Day 104: Barcelona

The first day out in the city began at 8:30 am. Kate and I got ready, switched rooms, and ate breakfast. Which wasn't breakfast. It was a pepperoni baguette with a muffin. We made our hike to the train station and went into town.

Our first stop was the Picasso Museum. One thing I love about Picasso is that even though he is most famous for his cubist work, he did some remarkably realistic paintings and drawings. We saw every single piece of the 4,000+ pieces before deciding it was a good time to eat. We ate at this little cafe that was near the museum. I had a ham and cheese sandwich with some bruschetta. Kate had a bowl of soup. I got a hot chocolate and she a coffee with hot milk. After lunch we walked around the streets and came upon a little market area that was selling Christmassy stuff. We saw another church by Gaudi and then headed back to Plaça de Catalunya. We walked up one of the main streets towards Casa Mila. We saw another one of Gaudi's houses (Casa Batlló) on the way before finally arriving to the one Gaudi masterpiece I had to see. It was almost 4 now, and we saw that La Sagrada Familia (Gaudi's church) closes at 6 whereas Casa Mila is open until 8, so we decided to hike about 10 more blocks to the church. It was fantastic to see in person! We bought our tickets and entered. Unfortunately 90% of the church is filled with scaffolding and we were only allowed to be in one small section of it. I took some pictures, and we headed down to the bookstore. I bought a couple things here and then we checked out the museum which is underneath the cathedral. It explained how Gaudi oversaw the entire process. For example, the sculptor had worked closely with Gaudi so as to conform to Gaudi's vision.

After the cathedral, we headed back to Casa Mila. Upon arrival, we were unfortunately informed that the house closes at 6:30 and that it would be better to do it tomorrow when we have more time. There was a temporary exhibition present though and we were given free entry. We looked around at the different work of the early 1900's. A lot of it was graphic design which interested me especially in seeing how similar some of the things that they came up with is so easily comparable to today's design. After a while, we headed back towards Plaça de Catalunya, through the center plaza, and down the opposite direction to a street called Nou de la Rambla. We met a few American students that Kate had met on her flight to Barcelona for dinner. We went to this small restaurant and had some interesting food (seafoodish stuff in rice.. it was ok). The two students were studying in London and are from Cali. They were heading back to the states on the same day as me.

After dinner, we decided to head back to the hostel. We took the train back, and hiked up the ridiculously curvy hill to our hostel (funny that they claimed the hostel was right off the train). Kate went to sleep and I read for a while. Then I followed her suit.