Sunday July 7th

Oh goodness! Today we slept until 3pm! I think that my body was exhausted by this four day weekend! I slept through the alarm! (Which I NEVER do!) We finally went out for the day. We were going to go to the Picasso museum. It is free every first Sunday from 3pm to 8pm. However, by the time we arrived the line was several blocks long. We decided that it would be okay to try earlier in about a month.

We headed off to the Gothic Quarter Museum which is also free on Sunday. This museum holds the most Roman ruins available outside of Rome. The ancient city of Barcino! It was amazing to see the archaeology and to learn about this civilization.

We walked through the textile quarter. This had weaving tools that were incredible. The used stones to weigh down threads, using up to 50 stones just to make a dress. I can’t imagine the time it must have taken! There were also some very fun residual powders and dyes that had been left behind. There was a red, yellow, and an Egyptian Blue. We are thinking this may be a fun experiment in the future.

We got to see some of the city. There were walls with towers, individual houses, roads, and a sewage system! It was fun to imagine what life might have been like. After exploring some of this we came to the fishing section. They cleaned fish and salted them or made a fish sauce called Garum. The fish and crustaceans were stored in big stone vats in the floor!

 

Next we saw the winery. There was a screw press and then a whole assembly for distillation. The press was kept in the corner of a room, with a spigot to drain the residue out from underneath and collect it in a stone basin to be funneled into the next room.  This room was full of several vats in which to keep the wine.  In the center of the floor were two holes, which we learned were used as storage tanks for sea salt and honey to add flavor to their wine. Our fun fact of the day is that they drank between ½ of a liter and ¾  of a liter of wine per person per day in Barcino! Wine bibbers!

 

We walked past the church, the baptistry, and the altar. Sadly, most of this was closed down for renovations. After that we saw the palace. Now, this palace was built much much later than the rest of what we saw and was literally built on top of the previous ruins described. The most interesting thing was that they had set up part of the floor to be see through (with a glass walkway) so that you could see the palace ruins as well as the mosaic from the old floor of the house that it was built above!

To end seeing the museum we were able to see the private chapel of the Catalunyian royal family. (Interestingly enough, this is yet again built on top of ruins!) The chapel was built by three separate monarchs and completed in the 14^th century. It had beautiful stained glass windows.

 

 

The coolest part of our more modern history is that we were able to go into the throne room of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella! It was gigantic! This is where they greeted Columbus when he came in from his return voyage from the Americas! We also left via the stairs that KD first showed me on our Gothic Quarter adventures. A wonderful way to bring it all full circle!