kathryn|kurioso

On the Easter Holiday in April, we flew out to Barcelona on an early 7:30 flight on Good Friday. We really hoped for warmer weather there, but it was only few degrees difference. Nonetheless, it was very comfortable to walk around the city, not as warm as we would like, but not cold, and no rain.

With some delayed from our flight, we arrived couple hours later than we scheduled. I was really hoping that we could start our day around noon, instead of mid afternoon. Our first amusement from Barcelona was the multi-tier escalator in the airport. It went flat at the mid-part to follow the design of the stair right next to it. It was kind of like going for a roller coaster in a very slow and safe version. Another thing I found very impressive about the airport was the number of stores insides. I knew from there that we would leave some time for us to shop before going back to London.

Going into the city from the airport is quite easy by taking the airport express, but finding the stop was a little confusing. There were many airport express’ signs right at different queues, and we the first one we saw stepping out the door was the at the taxi queue, right at the mid-part of the queue. We first thought the two stops were being located close to each other, but only later we found out there was only one place for the airport express’ stop, and it was WAY behind us. I just thought how great for them to put many of their signs to advertise themselves but no arrow sign to lead people to the right place to use their service.

In Barcelona, most people heard of La Rambla as the main street for tourist, but there is another big street, Passeig De Gracia, just as tourist, and I like that street better. For us to get to our hotel, we walked through Passeig De Gracia. All the stores on the street were closed for the holiday. It was kind of nice to walk on the big street with lots of room with our luggage as we needed it, but the same time it was kind of weird walking in the main tourist area and all the shops were closed. After we checked in, we took the Metro to Old City, and walked around the area. Although most shops were closed, churches were opened and crowded with many people for the celebration of the Easter. We first visited Placa Sant Just. We visited the church there, Sants Just I Pastor. I was attracted to the faces at the Gothic water fountain. Those faces looked like they were waiting for a kiss.

Old Cathedral was the church to witness the ceremony for Easter. Many people were at the church. We were there just in time to see the ceremony, the part when a life size Jesus on a cross was carried into the church. We later left the church from the main entrance. Many beggars were at the entrance asking for money. There were street performers and street vendors at the open area in front of the church, which made the area very live and busy. Close by the Old Cathedral, there was a Roman Walk. We only did part of it. The walk leaded us to see many roman style of architectural. Details on the buildings were beautiful. I really wished that we had more time and to see more of those buildings.

In Old City, there is Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona (MACBA). It is a very modern building. In the surrounding area, there filled with amazing street arts. Later we found out that many art pieces we saw there were from some famous street artists. Right outside of MACBA, BMX’s kids and skaters used the big open space to practice their tricks.

We walked through many narrow streets in the Old City and made our way to Palau de la Musica Catalana, one of the good examples of Modernista creation in the city. Colourful mosaic tiles were used on the exterior column, which always impressed me with their pattern and colour they used. Beautiful statues at the corner of the building created a focal point, which is right above the entrance. This music theatre has a new extension that used the same red bricks to tie with the old building, and the used of the glass in the design shows a more of the modern touch. We heard the interior of the old theatre is also beautiful, but since no picture is allowed in the interior, and we had other places that we would like to visit. We left and moved to our next destination. Closed by the theatre, there is a store sells very cute and fun cartoon t-shirts, postcards and many other different items. Many of the interesting cartoon graphics were based on the Ox and Spain. Kevin found a cartoon t-shirt he really liked, but they only had it available in children size. We bought some postcards for our friends.

Our next stop was Picasso Museum. As the name of the museum, it is all about the famous painter Pablo Picasso. We learned a lot about this great painter’s life and most importantly his path to become the world famous painter. There were many of his paintings starting from his early work showing most traditional drawing and painting skills, to his “Blue Period”, later “Rose Period”, then his famous Cubism, and end with his later work before his past away. There was one painting “Las Meninas” that was original done by Valazquez. Picasso repainted it in cubism. He did many different versions of it, and of each character. It was very fascinated to see his obsession over this one particular painting, and redone it many times in his own style. Some later of his work I just thought it was a joke. I guess it doesn’t matter what the famous did (especially in art), there will always be some experts in the field to find all kinds of explanations to help us to appreciate and understand the artist’s work. We ended our day by having a nice dinner in the Old City – Senyor Parellada. For starter, we both had fish soup. It was very delicious. For the main, I had fish, Hake, with olive oil and garlic. Kevin had lamb leg with twelve cloves of garlic. We both love garlic, but those two dishes were too garlic for me. The garlic bitter taste dominated over the taste of meat, which I thought the meat should be the main. Hake was very tender. We both love the texture of the fish. The price for that meal was better than what we had expected, especially comparing restaurants on the main tourist street – Passeig de Gracia.

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