Roman Holiday

Day 49

We woke up mostly refreshed after our 10 hour train ride. Quickly we found out that it would take a lot longer to get back to Madrid than we had thought. Luckily, our hotel let us change our plans and we bought tickets on a night bus for the next evening.

After resting for a bit and taking showers we decided that it was time to explore Barcelona. Luckily Al was feeling much better. Our first stop was the Barcelona City History Museum. Most of the museum concentrated on the Roman city of Barcino. It began as a retirement community but eventually grew into an administration center. The highlight of the museum is walking through part of the Roman town ruins. It seemed like the town was full of factories. We walked through the Laundromat where they used urine to clean the clothes, and the place were some sort of fish slurry was made. The most interesting part was where they made the wine. Wine was part of every meal, but in order to not get drunk people would water it down.

During the medieval ages the city grew both in population and in importance as it became a hub for Mediterranean trade. The section on medieval history was quite small and the museum was about to close so we didn´t really have time to see it all properly.

After a quick dinner at Subway we simply went back to the hotel. Al still wasn´t feeling great and we wanted to make sure that he would be better for the next day.