Barcelona

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I got up early to scope out opportunies for breakfast, but found limited options. We did find a suitable cafe and headed to the Cathedral which is adjacent to the Museu d'Historia and our first destination. I always carry a compass on our travels and Mike has a more mysterious form of wayfinding, so we periodically have a "different way of getting there."


Don't miss this museum on a trip to Barcelona. You take an elevator down into time. The elevator levels are indicated by centuries. You are deposited into the first centuries AD. I'm always questioning how it is that we become so impressed by something when we have had the opportunity on earlier occations, but such it has been for me with the Romans on this trip. We have made several trips to Europe, but I have really been impressed with their societ/culture on this trip. You should do your own "googling, " but I was struck by how advanced the Romans were in the first century AD and then went through a period that used to be called the Dark Ages; a term not used today for roughly the period 400-1000 AD. The Roman ruins in the basement of the museum were discovered 50 feet beow the present day ground level. The infrastructure for handling water and sanitation is amazing. They even had a system for collecting urine to make ammonia for disifecting there laundry. They had very suffisticated wine distilling and the use of garum in cooking is facinating; (Garum was prepared from the intestines of small fishes, macerated in salt and cured in the sun for one to three months, where the mixture fermented and liquified in the dry warmth, the salt inhibiting the common agents of decay.)

Mike had headed off to parts unknown, I knew Lynn and Ruth would be taking a long time in the museum, so we agreed to meet for a bus tour of the city at 1:00pm.

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