July 24

Today was much more relaxing that some of our other travel days.  We started with a wonderful morning at the beach about 1km south of our hotel.  It was nice to be able to relax on a Mediterranean beach and make all of you jealous.  There will be a massive photo posting when we have reliable internet and some spare moments.  Laurel got a fabulous shot of me as a wave was about to soak me.

After cleaning up from the beach, fuimos al---sorry, we've be thinking in Spanglish---we went to the city history museum of Barcelona.  The musuem starts by showing you some artifacts, but then quickly takes you underground, where most of the museum is located.  Barcelona was literally built on top of Barcino, its Roman ancestor city.  Barcino's ruins are located beneath the plaza where the city history museum is located.  Convenient, huh?  Laurel and I got to see some fourth-century Roman urban planning, factories, and even a laundromat and fish-sauce making store.  All of these ruins were from roughly 200-400 A.D., a mind-numbing distance from the present day.

We were also able to see the foundations of the Barcelona cathedral, which borders the plaza.  These stones were cut in neat blocks as opposed to the more jagged Roman ones. It is also suspected there are more ruins beneath the cathedral, but no one is going to let anyone go digging in a 700+ year old church.  We also learned more about Spanish history and the formation of Spain as a unified country.

Leaving the city history museum...ok, more like being escorted out by a guard because it was closing time...we turned to the South.  We explored a few shops and saw another protest against austerity measures.  Although they were perfectly peaceful, it was a little scary at first because we could hear the noise getting closer without knowing where exactly it was coming from.  (The streets of Barcelona, as previously mentioned, were laid out by drunken cattle.)

We turned south and saw a monument dedicated to Christopher Columbus named "El Mirador de Colon" (Columbus the Viewer, roughly).  We've seen monuments to Columbus on the other side of the Atlantic, too, but Spain is obviously very proud of its national discoverer.  We also got some fabulous pictures of Laurel riding one of the metal lions that adorns the monument's base.

After that, the day was drawing to a close and we stopped by a tapas restaurant to get Laurel some paella before she left the seaside Spanish city.  Tomorrow, it's on to Salamanca!