. We paid for the previous night for this garden terrace room so that we’d have access immediately upon arrival. We’ve been doing this for a long time when we are on long overnight flights. And it is so worth it to us. Also worth it…booking a room with outdoor space. This space is quite large…we could actually have a small get together out here 😉

A charming bag with amenities…tooth brushes, makeup remover, tissues, lotion, sponge, sewing kit, shoe shine cloth…adorable.

After unpacking, we both crashed and slept until after 4 pm…I woke up and spent some time reading on the patio in the comfortable lounge chair. Then we rested some more and at 7:30 headed to the hotel’s restaurant.