Exploring Barcelona (Feb 4)

We slept in! Ahhh. We needed that.

We showered and ate breakfast and met the Larsen's at the cathedral at noon. Every Sunday at noon, a local band comes to the front of the cathedral and starts to play (the same song over and over) and locals drop their bags and purses, form circles, and begin to walk/hop/dance the Sardona dance. It was a very patriotic moment, but it is patriotic to Catalan not to Spain. Spain is a country composed of regions that have strong cultural and historical identities. It was very neat to see something like this, even though the dance itself was less impressive than we had hoped!

After the dance, we went with Erik to Parc Guell, a 30 acre park that includes Gaudi architecture. It was intended to be a high income gated community, but flopped, so now it is a marvelous park full of artists painting and musicians singing and playing for donations. This was a place full of life. It was easy to spend the afternoon here. Gaudi is a name you will hear again in Barcelona. His architecture looks kind of like colorful melting ice cream cones. Andrew's reaction?? "When did we enter Whoville??"

That evening the two of us visited the Picasso Museum. Picasso was from Barcelona, and this is the best collection of his art in the country. Early in his career he painted the way other people wanted him to paint... like everyone else. He was good, but we may not have heard of him if he had never found his own style. We got to see his "Guernica" and hear the story behind it. There were photos that his girlfriend at this time took of the work in progress. That is worth seeing! This museum is free the first Sunday of every month, which is when we went.

Then it was back to the Larsen's. We talked with them until midnight, when Andy turned on the Superbowl and the rest of us went to bed! We loved talking with these guys!