Barcelona - 21 September 2011 (1)

I slept really well and didn’t get up until after 07.00.  We left the hotel after 09.00 and went for a coffee having eaten the last of our croissants for breakfast.  We found a very nice bar just a few doors down from where we had eaten breakfast on Monday.

After coffee, we walked down to the Picasso Museum.  There was a long queue but it went down fairly quickly.  My mum wanted to see a picture Picasso had painted of his mother when he was seventeen, but it wasn’t in the museum.  Lots of Picasso’s works are scattered around galleries and collections throughout the world and the museum can only offer a taste of the different styles he adopted throughout his life.

The paintings from Picasso’s first few years were very good but I felt it went downhill after that.  Call me a cultural peasant if you wish, but his drawings of doves in the later years reminded me of the birds in that unforgettable series “Rhoobarb and Custard”.  The last few rooms of the museum were entirely devoted to his version of the Goya painting of the Spanish Infantas.  I preferred the original.  We noticed how many of the paintings were displayed with Picasso’s sketchbooks to show how the paintings evolved.  I told my mum to keep her sketches as they could be worth a bit in the future.  The trouble is that my mum rarely sketches and gets the painting right first time.

We left the museum and found somewhere for a coffee.  I had a look in the guidebook and read that the Museum of the History of Barcelona had Roman ruins in the basement.  Not having had an adequate fix of ruins in Tarragona, this was a must-see, so off we went.

At the museum, I checked my rucksack into locker number 40 and we got the included audio tour.  This was better than the Picasso Museum where the audio tour would have been an extra €3 each.

The “time machine” which took us down to the ruins wasn’t nearly as much fun as the one in the Yorvik Museum in York.  It was just a lift with the date lit up which ran from 2011 to 12BC as we went down.

I’ve been in many Ancient Roman cities in my time, but never before have I strolled in a laundry, a garum and fish processing factory or a winery.  I have now and it was dead interesting.  I guess the museum had to make do with whatever happened to be underneath the building and they did it well.  In other sites, like Leptis Magna, Sabretha, Jerash or Dougga, similar establishments would be lying amongst all the rubble at the fringes of the site, never to be restored or included in the tours.

At the end of the site was the episcopal palace of AD600 and then we climbed to the mediaeval hall, where we had to return our audio guides.  After a comfort break, we were given the choice of the chapel or the exit.  We chose the exit but, big panic, it didn’t lead to the lockers.  Instead it led to a small square where they were erecting scaffolding for a concert for the fiesta.  We were right outside the museum.  Waving my locker keys, I asked a random security man for help and he escorted me to the museum entrance where I was happily reunited with my rucksack.

We then wandered off and found a small café with two courses for €10.90 and which had several vegetarian options.  We started with beetroot salmorejo as it is similar to gaspacho.  I loved it because it was so flavour packed that it made your eyes water.  My mother was not so impressed.  The soup was followed by hake for my mum and zucchini risotto for me.  Drink was included and I think deserts were too, but we didn’t have any.