Barcelona: Day Four

Thursday, June 26: An early reservation at the Picasso Museum meant an early start to the day. Breakfast at a small stall in the Central Market was great. I love the automatic orange juicing machine - yes, I know we have them in Arizona, but there is something about ordering jugo naranja, and having this old guy smile at me as the machine cuts the orange and squeezes out the fresh juice!

Back in 1970, on our honeymoon, we had discovered the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. It was good to go back and see it again. It is in a very old series of buildings that they have renovated into one, still rather small museum. The collection really has not changed much, as we remember, and is mostly based on a series of studies that Picasso did of a Valasquez painting that he called Las Meninas. Each day he would look at the painting and paint what he saw, and each day it would be different. Sometimes he would focus on a small section of the painting, and somedays he would paint the whole thing. The collection also includes a variety of other works from either early in his life - his paintings when he was 14 actually shocked Joani, as a former high school art teacher - or later in life. All, however, had to do with his time spent in Barcelona. 

In the afternoon we visited yet another museum, this one dedicated to Joan Miro, another son of Barcelona. There was quite a contrast between the two museums. While the Picasso Museum was in a very old series of buildings that had been renovated into one fairly modern facility with high ceilings and large galleries, the Miro Museum was a relatively modern building that was designed for this purpose, and yet had low ceilings and did not present the artwork very well. Both artists were indeed masters, but it was interesting to see how the buildings helped or hindered the display of the artwork.

For dinner, we went to a tapas bar. Tapas is one of the things that Barcelona is known for, and the restaurant didn't disappoint. It remined us of a sushi restaurant in that all of the tapas were beautifully displayed. Each one had a large toothpick or stick holding it together. You went to the counter and picked the ones that you wanted. As you finished each tapas you placed the toothpick into a stand. When you were finished eating, the waiter would simply count the toothpicks and multiply by the constant cost of each tapas and that was your bill. It was fun and the food was great. The only problem was that the USA lost to Germany in the World Cup that night.