Day 23 Land Sea and Air!

Longest breakfast, very fulfilling!

I'd decided to plan my next few days over breakfast I'm glad I did rather than wait as I had to plan 5 days ahead due to restrictions on what I wanted to do in the coming days ..   I'm not letting on what that is yet! 

But juggling reservations for hostels and one B&B for the next 5 nights along with all the connecting trains is a flipping nightmare! 

It took over two hours..... I just completed it as the staff started to clear breakfast! 

But this should be worth it! 😉

It did throw my plans for the day into chaos, a chaos that actually worked out well! 

Going through the Gothic quarter I stumbled into another covered market bright and colourful in the mooring light!

i miss markets in local towns sadly a thing of the past! 

Further into the quarter I noticed that some roadworks actually had archaeologists at work where they were recording a medieval bronze foundry! 

my kind of thing of the past! 

A quick chat with the archaeologists and they pointed me in the direction of Muhba 'Barcelona history museum' the museum is a little disjointed in its layout and I did get a little lost wandering through! 

This museum is actually telling the history of Barcelona not histoy in general, which really gave an interesting slant for a museum going from ancient Roman where the colony of 'Colonia Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barcino' was established a considerably smaller town in its time obviously, but maps really demonstrated the amount of growth Barcelona had undergone since those days! 

the museum is situated in the old Roman town with quite vast subterranean archaeology that's been excavated and is open to visitors to explore! With exposed fish factory and salt production in huge amphora!

in the bottom pic you can just make a school group being shown around, they were quiet and paying complete attention to the lesson, I didn't want to disturb them so I waited for their current talk to end before passing through them, they said hello and asked where I am from all really pleasant! I had to say just how impressed I was by them to their teachers!!! I can't imagine UK kids being so well mannered!

Carrying on through the museum there were Roman pendants of the kind that can be found in the UK phalluses! 

You can see mosaic which would have been from the Roman basilica over which is built the Gothic cathedral of Barcelona,

The museum covers Barcelona history right up to relatively modern times , my interest doesn't stretch in to the modern but a Catalan map of Europe was interesting with the known ports, rivers and towns marked up the UK being curiously painted a purple colour unlike the rest.... No idea why tho! 

Passing out of the museum in the lobby is huge mechanical time piece from the 1500's, I won't say clock as it never had a clock face it just rang on the hour!

Enough history for the day, and with it being lunch time it was long past time that I got to a beach! So there I sat watching the waves fending off beach sales of throws, sangria and one irritating woman who kept trying to sell a massage! No four times was not enough! 

I gave up walked off! 

Lovely beach tho! 

while I'd been sat, I'd seen a cable car in operation, I'm pretty sure I've never been in one! So I headed that way and 13 euros it was a no brainer! 

Stunning views over city beach and port! 

the distant basilica of the holy family visible even at this distance ( just about the white mast centre right)

descending from the end of that ride from the hill it had terminated on I'm back into the city and walking north towards the hostel to allow time to prep food for tomorrow's journey north! 

And of course to write this over a beer!