Barri Gotic

Barri Gotic is the Gothic neighborhood.  Oohhhh, creepy!  Not really, it's packed with tourists.  On our way to Museu d'Historia de Barcelona, we reached Placa de Sant Jaume:

It was flanked by these official and important-looking buildings.  Kept walking:

Okay, these people are everywhere, making bubbles to entertain the kiddos and can I just say they are genius!  They use 2 sticks and some string to make the hugest, most amazing bubbles I've ever seen!  You don't need those stupid plastic circle things or a bubble machine!  Go in your backyard right now and find 2 sticks and some string and tie it all together because these bubbles are insane!  They're not only huge, but with one swipe there are hundreds!

Such a good idea.

Whew, let's go back to being grown-ups and find the museum.

Not only do they have a section of "normal" museum artifacts behind glass, but they also have an entire underground area of excavated Roman and Visigothic Barcelona from as far back as 10 BC!  Yipee!  But let's check out a few artifacts first:

Okay, now that that's over with, let's go downstairs!

Ignore the pillars and the walkways, if you can.

This was part of the laundromat:

Luckily they had these drawings depicting what the ruins looked like back in the day:

Random shop:

Church:

Salted fish and garum (a fish sauce) factory:

Church:

Wine-making facility:

This gave me the chills:

Just to walk among the ancient ruins of an entire civilization and get a glimpse into how they lived was fascinating.

Then we kept walking through the Gothic neighborhood:

until we reached La Cathedral.  Yes, it's just called The Cathedral (I guess Holy Shit! was taken):

To go inside is free, but you have to have your shoulders and knees covered.  Both of us had our knees covered, but neither of us had covered shoulders.

Luckily Aaron had just bought a couple new T-shirts, so we covered up with those (and looked ridiculous):

Okay, now we're ready to go inside (yes, Aaron's wearing a Breaking Bad shirt that says "cook," referring of course to meth...and we're walking into a church).

I took a video entering La Cathedral.

They were having a service down below:

It's probably really disrespectful that I took pictures of them...sorry.

For every 10 cents, you could get a candle lit:

Then we went out into the courtyard:

They have a duck sanctuary and it's really beautiful:

They were very people friendly and adorable.
Kept walking in the courtyard:

You can buy candles here:

We exited behind the courtyard and this was right outside:

We walked back around towards the front, since it's a huge plaza with lots of stuff:

This lady was singing opera.

We went for dinner at a nearby restaurant.  For starters, we got a BBQ pork tapa:

  It was under-cooked, which was sketchy, so I picked at it a little and Aaron wouldn't touch it.  Luckily the chicken paella made up for it 10-fold:

Fricken fantastic!

For dessert we got Catalan creme brulee:

Less like a custard, more runny like a pudding.  Not my fav.

Walking back through the Barri Gotic, we passed this guy:

On the cab ride home, we passed this fountain:

Gorgeous!
A block from our house is this fun sign about keeping the neighborhood safe and clean:

Love it!
Aaron was so tired when we got home, he passed out monkey-style:

We loved the Gothic neighborhood!  Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.