Sunday May 5, 2019

Angelic

For being in a city, our room was very quiet last night. We also have a rare thing in Spain, breakfast is included. We go down to eat at 0800. They have an assortment of cheeses, ham, salami, chorizo, fruits, croissants, a onion and potato tortilla ( like a quiche), cafe, and orange juice. It is a nice start to our day. We walk about .4 miles to the nearest metro station and buy a 10 ticket ride pass from a machine. It can be shared and saves quite a bit of money as single rides are 2.20 Euros and this cost 10.20. We use our first two rides and enter the labyrinth of metro lines in the city. We successfully transfer lines and exit a station on the Rambla, where we walked yesterday. Two blocks later, we are on line at Palau Guell, a house designed by Antonio Gaudi, a very famous Barcelona architect in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. It is supposed to be a free day and you get a timed ticket here. However, Carol notices that some people have tickets, so I go to ask the guard, and he says you have to get them on line. I check on line and the free tickets are sold out for today. Well that sucks. We later learn that they made the change to online only a month ago, which was after we left for Spain and had researched it. This changes our whole day.

St Pau

We just get back on the metro and head to our next planned stop, also free, hoping that they did not change their policies. The reason things are free is that many cities in Europe have free days at the city museums on the first Sunday of the month and we are here on that day. Another metro transfer and we arrive at the Sant Pau Recinte Hospital. Built between 1905 and 1930, it was designed by Luis Domenech I Montaner, like Gaudi, another prominent architect in Barcelona.

View of Complex

The buildings were done in the Modernista Art nouveau style and the hospital was designed as a garden city to nurse the sick. It has always been associated with charitable work and the latest breakthroughs in medicine. Funded by donors, it provided health care to those who could not afford it. The grounds are beautiful and the architecture with colorful tiles sparkles in the sun. There is a grand piano in the courtyard that encourages people to entertain others, so we are entertained as we walk around.

X Ray Machine

Several buildings show the history of the rooms and the bed layouts, pretty nice for the day. One building had a history of the breakthroughs made here including the tools and equipment used. There is an old X-ray machine and blood pressure cup. There are also plenty of other medical and surgical tools that are pretty scary looking, such as the syringes to drain a cavity, forceps to pull the baby’s head out, and anesthesia masks. Hard to imagine what these were improvements over. We would not have visited here if it wasn’t for the free day, and were pleasantly surprised but how much we liked it. It is around 1230 when we leave and due to the mixup with our first stop, we do not have a time at the Picasso a Museum until 1600.

Mussels Appetizer

We decide to go and check out the beach as it is a beautiful day. Another metro ride takes us to the Barcelonata stop and we walk on a boulevard we think will lead us to the beach. We pass places to eat and some hunger kicks in. We get pitched by an older owner of one restaurant and say we may come back.

Paella Time

We check out a few other places as we walk and decide if we want a sit down lunch or not. Carol votes yes, so we go back El Dique to look at the menu further.when we get there, the owner grabs Carol and says she is with me now, then smiles and says I am just kidding as he leads her to a table. He is definitely a charmer as we watch him work the passing crowds. We get the menu of the day which includes a starter, main, one drink, and dessert. We order a salad and mussels as the starters and seafood paella as the main. Two beers will wash it all down.

Carlos The Owner

We sit outside and enjoy the people watching. The salad and mussels are very good and nice size portions. The paella comes later and is very tasty. Dessert is a pudding with chocolate syrup. At 15 Euros each, it is a nice meal and fills us up. What it wasn’t was a fast meal, so now it is 1500, and we figure that we don’t have time to walk to the beach and linger.

Picasso’s Father and Sister in a Painting

Instead, we decide to walk inland toward the Picasso Museum and explore the area a bit. A church on our list is free after 1700, so we leave that for later, and head to Picasso. We are about a half hour early but the girl,says we can go in, so in we go. This is another Free Museum today, and we have not been crazy about most of the Picasso’s that we have previously seen. We had decided that we would give it a try for free and are glad we did. The museum covers the history of Mr Picasso, from his art student days, budding artist years, and eventually to his cubist style. He paints his father and sister into some of his early work and his wife later on. He gets obsessed with La Meninas, the famous Velasquez painting, and paints portions of it as well as the whole painting, in his unique way, constantly changing things up.

Pigeon Painting

Tiring of that, he goes into a pigeon phase, painting pigeons that live outside his house. OPD, Obsessive Pigeon Disorder, can be seen in several paintings. It is well laid out with each room covering a stage of his life with corresponding paintings. There are even ceramics he made, which his wife donated after he died. We enjoyed this museum as you got to see him progress as an artist, not just the cubism style which made him famous. We have a few minutes to wait until the Santa Maria del Mar church is free, so we sit in a plaza around the corner and enjoy an ice cream cone. The Church of the Sea was built entirely with local funds and used to be closer to the sea before Barcelona reclaimed seafront to build on. It has a Gothic interior that is uncluttered because it’s art and treasures were either removed or burned by patriots fighting Franco during the Civil War.

Reusing Tombstones

We leave and decide to check out one more free museum, the Barcelona History Museum. We walk in and are not overwhelmed by the exhibits which have no English explanations at all. This changes as we descend to a lower level and discover that the main feature of the museum are excavated Roman Ruins discovered here that date from 100 to 200 A.D. We see the reuse of old tombstones in the tower wall and then wind around an industrial area that produced salted fish and garum, a sauce made of macerated fish and shellfish. Must have smelled wonderful in here.

Ceramic Fish Oil Vessels

There are large storage bins called dolia that would hold the oils. We see them again later when we go through the wine producing area, probably to help with the fish smell! It is amazing how far we walk and how extensive of an area is here under the streets of Barcelona. There is also the remains of an ancient church here as well. It was an interesting stop after all, but now we are really tired and our feet hurt. We take a metro back and return to the hotel. We do not even venture out again as lunch was very filling and no shoes on our feet feels good. More walking and adventures tomorrow.

Expenses
Hostal Alslyp 114 105.73E
Metro 10 Trip Card 10.20E Cash
St Pau Modernista Free Day
Lunch at El Dique 30E
Picasso Museum. Free Day
Ice Cream Cones 4.40E Cash
Archeological Museum Free Day
Walked 6 Miles