Barcelona, day 1

I arrived in Barcelona on a night train from Paris, at about 8:30 AM. Barcelona is the city of Antonio Gaudí, an important Spanish (well, actually Catalan) Modernist architect. His most famous work, the Sagrada Famila will appear in the next entry.

The first part of the day was spent getting my bearings. My room was near the main drag in Barcelona, La Rambla, right next to the Mercado Boqueria. La Rambla is a mile or so long road with a wide promenade in the middle. It is a constant whirl of street life, populated by buskers and beggars especially in the evening.

On one side is a square, in which can be found a street light based on Modernist ideas.



I then proceeded on narrow streets (this being the old part of Barcelona) towards the cathedral.





As it was hitting siesta time (and not in Akron, Okhiiiioooo), I wandered on to two fairly interesting museums. The first is the Museo Picasso, which is interesting both for its site and its content. The content was founded on donations by Picasso and his heirs of works of his, and has much of interest to anyone curious about the early days of Picasso's development as an artist. The buildings housing the museum are a set of adjacent historical mansions which have mostly been gutted in the interior for modern museum galleries, but much interesting architecture (and reuse of existing structures) abounded. No pics, sorry.

The second museum, right across from the Picasso, was the Barbier-Muller Museum, which housed an interesting exhibit of native arts and crafts from all over the world, currently showing those with bird and animal themes. Interesting to see e.g. Mayan and Egyptian objects juxtaposed. Small museum, but quite worthwhile.

I also visited the City History Museum, which is built on top of Roman ruins. You take an elevator down 2000 years into the past to view them. The ruins are of parts of a laundry, a wine-making operation, and, as the levels go up, elements of early church architecture. A really nice presentation...

I ended a long day of walking with dinner at Organic, a restaurant that Russell would hate. On the other hand, they had T-shirts bearing the words "Organic is orgasmic", so they can't be all bad. I almost bought one, but my backpack was feeling mighty stuffed.

The next day I went to Modernist heaven.