Thursday, September 25

During the morning, we took the metro to Arc Triumf. In the park beside the arch, we saw some older men playing bocce ball. I knew that there were places to play soccer, basketball, even ping pong in the parks, but not bocce. We watched for a bit, and then we walked through the city park, saw the Parliament building, an old run-down market place, and then the Museu Picasso after getting a little lost and waiting in a looooong line. I liked the blue period even though if it is depressing because of the emotion…but Amy didn’t like because she doesn’t like blue. She’d prefer the purple period, which doesn’t exist. It was interesting to see the chronological organization of Picasso’s works starting about at 15 years old. There were also ceramics, which we decided that he should have not taken up as an art form. We did like his prints. As we were leaving, I gave the street guitarist 1 euro because he made pretty music. Unlike the guy in the Madrid subway who plays on a keyboard with one hand and canned background music, with a very limited repertoire (we’ve heard the same songs in the three times we’ve seen him) and still makes mistakes with the slow one-handed songs. I won’t give him money.

Today the food was great. I got paella. And Amy liked her food too (yummy ice cream!!). Yum. My desert was a baked apple, which I did not know would come soaked in liquor. It was interesting. After eating, we wandered through the old neighborhood and went into an art gallery (my idea) and accidentally fell into a philosophical conversation with the very bored art student manning the shop. It was very pleasant and I wish him the best with his art.

After seeing a cathedral or two, we went to Park Guell, which had Gaudi’s handiwork and where he lived. We again got kinda lost, but not really, and had to climb a HUGE hill up to the park. Half of it was escalators, though. I asked for directions at a bar, and the owner tried to tell me that the park didn’t exist anymore because of pickpockets. We walked up a hill with crosses on it from which we could see the entire city, surrounding mountains, and the sea. On the path, there was a man playing an instrument (a Hang, which means hand in Berne or something) that looked like a pot/wok and sounded beautiful when he played it. Amy almost died on top of that hill, though she concedes it was a beautiful viewpoint. The best part was all the mosaics of ceramic. It was very extensive. Amy said she is too organized to do all of those patterns.