Monday 2/10 evening – Tuesday 2/11
We again went to dinner in Barri Gotic and in the battle of 21st century technology vs 11th century narrow roads and tall buildings, we came out a little better. The taxi dropped us off at the end of one of those narrow streets, but this time the restaurant was only a short walk down the same street. The previous night when we got lost and the waiter had to run down the street to find us, the Festival of Santa Eulalia was going on and the taxi couldn’t get close enough to point us in the right direction. So the 11th century wins over 21st century iPhone navigation.
The restaurant, Cafe de l’Academia, on Monday evening was again very good. Eating at 8 or 8:30 means that the restaurant is almost empty and will fill as we are finishing our food.
Tuesday, the 11th, we ended up sleeping until after 11 AM, jet lag is not that easy to get over. We got up, had coffee/tea, and went downstairs to the bakery next door for lunch. We walked past the Cathedral and then walked over to the Barcelona History Museum. We spent the next hour or more in the archeological dig underneath the museum which was a fantastic discussion and display of life in the Roman City which was founded over 2000 years ago. We saw the baths, the dye shops, the winery and all sorts of interesting parts of houses and even early churches after the fourth century. Did you know that Romans drank around 250 liters of wine a year. This means that roughly 750 ml were drunk per day, which is conveniently the size of current wine bottles! Here are a few underground shots.
After that tour, we found the Federal restaurant, which was a kind of WiFi bar with good food also, and had an early dinner. We spent quite a while relaxing there and then GPS’d our way back over to the Barcelona Cathedral for a tour. Very lovely big city Cathedral, although Burgos and León are probably more impressive
After this, we walked back to the apartment and grabbed a few sandwiches from the bakery and had a bottle of wine and relaxed without going out for dinner
