Beach, Geese, and Picasso

This morning we made our way over to the beach area of Barcelona. There are about five or six different beaches in the city, and we chose to go to Barceloneta, simply because it was closest and we were happy to see umbrellas for rent.

The beach was absolutely packed by 11am. The water was refreshing, and even a little bit colder than I expected, but the people watching is probably the biggest reason to go to the beach in Barcelona. We saw numerous people stumbling around asking for money who were clearly still drunk from the night before. The police came by a few times to shew away the vendors for harassing tourists. The tattoos are the real deal, spanning crazy parts of people's bodies. The beach feels very European, and different than California, but there is no doubt the views are beautiful.

After some sun and lunch (I didn't get sunburned, win!), we went home and showered for part two of our day. We crossed our courtyard and I had to put pants on over my shorts to go inside the cathedral. The cathedral is dedicated to St. Julia, one of the patron saints of Barcelona. She was martyred at age 13, and her miracle was that after being publicly humiliated and stripped nude in the middle of town, it started to snow to cover her up. A blizzard in June is definitely hard to imagine here in this Mediterranean city...

Inside the Cathedral

To honor St. Julia, the cathedral has 13 cloistered geese because of Julia's age when the miracle happened. I have so many questions about cloistered geese! Don't most geese live in captivity? I thought the idea behind being cloistered is dedicating your life to prayer and I am not sure that geese are capable of that? What happens when a goose dies, do they replace it?!

The Chosen Geese

Anyway, seeing a cathedral with live animals was a first for me. The cathedral also has cool gargoyles like this unicorn!

To round out our day, we went to the Picasso museum. The museum has over 4,000 of Picasso's pieces, some more famous than others, all are modern and a little weird. I didn't notice the "do not take photos" sign until after I snapped this photo. Oops.

Another great day of sight seeing. This is our last night here in Barcelona until later in the week. Tomorrow we take the train to Madrid.