Taking it easy: Barcelona Day 2 (7 Sep 2013)

We decided that we’d try to make this a quiet day, and we managed, sorta!

First though, despite having said goodbyes the previous night, some group members met Cyra for breakfast before she headed back to Madrid and her next tour. After that, we dispersed – Cyra to the railway station, most of the others to the hop-off-hop-on bus, and us to the Museu Picasso.

Museu Picasso

There are two artists you must see in Barcelona … Picasso and Gaudi. We should probably add Miró to that, but time is limited.

The Museu Picasso is located in five adjoining medieval 13th-14th century buildings, and was originally the inspiration of Picasso’s longtime friend and secretary, Jaume Sabartés. It’s a fairly small exhibition that focuses on his early art and into his Blue and Rose periods, up to 1917 mainly. It doesn’t have many highly recognisable pieces, but it was great to see works from his youth and teens. He was clearly always going to be an artist. We were impressed with some of the landscapes and portraits he painted when he was 9, 13, and so on.  As Len said, you could see he wasn’t going to be representational for long. We liked the fact that some rooms in the museum had only a few works on the walls, sometimes just one on a wall. We came across that a bit in modern Japanese galleries and liked the way it enables you to focus.

We enjoyed seeing works from his first years in Paris when he was around 20 or so, and the influences on him of artists like Gauguin, Lautrec and Degas. You could see him trying out ideas but not slavishly copying. We also saw his move into monochromatic work, more sombre ideas. They also had some ceramics, which we rather liked, but there was no useful signage or commentary about them. He was such a versatile artist.

We were intrigued by his Las Meninas series of 58 works (1957) in which he interpreted  Velazquez’s painting of the same name. His renditions of the infanta Margarita María particularly caught our eye. The audio guide provided useful commentary on this.

After a brief stop for refreshment (granita and what we think is a local meringue treat, Roc D’Avellana), we decided to follow Lisa’s recommendation and visit ….

Museu d’Història de Barcelona (MUHBA/MHCB)

Lisa was right. This was a very interesting museum, albeit a little tricky to find. It covers the history of Barcelona from its origins to the present, including displays about the early Iberos people and mediaeval Barcelona. They also have a good AV presentation showing Barcelona’s growth. (It’s in Spanish but the graphical presentation made the main info pretty clear). But the main fascination is the excavated remains of one of the largest  Roman settlements apparently discovered in Europe, providing a peek at life in Barcino (Barcelona’s name in Roman times) from 1st to 6th century. You go underground and wander around areas used for laundry and textile dyeing, fish preparation and fish sauce production, winemaking, as well as a church and the episcopal palace. It’s wonderful. Amazing how these old civilisations got completely buried and built over by succeeding civilisations. Makes you wonder what will happen to our huge towers a few centuries hence!

At the end, we exited from a different part of the building to the entrance, which we needed to find to retrieve Sue’s bag from the locker. We decided the best way to ask would be for Sue to, nicely of course, dangle her locker key in front of the attendant – which she did. Quick as a flash, he laughingly dangled the keys on his belt back at us … and then, after we all had enjoyed the joke, pointed the way.  Such fun when people enjoy attempts to communicate.

Dining and resting

At this point we were ready for lunch, and so wandered some lanes looking for something likely, and the something likely turned out to be a tiny cafe-bar called Mesón del Café. We ordered a seafood paella and a drink each, and enjoyed watching the scene as people came and went. It was a lovely serendipitous find, we thought!

That afternoon we had a bit of a siesta, then walked down to the water just to see what it was about. Cyra didn’t think it was a high priority and she was right, but it was good to get a sense of the geography of Barcelona as a port city.

For evening refreshments, we checked Trip Adviser and came up with another little tapas bar not far from us called Bodega Biarrtiz 1881. It’s tiny too. In fact, both these places reminded us of the tiny izakayas we’d find in back alleys and small towns in Japan. We had fun choosing a few traditional tapas from their blackboard no-pictures-of-course menu and by pointing at dishes on their counter. All good fun and a nice way to end our sort-of quiet day.

Three-words

SUE: Picasso, Romans, Crowded
LEN: Infanta, Ruins, Paella

and the stills…

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