Friday July 5th

The Gothic Quarter – Day One (Well, with both of us anyway.) KD was so incredibly excited and I was so incredibly exhausted! It was incredibly fun though because he was almost jittery with history zeal! He showed me all of these awesome historical places in Spain. First were the steps that Columbus walked up after his return voyage from the Americas. He turned to me and said, “Do you want to go sit on them?!” I decided that would be a great time to take his picture on the steps…. Now where was the Columbus Statue Man from Las Ramblas? Now that would be awesome! Some other fun things that we saw were the largest remaining section of the 2^nd Roman wall, the Roman aqueducts, the cathedral, city hall, the city government building, the Jewish quarter, San Felip de Neri (church), and the Corinthian pillars.

 

 

He showed me this crazy skull with a knife through it! He said that it was put there by one of the Catholic Bishops in the Middle Ages to symbolize the supremacy of the Catholic church. Legend has it that if the knife is ever removed, Barcelona will crumble. He also asked me if I wanted to go see the old Jewish baths that had been turned into a furniture store. It didn’t sound too interesting so I said no. However, I later found it because they had beautiful clothes in side. Rather amusing that my love for clothes could lead us to a spot that would also satisfy KD’s love for history. It was actually a really fantastic store! It had flowy dresses, some gorgeous jewelry, and some very modernistic furniture. The best was actually the beautiful architecture that had been left from the Jewish baths. We were both enthralled with our mutual find.

 

(Look close on this one. It is the skull with the knife in it.)

(Jewish Baths)

Something that KD had saved to show me was the antique market. There were hoards of old glass, silverware, serving ware, teacups, coins, books, shawls, a few dresses, thimbles, letter openers, clocks, and my favorite…. Jewelry! We found this beautiful ring! It was an antique silver ring with a citrine stone in the middle. If it was half a size bigger I have no doubt we would’ve bought it. (And too bad we couldn’t take a picture to share with you, but trust me, it was beautiful!)

We had to leave our adventuring around 6pm to head to the residence of the Consul General. We had been invited for dinner and a movie. The bus there was a great way to see the city as I have mostly traveled underground. It is truly a beautiful place. You can tell the city is old but yet it still looks very romantic and people beautify it with flowers and hanging vines. It is enjoyable to ride and look, but even more so to enjoy an evening walk.

 

 

 

A bus ride and a short walk later we had arrived at the residence. After a tour of the house we were put right to work. Thankfully, it was doing one of our favorite activities together. COOKING! We chopped and diced to our hearts content. Dinner was a delicious 3 course meal plus dessert! Lamb, spicy chicken and vegetable dish, and a sweet macaroni and cheese with celery, onions, red peppers, and nutmeg! Along with dinner we drank delicious homemade lemonade. (One of my most favorite drinks on earth!) And for dessert…. Ice cream and lemon cookies. I will be getting those recipes!

We watched Independence Day! (Very appropriate for the holiday season.) I had forgotten how funny that movie really was AND we both love Will Smith! It happened to be even more hilarious watching it with such political people. There were so many jokes about budget cuts, public opinion, and classified information. You should all try this movie out sometime with a crew like this. Not to mention that KD kept sneaking more lemon cookies to me and making our hosts laugh at our sneaky/silly behavior. We stayed till after one and thankfully a taxi was called for us. What a night!