Last day in Barcelona – Picasso and Güell Park

Today marks our last day in Barcelona and it was a great day! I woke up MUCH earlier than I have for any other part of our trip so far to skype with family and friends back home. It’s so hard to find a good time to talk with them as we are 9 hours ahead of everyone! I made the mistake of telling my mom I would skype with her at 9:30pm on Wednesday, when I had planned to get up at 6:30am on Wednesday to skype. The problem is 6:30am Wednesday in Spain is actually 9:30pm Tuesday in California! Silly me! Luckily it worked out and I was able to talk to everyone I had planned.

After skyping until 8am, I went back to sleep until 11am and then we got up to begin our day. We had a quick breakfast of bread and peanut butter in the hostel, and then went off to the market for fresh fruit juice and sandwiches to pack with us for lunch. Our plan today was to visit the Picasso Museum. We navigated our way through the Gothic quarter to the museum. When we arrived, the line was a half hour wait and it was boiling hot! We were able to stand in the shade, and I bought a 1€ fan from a vendor to help us keep the air circulating. The wait didn’t seem too long because before we knew it, we had purchased our tickets, stuffed our backpacks in a locker, and were off touring the museum.

This museum houses about 3,000 works by Picasso, mostly sketches done with pen and ink on paper and oil on canvas. Most of the collection highlights his earlier work, leading up to his studies in cubism. With my art history background, I found the museums chronological progression to be quite fascinating. Ryder enjoyed Picasso’s early realist work, but wasn’t too impressed with the small collection of early impressionist and cubist work that quite didn’t reflect what can be seen in his most famous pieces. I feel that what the museum lacks in famous pieces, it makes up for in the quantity of work and quality of his earlier work, including two pieces, Science and Charity and The First Communion, which won him numerous awards in public exhibitions. All in all, it was worth the wait. After we left the museum, we headed to Güell Park.