Gelati: 2, Beer: 3 glasses, Tapas: 0
I let Vanessa and the others sleep in this morning. We arranged to meet at 1pm instead. I spent the morning wandering around the centre of the old city spotting parts of the old Roman walls. Then, once the city museum opened I visited that (I just can't get the hang of Spanish time). The city museum is underneath the current episcopal palace. It is built on the remains of an earlier Visigoth episcopal palace, which in turn is built on top of the Roman city of Barcino. You could see parts of the base of the original Roman walls, along with a winery, salted fish (and fish sauce) factory, dye works and laundry (rather more upmarket than Lenia's). In the winery were remains of their equivalent of barrels for fermenting the wine. I manage to drop my leaflet with the museum map into one of these while leaning over the railing to take a photo. I suspect I wasn't the first and won't be the last. I imagine it is the job of some attendent to go around after closing and pick them all up.
I just had a snack for lunch. This was a paper cone of jamon off-cuts with a packet of breadsticks from one shop and a gelati (pistachio and raspberry) from another. I then headed back to my hotel to meet up with Vanessa, would showed up at 1:40pm which is late even by her standards. I didn't mind too much. I'm on holiday (still!) so I was in no rush. While I was waiting a group of young Brazilian men put on their busking act. They are all experienced at the Brazilian martial art of capoeira and put on a display of mock fights and acrobatics (tumbling and human pyramids). They were all good looking and wearing nothing but track suit pants low on their hips so they drew a big crowd of mainly women. I actually got elbowed and had my feet trodden on by some who wanted to get closer to the front to watch. The part of their act that got the biggest cheer was when the pants of the one on top of the pyramid fell down around his ankles.
After finally catching up with Vanessa the two of us meet up with Rachele and Generoso and went to Montjuic Park on the outskirts of Barcelona. To get to the top we first took a funicular halfway up and then a cable car to the very top (which turned a corner!). At the top is a castle which had fabulous views. We rode the cable car back down to the halfway point and then went in search of another theme park aka Poble Espanyol like the one I went to in Palma. It turned out to be further away that it seemed from the map so Rachele and Generoso waited for us in a park while Vanessa and I went on. It wasn't as good as the one in Palma. I didn't recognise any of the supposedly famous buildings. However, each building housed the shop (and often workshop) of a local craftsman so we had an enjoyable time browsing around. We also had a gelati (pistachio and mango for me this time). It turns out the man selling the gelati was from the town outside Bergamo where Vanessa used to work so they had an animated conversation. I really must learn more Italian that just words for food.
After our gelati we collected Rachele and Generoso and headed off to dinner. This was at the Moritz brewery, which has a restaurant on site. It is built on top of some more Roman ruins so it was worth going to just to visit the loos in the basement and see the ancient walls and pavements. The beer was ordinary and the food was German-inspired but we had a pleasant time all the same. Finally I said good-bye to Rachele and Generoso but not Vanessa. She rushed off to see a concert with friends but has promises to meet me at the airport bus stop tomorrow morning at 7am. I said she'll oversleep but she promises not to go to sleep at all but just stay up all night. She insists she'll show up, but makes no claims about her sobriety at the time. We'll see.
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