Spain Day 2 - Maritime Museum and An Attempt at Futbol
Our first full day in Spain fell on our anniversary, and our original plan was to take in an FC Barcelona soccer game at the famous Camp Nou stadium. Unfortunately, Catalonia chose this day to hold a referendum by which the people of the region were to vote on whether they wanted Catalonia to secede from Spain and become an independent country. The central Spanish government of course didn't think that would be a good idea, and decided to name the referendum illegal and send in the national police force to stop people from voting. This caused a significant amount of unrest, and though everything was peaceful by us, even with a voting location around the block from our hotel, there were many incidents across the region of violence by police towards voters.
The Las Palmas team that FC Barcelona was supposed to play didn't exactly help things stay non-political. We heard from the Internet that they sewed Spanish flags and the date onto their uniforms for the game, and that the Barcelona team was pretty upset. The league wouldn't allow the match to be postponed though, so FC Barcelona decided to play the match behind closed doors, meaning that they played to an empty stadium and didn't let fans in. Of course, we didn't realize this until we got to the stadium.
When we got off the subway, we noticed a fair number of people walking in the opposite direction of us, and though we checked and rechecked the GPS to make sure we were headed in the right direction, it was obvious something was going on. I was actually shocked at how calm and reasonable everyone was once we found out why no one was getting into the stadium. I think if the NFL tried to do that, they would incite a riot rather than prevent one.
It was still cool to get to see the stadium from the outside, though we'd have liked to get to see the game of course.
Earlier in the day, we took some time to do more sightseeing on foot in Barcelona, checking out the harbor a bit more, including the maritime museum, which was quite interesting and had a cool automatic, location-based audio guide that would start playing as you entered a new area of the museum.
They had a full scale replica of a 16th century galley ship, and we learned just how terrible it would be to work on one of those things. They took hundreds of rowers, which sat chained 4 to a bench. Some of the rowers were contracted, and many others were sentenced to work on the galleys rather than go to prison.
I think I'd prefer prison personally, as the rowers were exposed to the elements and never moved from their benches even to sleep or go to the bathroom. Apparently this practice caused the ships to smell so bad that you could smell them before you could see them!
The museum sits inside the royal shipyard of Barcelona, which was originally build in the 13th century, and used through the 18th century. Obviously the buildings have been restored, and were used for a few different things - shipbuilding of course, barracks, and storage space. It was really neat to stand in a place that had so much history.
After the museum we headed to the mall on the harbor for a quick look and some really nice views of the harbor and city, and then back to the hotel to get ready for what turned out to be the not soccer game.
The Las Palmas team that FC Barcelona was supposed to play didn't exactly help things stay non-political. We heard from the Internet that they sewed Spanish flags and the date onto their uniforms for the game, and that the Barcelona team was pretty upset. The league wouldn't allow the match to be postponed though, so FC Barcelona decided to play the match behind closed doors, meaning that they played to an empty stadium and didn't let fans in. Of course, we didn't realize this until we got to the stadium.
When we got off the subway, we noticed a fair number of people walking in the opposite direction of us, and though we checked and rechecked the GPS to make sure we were headed in the right direction, it was obvious something was going on. I was actually shocked at how calm and reasonable everyone was once we found out why no one was getting into the stadium. I think if the NFL tried to do that, they would incite a riot rather than prevent one.
It was still cool to get to see the stadium from the outside, though we'd have liked to get to see the game of course.
Earlier in the day, we took some time to do more sightseeing on foot in Barcelona, checking out the harbor a bit more, including the maritime museum, which was quite interesting and had a cool automatic, location-based audio guide that would start playing as you entered a new area of the museum.
They had a full scale replica of a 16th century galley ship, and we learned just how terrible it would be to work on one of those things. They took hundreds of rowers, which sat chained 4 to a bench. Some of the rowers were contracted, and many others were sentenced to work on the galleys rather than go to prison.
I think I'd prefer prison personally, as the rowers were exposed to the elements and never moved from their benches even to sleep or go to the bathroom. Apparently this practice caused the ships to smell so bad that you could smell them before you could see them!
The museum sits inside the royal shipyard of Barcelona, which was originally build in the 13th century, and used through the 18th century. Obviously the buildings have been restored, and were used for a few different things - shipbuilding of course, barracks, and storage space. It was really neat to stand in a place that had so much history.
After the museum we headed to the mall on the harbor for a quick look and some really nice views of the harbor and city, and then back to the hotel to get ready for what turned out to be the not soccer game.
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