April 3 – Off the Ship – Barcelona and Mozart
Before gong to be on April 2, as we sailed from Valencia to Barcelona, I took a picture of sunset, over the ocean and mountains.
We got up in the morning, just before our wake up call, and shortly thereafter got our room service breakfast. The suitcases had been out the night before, so we just packed our backpacks and checked the stateroom for everything. We got off the ship around 8:20. After going through immigration and picking up our luggage, we got on a taxi for a short drive to the place to drop off our luggage, since the room wasn’t ready yet. Unfortunately, there was a Sunday morning road race with all roads blocked off. Our taxi driver tried to find a way and finally put us on “a 1 km walk away”. We proceeded checking Apple Maps every little while and finally stopped for coffee and rested. We arrived finally at the place and packed our luggage away.
We walked past the Cathedral, before arriving at our destination, the History Museum of Catalonia.
We visited this museum when we were here BC (before Covid) in February of 2020. It is built atop ruins from Roman and Visigoth Barcelona from the 2nd to 8th centuries. It is fascinating and you can find many pictures in my 2020 blog posts. I took some more, of course. The Roman ruins included a place where they cleaned and processed fish, sewers and a place where they pressed and fermented wine. You can imagine the smells back then. The Visigoth ruins were from a cathedral.
Among the items found in the ruins was a ring with an early representation of the monogram of Christ, not a cross.
The other item which we saw last time was found elsewhere but shows 5th century Christianity. It is a tombstone and here it is along with the description. Poor little Magnus was only three.
We then walked around for a while, figuring to get to La Rambla. Around noon, we stopped for lunch at Restaurante Ferran, which was a fun name since we are traveling with Bert and Alice Ferran. 
After this, it started to rain. We walked back to the storage place and then got a taxi to our VRBO apartment. The landlord helped us with luggage and showed us the apartment. Very nice place for the next two days. We relaxed and unpacked two days worth of clothes and tried to leave the rest in suitcases.
After a couple of hours, we dressed for a concert and dinner, and caught a taxi to the Palau de la Música Catalana for a Mozart concert featuring the Linz Symphonia, KV 425 and the Great Mass in C Minor, KV 427. The Mass was incomplete during Mozart’s lifetime and there have green many completions of it. In this case the conductor, Salvador Mas, actually was the person who did the completion. We had seats in the balcony, separated from the Ferrans and Ali-Hassans. A magnificent place for a concert, with wonderful acoustics and decor.
The entire chorus wore masks as well as the orchestra (except wind instruments). Only the conductor and soloists were mask-less. It is very hard to sing in a mask, speaking from personal experience.
After the concert, we walked about a kilometer to Restaurante Arcano for a great dinner with lots of interesting Catalonian foods. We then took separate taxis to our location. The Ferrans and Ali-Hassans are taking a special Gaudí tour with a personal guide. We saw all that in 2020, so we will tour around here.
