(no subject)
2006 September 20th.
Our plan for this day was to see Museum of City of Barcelona, check out, see Picasso Museum, wander Barcelona some more, get random food for dinner, then hop on an overnight train to Granada.
We learned from our trip to St. Petersburg the year prior that small city museums have a tendency to take pride in their work in a way that makes the museum informative and entertaining. (And that audio guides from big world-famous museums are overrated, but that's another matter.) So we resolved to investigate the Barcelona city museum and to brave its audioguide.
The museum is split into three areas. The entrance covers an overview of the museum, including a general history and the layout of the land. The second area describes the ruins of the Roman colony of Barcino. The third traces the Visigoth rule and ends before the Spanish monarchy. The first area basically explained about the Roman Barcino, how its walls progressively increased to the current Gothic levels, how eventually the city grew beyond those borders, and how it became Catalonian. There was a video in Catalan, English, and Castillan, but we just missed the English video and were not as interested in sitting around for 20 minutes for the next broadcast. Underneath the museum lay some Roman ruins, including a cloth dyer, baths, winery, and other industrial Roman buildings. All were fairly well explained in the audioguide. The last section included the central hall from the pre-Spanish-monarchy era Barcelona, and had a fun little video tracing how the building grew from its Roman origins to the building it is today. Finally, the museum ended with a guy asking us what we thought about the audioguides, a really nice bonus. In all, I deem it a fun little museum that doesn't really take too long but is quite informative, both on Barcelona and Roman culture.
Between check-out and lunch was further wanderings of Barcelona. This time into the cathedral. The cathedral is mostly unremarkable except for a tribute to a 13-yr old girl who died in Visigothic times, a patron saint of Barcelona, and a gaggle of 13 geese, a primitive form of a klaxon. Lunch was conducted at La Champanyet, Catalan for "small [bottle] of champagne". More good tapas, more wine cheaper than water.
The Picasso Museum was an interesting affair. A temporary exhibit showed a series of drawings and sketches of Picasso before the actual painting (a later painting whose name escapes me), and the main exhibit traced his childhood paintings to a number of difference editions of his 1957 Las Meninas, the cubist version of Velazquez's great painting. Oddity number one were with the museum guards, who strictly enforced a preplanned and convoluted route through the museum. Oddity number two is the amount of work Picasso put into sketches for his paintings. While all artists undoubtedly does so, they're not always on display, and seeing Picasso's testing of figures and colors before reaching the final composition was a interesting look into the artist's mind. Oddity number three is what a brilliant artist Picasso was. Yes, we all know about his later brilliance, of Cubism and Guernica. But I didn't know that he was a painting prodigy; that his paintings before the age of 20 would look just as good hanging in any art gallery. The only flaw of his childhood paintings is how correct they were. He could have been a brilliantly competent Realist painter, but he rejected that future and bravely invented his own style. That's something I didn't know about him.
Oh, and yes, his versions of Las Meninas are also very cool.
After the Picasso Museum we first took a short break at a cafe where I enjoyed (and found out the title of) Comatrixx's Sunrise Cafe, an electronic piece which I really enjoy. We returned to walking along the Ramblas (where I was highly indecisive about finding a place to sit and highly ignorant to Liu's tiredness), after which we visited the supermarket of El Corte Ingles, a premier department store chain in Spain. A short meal of prosciutto, cheese, and bread proceeded our last walk through Barcelona.
Between picking up our luggage (stored at the apartment) and the train station something really nice happened. Liu and I went across the street from the apartment and realized that we forgot to rearrange our bags a bit to get what we need for the train out. We didn't really see anything suspicious happening around us the last two days, so we plopped down on the side of the mostly empty street, and I kept a light look-out while Liu dug through our stuff. I kinda noticed an old bearded pharmacist standing in his doorway looking out through the streets, a couple groups of young men seemingly heading towards dinner, and a few older women chatting in the streets. When Liu was finished, the pharmacist came up to us and said in heavily accented English, "Precaution." He pointed around and spoke the word again before returning to his little shop in the corner. That made Liu and I feel really happy and scared. We didn't feel like we were in danger, but this old man must have known something we didn't, and he helped out two oblivious tourists. It made us feel really good about Barcelona
One thing odd about the train: they fit a sink into every compartment, which tilted each compartment somewhat, so the hallways were jagged. Also, I did not notice the travel package left in the compartment until my arrival in Granada the next morning. It was hidden behind the mirror above the sink.
Our plan for this day was to see Museum of City of Barcelona, check out, see Picasso Museum, wander Barcelona some more, get random food for dinner, then hop on an overnight train to Granada.
We learned from our trip to St. Petersburg the year prior that small city museums have a tendency to take pride in their work in a way that makes the museum informative and entertaining. (And that audio guides from big world-famous museums are overrated, but that's another matter.) So we resolved to investigate the Barcelona city museum and to brave its audioguide.
The museum is split into three areas. The entrance covers an overview of the museum, including a general history and the layout of the land. The second area describes the ruins of the Roman colony of Barcino. The third traces the Visigoth rule and ends before the Spanish monarchy. The first area basically explained about the Roman Barcino, how its walls progressively increased to the current Gothic levels, how eventually the city grew beyond those borders, and how it became Catalonian. There was a video in Catalan, English, and Castillan, but we just missed the English video and were not as interested in sitting around for 20 minutes for the next broadcast. Underneath the museum lay some Roman ruins, including a cloth dyer, baths, winery, and other industrial Roman buildings. All were fairly well explained in the audioguide. The last section included the central hall from the pre-Spanish-monarchy era Barcelona, and had a fun little video tracing how the building grew from its Roman origins to the building it is today. Finally, the museum ended with a guy asking us what we thought about the audioguides, a really nice bonus. In all, I deem it a fun little museum that doesn't really take too long but is quite informative, both on Barcelona and Roman culture.
Between check-out and lunch was further wanderings of Barcelona. This time into the cathedral. The cathedral is mostly unremarkable except for a tribute to a 13-yr old girl who died in Visigothic times, a patron saint of Barcelona, and a gaggle of 13 geese, a primitive form of a klaxon. Lunch was conducted at La Champanyet, Catalan for "small [bottle] of champagne". More good tapas, more wine cheaper than water.
The Picasso Museum was an interesting affair. A temporary exhibit showed a series of drawings and sketches of Picasso before the actual painting (a later painting whose name escapes me), and the main exhibit traced his childhood paintings to a number of difference editions of his 1957 Las Meninas, the cubist version of Velazquez's great painting. Oddity number one were with the museum guards, who strictly enforced a preplanned and convoluted route through the museum. Oddity number two is the amount of work Picasso put into sketches for his paintings. While all artists undoubtedly does so, they're not always on display, and seeing Picasso's testing of figures and colors before reaching the final composition was a interesting look into the artist's mind. Oddity number three is what a brilliant artist Picasso was. Yes, we all know about his later brilliance, of Cubism and Guernica. But I didn't know that he was a painting prodigy; that his paintings before the age of 20 would look just as good hanging in any art gallery. The only flaw of his childhood paintings is how correct they were. He could have been a brilliantly competent Realist painter, but he rejected that future and bravely invented his own style. That's something I didn't know about him.
Oh, and yes, his versions of Las Meninas are also very cool.
After the Picasso Museum we first took a short break at a cafe where I enjoyed (and found out the title of) Comatrixx's Sunrise Cafe, an electronic piece which I really enjoy. We returned to walking along the Ramblas (where I was highly indecisive about finding a place to sit and highly ignorant to Liu's tiredness), after which we visited the supermarket of El Corte Ingles, a premier department store chain in Spain. A short meal of prosciutto, cheese, and bread proceeded our last walk through Barcelona.
Between picking up our luggage (stored at the apartment) and the train station something really nice happened. Liu and I went across the street from the apartment and realized that we forgot to rearrange our bags a bit to get what we need for the train out. We didn't really see anything suspicious happening around us the last two days, so we plopped down on the side of the mostly empty street, and I kept a light look-out while Liu dug through our stuff. I kinda noticed an old bearded pharmacist standing in his doorway looking out through the streets, a couple groups of young men seemingly heading towards dinner, and a few older women chatting in the streets. When Liu was finished, the pharmacist came up to us and said in heavily accented English, "Precaution." He pointed around and spoke the word again before returning to his little shop in the corner. That made Liu and I feel really happy and scared. We didn't feel like we were in danger, but this old man must have known something we didn't, and he helped out two oblivious tourists. It made us feel really good about Barcelona
One thing odd about the train: they fit a sink into every compartment, which tilted each compartment somewhat, so the hallways were jagged. Also, I did not notice the travel package left in the compartment until my arrival in Granada the next morning. It was hidden behind the mirror above the sink.