BYE BYE BARCELONA

Rough night.  Across from our B&B is a wine bar which had an indoor-outdoor Saint George’s party going on into the wee hours.  One woman stands out.  At 3:00 am she shouts in the middle of the street, “Oh, I am so drunk.”  Yeah, in English.  I won’t recount my comment.  Dawn came all too soon. Our last day in Spain.  Having walked our legs off yesterday, and slept little last night, we opted to slow things down and take in a little ancient history at the Museu d’Historia de la Ciutat.  All underground, it traces Barcelona’s evolution from its first Iberian settlement through its Roman and Visigothic ages.  You roam around on metal walkways overseeing walls of houses, mosaics, workshops.  Not very exciting, but pretty interesting to see the actual stuff from that long ago.

Adjacent to the ruins is Saint Mary’s Chapel of the Major Royal Palace built by King James II in the early 1300’s.  It replaced an older, Romanesque chapel.

 

Barcelona, the seat of a monarchy and a hub of Mediterranean trade, had an urban ethos that was receptive to the most innovative artistic influences in the opening decades of the 14th century. (OK, I copied that line.)   The city’s workshops were centers for the production of Haggadot, manuscripts that contain the ritual of the Passover meal, which were commissioned by families living in the Call (Jewish quarter) in Barcelona and in other Jewish communities. The museum’s exhibition reunites for the first time in more than six centuries an extensive selection of these works from the Catalan Gothic period that were dispersed around the world when the Jews were expelled.  I took this representative shot just before the heavy hand of a museum guard settled on my shoulder with the comment, “no photos!”  I offered to delete it, but he shrugged and said no need. 

Enough kulchah.  Time to eat.  We again wandered back towards the B&B and a place we had scoped out earlier, P’tit Bistro, which was just down the block.  We had another late lunch-cum-dinner and it was delicious, especially at a fixed price of 10.5E each.  For starters, Loni had a salmon & spinach empanada in a tomato béchamel sauce.  I opted for a cuttlefish pasta with prawns.  We both then had the main, pork in a sauce of reduced onion, garlic, peppers, & tomatoes.  We finished with a lemon tarte for me and a chocolate tarte with Bailey’s sauce for Loni.  Oh yeah, and a beer each, included in the price.  Yikes.  You can eat well in this town.

We happily groaned our way down the block to the B&B to catch a few winks before packing for our flight to Lisbon tomorrow.  Despite the late-night street shenanigans, we enjoyed the “Close To Passeig d’Gracia” very much.

Yeah, we got our exercise climbing up.  Still, not as many flights as our B&B in Paris.  As you step inside that slightly ajar door, you enter into the kitchen, which is the center of things.  There isn’t any lounge area, just this table.  Down the hallway are the back rooms that share a bath.  Turning around, our room is behind the small door to the right by the window.  When you enter it, you pass by our bathroom on the right and down the hall to where Loni is flaked out on the bed.  Everything was spotless, if a bit quirky.

It seems like we covered every inch of the city, but we know we only scratched the surface.  If we went back, I’d like to have a native show us around.  It would sure make selecting dinner a lot easier, but “adventure” ordering isn’t bad either.  Cuttlefish, anyone?