Again we breakfasted in our flat on croissants from the local bakery, accompanied by what I thougt was orange juice but turned out to be an orange-soy "health" blend with the chalky taste of Tang.
Once all of us were dressed and ready, we sortied toward the Museum of the History of Barcelona, located just a few blocks away next to the main Cathedral. Once again I managed to underestimate one of Barcelona's attractions. I figured the MUHBA would be a collection of mostly local interest — a few antiquities, some portraits of 19th-century politicians, maybe the jersey of a particularly beloved Barcelona F.C. player.
Once again, Barcelona sneered at me. The mighty MUHBA is much bigger, and considerably more interesting than I ever expected. Among other things it contains a chunk of an ancient Roman town. One descends to the basement level, where archaeologists have been digging like moles under the area around the Cathedral, exposing the foundations and basements of the original Roman settlement of Barcino.
Nor is the MUHBA content merely to show: there are portable audio guides which tell about everything in great detail. One can select helpful little supplementary lectures on Roman laundry detergents, the production of garum, and wine-making.
Above the Roman city there's a layer of Gothic Barcelona, and one can trace the expansion of the original bishop's house from a standard Roman town house to the huge pile he lives in nowadays.
At the surface level is the old palace of the Counts of Barcelona, with a display of High Medieval history explaining how the Counts went from rulers of the city to Kings of Aragon and finally to the throne of Spain and masters of three continents.
Overall, I give the mighty MUHBA an enthusiastic thumbs-up, especially since the museum has other facilities scattered about the city and we only got to visit one of them. It also has a pretty impressive bookstore, focusing (naturally) on the history of Barcelona and Catalonia. (Note: bookshops are scarce in the old section of Barcelona. I only saw one other, on La Rambla. I expect there are more near the Universities, and for all I know there's a whole street of them we never stumbled across.)
We picked up some Xorico for dinner and had lunch at a different Basque tapas joint (whose name escapes me). It wasn't as awesome as the one near our flat, but it was certainly good. Then home for a nap.
In the afternoon we slathered ourselves in sunscreen and headed for the beach — along with several thousand other tourists and Barcelonese with the same idea. Like all public beaches, the one in Barcelona makes one feel very slender and attractive. It also made us feel exceedingly pale. I'm sure passengers on airplanes coming in for a landing must have wondered what those white flashes were from the seashore.
The water itself was warm and very dirty. Floating-condom dirty. When we were done we all went back to the flat for a serious scrubdown. (I expect the water is cleaner at the public beaches located further away from the city's core, but I didn't get to find out. If I go back it would be nice to arrange a day-trip or overnight expedition up the coast.)
We had planned to go to a choral concert that evening at Santa Maria del Mar, but at the last moment it was canceled. Maybe the choir got drunk. So we improvised: a stroll through the Ciutadella park (located on the site of the other huge fort built to control the city) and then a very high-end dessert at the nearby pastry shop called "Bubo." It's worth a stop if you're in BCN. By then our active day began to catch up with us, so we went off to bed tired and content.
Cats sighted: 0
Next time: Xocolata!
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