3rd day in Barcelona, 10/17

Today was our last day in Barcelona and we saw a little bit of what didn’t fit in with old or new Barcelona in the earlier days. We started our walking tour at 11 am walking though more of the city making out way to la Iglesia Santa María del Mar, the second cathedral in Barcelona with the one we saw the first day in the Gothic neighborhood being the first one and la Sagrada Familia being the third. We only saw the outside because it was Sunday and there were services going on and we didn’t have a lot of time.

On one side of that we saw a monument to the massacre on September 11, 1714 of Catalan patriots by the Bourbon king ruling from Madrid. From that day the king outlawed Catalan culture and its institutions. Then we finished our tour in the Paseo de Born, which is a cute little square that used to be a jousting square but now has many nice restaurants in the evening and is a popular place for younger people during the nights.

Most of us headed to the Picasso Museum after that having to wait in a bit of a line to get in. It was really cool and I’m really glad that we went. There weren’t a lot of his most famous pieces, but the rooms evolved along with his years as an artist and it was really interesting to see his progression and the different types of art that he studied. Some of it seemed very realistic, but the parts I liked the best weren’t the beginning or the end, but the part before his signature style where the figures were a little off from normal but you could still easily tell what they were. The gift shop was also had a lot of really good stuff and I was thinking about getting a poster, but none of them really spoke to me.

Lunch after with Laura Rachel and Kevin led us to an udon noodle place nearby. It was good which was nice because ethnic food isn’t usually good in Spain. We took the metro back to closer to our hotel since we had walked a ways that morning. Where you put the tickets in is opposite to in Madrid, so when Kevin tried to go through and it didn’t work we then pointed out to him that it was the other side. He switched to the other side but it still wouldn’t let him through. He thought he had run out of time, and since we had paid, he ducked under the turnstile.

The security guard only saw this last part and started yelling at him. Thankfully there was a man from Barcelona that saw the whole thing and quickly explained to the guard what had happened. We all thought he was going to get arrested or something like that. After that Kevin got an embarrassing lesson from the security guard about how to use the metro. Evidentially you have to remove the ticket before the turnstile will let you through which was the whole problem in the first place.

Then we walked along some of the more modern and larger streets on our way back to the hotel where we then got our bags, took the bus back to the train station and took the train back to Madrid. A very fun weekend trip, and I’m glad that we went here with the program because of everything we got to experience because of it and having informative guides to explain a lot more of the city to us.