The Picasso museum is indeed a museum of Picasso's work, but mostly his early work. If you think you'll be seeing his truly famous works here...um, yeah, you'd be wrong. Those are in Paris or Madrid or New York or basically anywhere else but Barcelona. However, I thought it was a great museum explaining how Picasso wasn't some genius who appeared out of nowhere and was instantly successful. It all came down to his family, his environment and the era in which he matured as an artist. His father was an art teacher who challenged his son constantly and impressed a love of art in Picasso. Picasso grew up in several cities with beautiful landscapes and a culture of art. When Picasso was a young man, he became friends with some of the most influential artists, poets and musicians of the day. He was in the right place at the right time. And funny enough, he copied everyone. Most of his early paintings are direct rip-offs of other people's styles and paintings.
After that museum, I wandered around a bit in the El Born area which is supposedly super trendy...I just found it kind of depressing and smelly...maybe I came at a bad time. Anyway, I walked up to La Rita, a fantastic restaurant in the same restaurant group as La Crema Canela, to save a space in line. Yes, I said to stand in line. Even though the place doesn't open for lunch until 1PM, people were lining up at 12:30PM. They have a three course lunch menu for 8,90 euros! Unheard of! Christine met me there and we stood under the overhang to stay out of the sun. However, the red overhang made it look like Christine had a horrible sunburn. It wasn't until after we went into the restaurant (and after she had slathered on more sunscreen) that we realized most of the redness was from the banner.
The lunch was fabulous! We both had the roasted asparagus and potato starters with a tomato sauce, the paella and the Catalan chocolate creme cake. By the time we sat down and ordered, the entire restaurant was already filled and the queue was out the door. A nice sign was that we were one of only a few tourists. Most people were business people wanting a quick, filling and cheap lunch.
After lunch we walked/rolled back to the apartment for a quick siesta before taking the bus up to Park Guell which is on the side of a hill. We made a quick stop to an English second-hand bookshop. Christine found a few books and I only found one but it was fun to look.
Parc Guell was built by Antoni Gaudi as a gated community that was supposed to have 60 luxury mansions, open market space and gorgeous landscaping. It was a complete flop. It's a bit hard to fault Gaudi though as his idea was 100 years before gated communities actually caught on.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. It's a wonderful, relaxing park (once you escape the tourists).
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