Day 13: June 26 (Barcelona)

Museum of Catalan Art

City View from Museum

We got up after 10:00 am, had breakfast at the hotel, and set out for a day at Parc Montjuic.  Once again, we followed an ipod tour. At the entrance beyond the Placa d' Espanya, we saw some buildings from the exposition of 1929/30, including a Van der Rohe building, the German Pavilion, considered one of the most beautiful in the world.  We did not pay to go in, partly because we could not figure out where the entrance was after walking completely around it. This turned out to be because the "Entrada" sign was on the reverse side of the "Salida" sign which was facing toward us.  We retraced our path of last night to the National Museum of Catalonian Art.  This museum is best known for its Romanesque collection which was (of course) closed to the public for remodeling.  It did not actually matter to us because we enjoyed the parts of the museum we did see.  We checked out the temporary exhibits and then finished in the modern section.  The temporary exhibit was "Realismo" featuring the work of Courbet.  My favorite in the modern section was a Catalan artist named Casa.  Neil liked the modern area very much, especially many of the cityscapes.  One of the paintings was of La Boqueria we visited yesterday.  We could have spent more time but the museum closed at 2:30 pm on Sunday.

Continuing on our ipod tour, we climbed the hill to the Olympic Stadium.  It was built in 1928-29 also, and refurbished for the 1992 Olympics.  The stadium was one of the few things open on Sunday afternoon.  You could go in the front door and look at the field and stands.  We had a sandwich and bought some water for our walk to Castell Montjuic at the top of the Park. The views of the city off the road on the way up were outstanding.  On the way, we passed an aerial tram station which we thought was the opposite end of the one we saw yesterday from the World Trade Center at the beach.  It was not, however.  This tram started down from the bottom of the park. There were surprisingly few people.  At the Castle itself, there were more - but not crowds.  It was possible to drive to the Castle.  There were also trams and there were tour buses.  The Castle and grounds were huge, and there were 360 degree views of the city and of the harbor.

View of Harbor from Montjuic

Rambla del Mar from aerial tram

We walked down from the Castle with the plan of finding the aerial tram to the beach and taking it.  We passed through beautiful gardens walking down the ocean side of Montjuic.  We found the tram station, which adjoined a big hotel and nice gardens.  The ride was expensive but fun / scary.  We exited the tram on the top of a very tall tower and had a fun ride down in a transparent elevator.

We walked back into the Barri Gotic from the beach, toward the Cathedral area.  We hoped to see people dance the Sardana (a Catalan folk dance) which is performed impromptu by groups, usually on Sundays, in the plaza outside of city hall.  (I did take a picture of a statue of Sardana dancers coming down from Montjuic.)  On the way, by pure chance, we stumbled upon Bubo, the shop we were looking for the other day with the best chocolate cake in the world (according to Frommer).  We stopped in and had coffee and shared a hazelnut treat recommended by the waiter.  We realized that our problem in finding the shop was that we confused two churches / plazas. Anyway, we enjoyed the surprise break from our walk.

Human pyramid

We did not see dancers when we got to the city hall, but it did look like something was about to happen.  The doors to the city hall were open, people were milling around, and there were two big procession figures on either side of the doorway.  No dancers appeared but a group of youngsters in white martial arts looking outfits accompanied by musicians came out the doors and performed a series of acrobatic human pyramids with a small child at the top.  I had read that these "Castellers" traditionally did these routines at festivals. After the acrobatics, the musicians started up and the two procession figures by the door did a kind of formal dance.  This started a whole procession of several sets of musicians and figurines marching out the doors of the city hall and into the plaza. One group of marchers has water guns and shot streams of water into the crowd.  The "Castellers" brought up the end of the procession, making some moving pyramid formations as they marched.  We had no idea of what the festival was or where the procession went, but we were thrilled to be in the right place at the right time.

Trying to get back to the hotel, we got totally turned around in the Barri Gotic.  We ended up emerging from the old quarter into the harbor / beach area, just about totally opposite of what we were trying for.  We were, however, on familiar ground once we saw where we were.  We walked back over to the Columbus monument and got on the Metro at the foot of Las Ramblas.  Exiting the Metro at our home stop, Rocafort, we stopped for another ice cream treat and then headed down to the hotel for our afternoon siesta.  Neil worked on our travel plans for tomorrow while I did quite a bit of laundry.  I called my friend, Carol, who is going to meet us tomorrow in San Sebastian.

We dined close to home, at a small bar called Diamante across the street.  It was another beautiful, warm night to cap off another busy day.  The waiter was very nice, although (once again) there was some confusion stemming from our bad Spanish. There is a Tango Club around the corner from the bar.  We have not gone in but it looks pretty garish with lots of bright neon street lighting.  It seems like a hangout for a clique of mostly older men and women.  A big group of the Tango Club patrons walked by the bar while we were eating.  They exchanged warm greetings with our waiter as they passed through.