May 3, 2026

Greetings!

Hello from 35,000 feet on the final leg of a long travel day. It should not take this long to go from London to Riga, but here I am on flight #2 from Frankfurt, after logging about 7K steps in the airport terminal alone. A mistake I will not make again. This is a reminder to all about the new EU entry regulations that are now in place.

But as I often say: there is nothing so stultifyingly dull as other people’s travel woes. So, I will leave it at that.

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I left Seabourn Ovation this morning with much regret after an almost perfect 15-day cruise. I wrote last week about the marvelous time we had in Bordeaux, and this week I can report an equally splendid 2½ days in Rouen. Rouen does not afford the central mooring that Bordeaux does, but, Rouen’s historic center was an easy 10-minute ride away on a convenient shuttle provided by the city. We took full advantage of these courtesy arrangements to make the most of our time in lovely Rouen.

So many highlights! Beginning with the breathtaking sail in along the Seine, with mist surrounding the landscape.

Rouen Cathedral always takes my breath away with its elegant proportions, soaring heights, and beautiful details. I paid homage to Rollo — the Viking warlord who was granted a track of land in the north of France by Charles the Simple in exchange for his help in keeping the Vikings away from France. The land came to be known as “The Land of the Norsemen” or Normandy.

Rouen is the final resting place of the heart of Richard the Lionheart, his elder brother Henry the Young King, Rollo, and his son William Longsword.

The extended stay in Rouen enabled us do a few things I’ve wanted to for some time, and I truly enjoyed the Historical Joan of Arc, which reenacts Joan’s second trial in which the first trial is reexamined. This set Joan on the long road to sainthood. Guests of the center move through the elegant rooms of the Archbishop’s Palace as listening to the interrogation of witnesses by holograms. This the story of Joan’s remarkable life, using fantastic technology to bring the story to life. The trial ends at the very top of the palace, which affords unrivaled views of the facade of Rouen Cathedral.

Learn more about Rouen: What to Do in Rouen — Cathedrals, Joan of Arc & Normandy​

Equally moving was the very modern Joan of Arc Cathedral with its striking design and beautiful stained-glass windows. We were fortunate enough to attend a mass there, which I did not photograph, but afterward got some lovely shots of both the interior and exterior.

Of course, the culinary highlight of our time in Rouen for me was our dinner at La Couronne, where Julia Child had her very first French meal. We followed in her footsteps with tangy, briny oysters and the delectable Sole Meunière (which never photographs well). All of this under the watchful eye of a lovely photo of Julia on the wall.

​La Couronne preserves the very formal service I associate with classic French restaurants, but with genuine warmth and infectious delight in the exquisite food and wine the staff serves. I love a good market stall, brasserie or bistro, and food trucks, but this more formal meal was a real treat. The cheese tray had about forty different varieties — an embarrassment of riches.

We enjoyed every mouthful!

I did not know, but was delighted to learn that La Couronne is the oldest inn still operating in all of France! It is well worth a visit, and thanks to the extended stay in Rouen, we could enjoy an unhurried dinner rather than a rushed lunch. I’m writing a longer piece on this — I am so delighted that the lines I work for are all moving towards longer, more immersive stays. I know this is what the thoughtful, curious travelers I sail with crave: immersive experiences that build in time for unhurried exploration, abundant free time to find hidden gems, and the ability to enjoy lingering over a good meal, as we did. More on this topic soon!

Book your unforgettable meal at La Couronne here.

This week’s spotlight is on Barcelona! I’ve been trying to find the time to sit down and really focus on this formidable city for a new 8-Hour Guide to the city, and I was finally able to do that on Ovation.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Barcelona, though in 1-3-day trips, usually to get on or off a ship. Researching and writing the guide, I realize how much remains for me to discover and enjoy. There is an openness about Barcelona that I find very compelling: life lived so much in the public square, creativity buzzing on every street corner, and a culinary scene that has me salivating as soon as we catch sight of land.

Barcelona also offers the discerning traveler a layering of identity so dense and so exuberant that you feel it before you understand it. This is a city that has been Roman, Visigothic, medieval Catalan, briefly Moorish, Habsburg, Bourbon, and fiercely, stubbornly, permanently itself. Its three great architectural epochs — the Roman bones visible in the foundations beneath the Barri Gòtic, the soaring Gothic of Santa Maria del Mar, and the glorious, joyful riot of Modernisme — cohabit without apology, each layer legible to anyone who pauses to look. And then there is the food, which is not Spanish in any lazy shorthand sense but Catalan: oceanic, seasonal, rooted in the mountains and the sea, capable of extraordinary subtlety and extraordinary abundance in the same afternoon.

What Not to Miss

No visit begins anywhere but La Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí's great unfinished — and now, miraculously, finished — basilica, which was completed in time for the centenary of his death in 2026. I have visited several times, and it still stops me cold. The contrast between the exuberant Nativity Façade, all barnacled growth and geological fantasy, and the severe, geometric Passion Façade tells you everything you need to know about Gaudí's extraordinary range. Inside, the forest of branching columns filters the Catalan light through stained glass into pools of green, gold, and rose. Gaudí is asking you to feel rather than to analyze. Book tickets well in advance — ideally the day you book your cruise — and allow a minimum of ninety minutes. The full story, with practical notes on tower access and audio guides, is waiting for you in my complete guide to 8 Hours in Barcelona.

A short metro or taxi ride north, Park Güell rewards the climb with the mosaic-clad serpentine bench overlooking the Mediterranean, the famous trencadís lizard at the entrance staircase, and the Hypostyle Hall of eighty-six fluted columns originally intended as the market for Gaudí's doomed luxury garden suburb. The views from the upper terrace are among the finest in the city. Reserve your timed entry ticket in advance; the guide explains exactly how.

For those whose time or inclinations don't stretch to both Gaudí landmarks, the two great houses on the Passeig de Gràcia offer a superb alternative. Casa Batlló — known locally as the House of Bones for its skeletal organic façade — and La Pedrera (Casa Milà), with its surreal rooftop of warrior-helmeted chimneys, are among the most extraordinary interiors in Europe. If you can only choose one, my preference is Casa Batlló by day for its color, and La Pedrera by early evening, when the lights of the Eixample flicker on below the rooftop terrace.

Do not, under any circumstances, skip the Barri Gòtic. Walk from Plaça Nova — where two cylindrical Roman towers still flank the entrance to the cathedral square — to the Catedral de Barcelona with its famous cloister of thirteen white geese, named for the thirteen years of Santa Eulàlia's brief martyred life. Continue to Plaça de Rei, the austere medieval square where Ferdinand and Isabella received Columbus on his return from the Americas in 1493. Beneath it, the Museu d'Història de Barcelona (MUHBA) descends into a preserved Roman city of fish-salting basins, dye works, and wine presses. It is the single best place in Barcelona to grasp the full depth of what you are walking above. Two hours, unhurried, is the right amount of time. See all my Gothic Quarter suggestions — including the best walking tours →8 Hours in Barcelona: A Cultural Concierge’s Guide to Spain’s Catalan Capital.​

At the Table

Catalan cuisine has its own grammar, its own seasonal logic, and its own preoccupations. Begin with pa amb tomàquet — country bread rubbed with ripe tomato, drizzled with olive oil, salted — which sounds austere and is, in fact, one of the great inventions of the Mediterranean diet. Move on to escalivada (smoky charred peppers and aubergine dressed with oil), esqueixada (the salt-cod salad that is Catalonia's answer to ceviche), and — if the season obliges — calçots, the long sweet spring onions grilled black over fire and dragged through salvitxada. For the rice dishes, look to arròs negre cooked black with squid ink, or fideuà, the paella made with thin noodles rather than rice, which converts skeptics within three bites.

To drink: cava, the traditional-method sparkling wine from the Penedès region, made with native Catalan grapes and shockingly affordable by Champagne standards; and vermut, the sweet vermouth served on the rocks with an olive and an orange slice that constitutes the city's unofficial Sunday-noon ritual. The practice of fer el vermut — literally, 'doing the vermouth' — is one of Barcelona's most charming social customs, and one worth honoring even on a weekday.

As a subscriber to the Destination Curation newsletter, you have exclusive access to my list of Recommended Restaurants in Barcelona, which you can find here.

For the market experience, La Boqueria on La Rambla remains magnificent despite its fame: three hundred and thirty stalls of glazed langoustines, whole legs of ibérico the color of mahogany, pyramids of saffron and Pyrenean mushrooms, and bacalao stacked like white planks.

Walk right past the Instagrammable front stalls to the back of the hall, where the locals still shop and the real Barcelona still hums. Bar Pinotxo for chickpeas with pork cheek and a glass of cava; El Quim de la Boqueria for huevos rotos with baby squid. If La Boqueria feels too crowded — on cruise days, it sometimes does — the Mercat de Santa Caterina in El Born, under its vivid undulating ceramic roof, is a beautiful and considerably calmer alternative. More on both, plus my full dining recommendations, in the complete guide.
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​The Insider’s Choice

Among all of Barcelona's riches, the sight I recommend most fervently to first-time visitors with limited time is the one most likely to be overlooked: the Museu Marítim, housed in the magnificent Drassanes Reials — the Royal Shipyards begun in 1283, still one of the largest and most complete medieval shipyards anywhere in Europe. The architecture alone justifies ninety minutes: a Gothic basilica of the sea, with soaring stone arches and parallel vaulted naves built not for prayer but for the construction of war galleys that carried the Crown of Aragon's ambitions across the western Mediterranean. For anyone who has just arrived in Barcelona by ship, this is not merely a museum visit. It is a small, electric piece of historical continuity — standing in the nave where the galleys were built that once commanded the very sea you sailed in on.

And for the musically inclined, the Palau de la Música Catalana, designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner and completed in 1908, is — to my mind — the most beautiful concert hall in Europe. The inverted stained-glass skylight alone is worth the guided tour. If your eight hours happen to coincide with a lunchtime concert, take it without a moment's hesitation.

Plan Your Visit

Most large cruise ships dock at the Moll Adossat, about two and a half kilometers from La Rambla. The cruise lines' paid shuttle (the Blue Bus, or T3 PortBus) drops you at the Columbus Monument for around five euros each way and is by some distance the most efficient option. Smaller and luxury vessels sometimes berth at the World Trade Center terminals at the foot of La Rambla — a five-minute stroll from the Gothic Quarter. Barcelona's metro, the taxi app Free Now, and the hop-on hop-off buses are all reliable for getting around; full details on all of these, plus my recommendations for tours and excursions, and restaurants are in my complete 8 Hours in Barcelona guide.

​Read the complete 8 Hours in Barcelona guide at jennifereremeeva.com →​

I spent Friday in Portsmouth with a dear friend, and we took a long walk on the beach before having a marvelous lunch at Briny — a superb restaurant, which I totally recommend. This was our second meal there, and I think we won’t be looking to try anything else. The menu boasts little plates, which is exactly the way I like to eat: pickled cockles, delectable crab on toast, gorgeous ceviche, hot smoked trout, and fried pickles of all sorts.

Although I slathered on the sunblock, I realized we are now firmly into sun hat season. I regret not bringing one of my beautiful Eric Javits hats, which for me are the perfect summer accessories. Hats are tricky when one is traveling, but Eric Javits’ signature “Squishies” can be folded up in a suitcase. I find it takes about 24 hours for them to snap back into place, and I help this process along by stuffing the brim with a towel overnight.

I’ve teamed up with Eric Javits to offer readers of the Destination Curation newsletter 10% off when you use code DESTINATIONCURATION10.

Here are a few of my favorites from this season, and you can shop my full collection of sun and rain hats here.​

Shop the whole collection.

​8 Hours in Barcelona: A Cultural Concierge’s Guide to Spain’s Catalan Capital​

​Basque Cuisine: Fire, Sea, and the Genius of the Pintxo​

​What to Do in Bilbao: Guggenheim, Pintxos & Basque Coast​

​Treasures of the Louvre Museum: A Guide to 10 Iconic Works​

​The Discerning Traveler’s Guide to Port Wine​

​The Rise of Islam: From Desert Sands to a Global Civilization​

​French Cuisine Through the Ages: A History of Gastronomy and Innovation​

We have a quick turnaround in Riga, before we head out for some personal travel in May. Our daughter is graduating from her Master’s Program at Georgetown, so we are flying (on an airplane — the horror!) to Warsaw, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and New York for three weeks before sailing back to Europe on the Queen Mary 2. From there, I will fly directly to Reykjavik to rejoin Seabourn Ovation for three weeks in Iceland and Norway, which has become something of an annual event.
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As a subscriber to the Destination Curation Newsletter, you have access to my cruise schedule, which you can visit here. If any of these voyages align with your travel plans, I'd love to share the journey with you.

We are beginning our descent, so I will wrap it up, but not before saying this: I turned 60 during this voyage on Ovation, which is a bit of a milestone. Like everyone who approaches this kind of huge number (enormous) I had mixed feelings about it. But I realized during this cruise that if it has taken me 60 years to find out what I’m supposed to be doing: a job I feel passionate about, that gives me the opportunity to research, write, and lecture about things I care about, then that is an achievement worth celebrating. But I could not do it without you. Thank you for being a loyal reader. This means the world to me! And as ever, if there is something I can do to help make your travel meaningful, send me an email and I will get right back to you. If I don’t know the answer — I hunt it down for you!

I hope you've enjoyed this edition of the Destination Curation Newsletter. If you'd like to share it with a friend, just forward them this link. Or copy and paste the URL and share it in any way you wish! I deeply appreciate your support for my work! https://jennifereremeeva.com/subscribe/​

I really love hearing from you -- let me know how I can help make your travel meaningful. I am rolling out new 8-Hour Guides to popular cruise destinations and love getting suggestions for new ones from this amazing community of readers.

Did you miss my last newsletter? Here are links to the previous three editions.

​📚 Books for Travelers | April 26, 2026 📚​

​🇵🇹 Legendary Lisbon 🇵🇹​

​📚Books for Travelers | April 12, 2026 📚​

Safe onward travels!

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