Our apartment is about 100 feet from the Santa Maria del Mar, a church built in the 1300s that rings out the time every 15 minutes. Fortunately our apartment has soundproof windows.
The church is famous because unlike almost every other church, which was built by royalty, this one was built by fishermen and shop owners who voluntarily dragged the stones one by one on their backs from the port. Back then there wasn’t room for working class people in the established churches so they decided to build their own damn church. And it is quite a church.
Also, judging from the Netflix series Cathedral of the Sea, which is a dramatic account of some happenings here around the time the church was built, the people were really good looking and fell in love a lot.
Speaking of love, you can get married here if you remember to make a reservation years in advance, meaning that women (men around here generally don’t do this) reserve a date before they even have a boyfriend, hoping that the timing will work out. Being a male, I can imagine the pressure this puts on the poor guys who are dating the women who have already reserved a wedding date at the church.
We had a little potluck dinner at our rooftop overlooking the Santa Maria del Mar and bade it farewell since tonight is our last night here. Nothing now stands between us and Girona, our next stop, other than . . .
. . . a James Taylor concert tonight at the Palau de la Musica, the theatre that you really have to see to appreciate. A UNESCO World Heritage site, the theatre looks like some wild fantasy designed by a committee. But a committee of what is the question.
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