I’m sitting at the Maritime Museum, in their gorgeous and unusual cafe, waiting for my feet to “cool off”. Having feet problems and loving travel is an unfortunate combination. But, I saw two gentlemen in wheelchairs today and my heart broke for them, and was filled with gratitude for my problems, small as they are comparatively.

Barcelonetta is what you would expect: commercial, filled with boobs and buts (like all beaches), filled with mediocre food (yep, I’m an elitist when it comes to food), and stunning none the less. Worth a visit! I walked up and down it today. With sunshine like this and humidity like England or the Pacific Northwest (i.e. close to none), a breeze and palm trees and shrubs and other trees and plants of all types, I felt blessed despite the commercialism and the occasional crush of the crowd.

I saw something for the first time ever: a gym, of sorts, in the middle of the beach where young, ripped men could go “prove” themselves to a hopefully watching world. Never seen a gym on a beach before! The same build of gentlemen swarmed all around this gym. Clearly you only come here if you’ve already got the muscle and desired shape to show to the world. I didn’t mind watching…

The Maritime Museum is free on weekends! How lucky! Not that Barcelona does not already have a lot of my money. It does! I’ve been giving it to all the eateries. En Ville is tremendous. 100% gluten free. I ate there last night. At first I thought it was so good that my judgment of My Fucking Restaurant as being in the top 3 of my experience had to be wrong. Then I realized what the profane restaurant offered which En Ville did not: novelty and complexity. The complexity and layers of flavors was far beyond what En Ville offered. I recommend both! But for something new and complex, the answer is My Fucking Restaurant.

Attended mass at The Cathedral this morning. It is offered in Spanish and Catalon only. This time I knew that and came prepared with an app that I hoped could help: Google Translate. The “conversations” feature translates live audio into written text of a different language. Well, it didn’t work. It works if you’re standing several feet away from the phone but not, it appears, if you’re standing ~80 feet away from the phone. Makes sense. It appears that, not for the first time, I want something that the market has not yet developed. I read the book of Micah while the priest delivered his message. Both were beautiful: the sound of the priests voice echoing through the cathedral and the intent of the book of Micah, justice.

Before entering The Cathedral, I read about it some. It was built between 1200 and 1400 but, the intricate facade it has now, which is surely what you’ll notice more than anything else on initial encounter, was not added until the late 1800s. I was annoyed by that. I had an ~1880s interpretation of the medieval viewpoint, not the actual medieval viewpoint. This was one the other reason why one of my Spanish friends had told me she preferred the Basilica to the Cathedral: the first has remained largely authentic. I looked up York Minster as a comparison. I experienced that structure a couple years ago. And thankfully, every significant drop of it is real/authentic. This is a helpful reminder to myself to continue to get the history on things so I’m not significantly misjudging. For example, I observed that most faces carved around the front door of The Cathedral looked the same. Originally I thought “this is the sort of face folks from the 1300s thought was beautiful” because of course we have no idea what Peter looked like and equally it’s excruciatingly doubtful that all 12 of the disciples looked the same (unless Jesus took the same approach that Queen Elizabeth I took which was to hire her ladies in waiting based on beauty. I think not.) But then, I realized, this was what late 1800s men thought was beautiful. If you look at the individuals carved into York Minster, they are not only not all the same, but some are actually different heights, and some are kind of unattractive!

Gonna go check out the musem now. I am returning to SantAugustina this evening for dinner to recover from the mediocre food I had on the beach. It is guaranteed to work. I am looking forward to this! And to some ships!

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Fascinating fact from the Maritime Museum: at least 80% of goods sold and purchased today are transported by sea for at least part of their journey. It appears containers, and later container ships, have revolutionized our world. By creating and playing a game of tetris, we’ve become more efficient. I am fascinated by this! Would love to study this more.

On a sadder note – I actually cried in the museum – the galley rowers (the men who sat in the lower part of a galley ship and rowed in unison to propel the boat) were chained to their seats! They rowed, slept, ate, and pooped and urinated from that position. They were chained until the trip was complete. Most would not live longer than two years. I hate galley ships. (And yes, I realize I’m hating something from the past.)