It's a Rainy Day in Barcelona

 Today is Naomi's last full day and our second to last. It's been raining all day. So we're mainly staying close to home. Naomi says we've hit all the places one of her customers recommended (La Sagrada Familia; the Picasso Museum; the Joan Miro Museum; Montjuïc. The only place we haven't gone, but are going tonight is the restaurant Agua for dinner.

Actually, there's one other place we didn't get into: The Park Güell. We got this close to it:


Foolishly, we thought we were going to walk right into the park. It's a park, right? No, it's a fabulous highly desirable tourist locale, and we needed tickets to get it. They were sold out by the time we got there. But it was an interesting neighborhood, and I enjoyed walking around.

We regrouped at a coffee shop and decided to go to the Joan Miro Museum instead - of course, getting tickets ahead of time. The exhibits touched on his training in and eventual rebellion away from "representational art." My favorite comment from Miro was about a painting of a single line on the canvas (parphrased here): "It only takes a moment to draw the line, but I spend years reflecting upon it." The exhibit of his line paintings was appropriately (and at Miro's insistence) presented as a "chapel" in which to meditate in silent reflection upon the art.

The coolest piece (in my opinion) was his mercury sculpture. It looks a bit like an Alexander Calder, with whom Miro was great friends. Chris and I gazed at it for a while, assuming that the liquid running through it was water. But then we saw droplets on the floor that were not being absorbed and realized it actually was mercury - which also explained why the sculpture was in a glass-enclosed space. See Facebook for a video.

I've already touched on our visit to La Sagrada Familia - the ultimate "must see" site in Barcelona. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I found the outside to be far more interesting than the inside, but there was some impressive abstract stained glass inside.



Here's my favorite picture from the exterior of the cathedral:


And Naomi in front:


Finally, we went to the Picasso Museum on Sunday (after our morning with the giants). This exhibit showed more of Picasso's trajectory through representational art as a student than the Miro museum showed for Miro. The Spear/Countryman family will often spend as much time in museum gift shops as it does in the actual exhibit. I'm often the one who spends the least (we just got rid of a bunch of junk in our house; why pick up a bunch more?). But I have to say I was tempted by some throw pillows that I thought would look great on our new sofa in Chicago:



You'll all recognize Chris's resting face here, right?

That catches us up on our time in Barcelona. See you in Paris!



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