My trip to Spain: Barcelona Part III

10-16-2009

This was our last day in Barcelona. I got pictures of the art decorating the hotel before we ate breakfast at the buffet. We left our luggage with the hotel and headed out.

The block of discord was near the hotel, so we walked there. It was something that we had wanted to see yesterday, but we were too exhausted from the trip to Park Guell. The block of discord is a section of town where building designers basically had a duel to see who could come up with the strangest designs. You can see from the two images I uploaded that there are some wildly different designs.

From there, we headed to the Picasso Museum. This was actually somewhat near the Gothic Cathedral. This didn't contain really famous Picasso works like the Reina Sofia did. Instead, there were representative samples from throughout his entire life. His early works are very realistic, which is kind of odd when you think of a Picasso portrait having three noses. Later in his life, like in his fifties and sixties, he turned his attention to etching and pottery. I suppose he is an artistic genius an all, but it's odd to think of someone picking up a new hobby at the age some people start to retire and becoming world class at it. One thing about this museum that was interesting was that it was established out of items from Picasso's personal collection.

After we left the Picasso Museum, we went to the Museum of Chocolate. The chocolate sculptures are really amazing. I've included a sample chocolate sculpture.
There were sculptures of every conceivable subject imaginable. There were chocolate monuments, animals, and even a chocolate Homer Simpson. There were also articles and displays chronicling the history of chocolate. The gift shop was as much of a draw as the rest of the museum of chocolate. I picked up a 90% cocoa bar for Dad. I thought about getting one for myself, but it's probably good that I didn't. Michele picked up some chocolate for her kids and some for her kids. Also, the tickets to the museum were themselves chocolate bars. We ate at a stir fry place, again not very Spanish. The place had just opened up, and if I had bout a chocolate bar for myself I wouldn't have been able to eat. They wouldn't have been able to break my large Euro note.

We got through both museums much faster than we expected. We had picked up our bus tickets the day before. So we didn't have any reason to get to the bus station early. We took another trip to the end of Las Ramblas, and looked around the mall at the end of the street. When we walked back to the hotel, we tried to walk down the side of Las Ramblas that we hadn't before. We still had time to kill, so we went to Otto's for a few drinks. I had two Catalan beers, which were both good. I liked the dark beer better than the red I had. Michele had some local wine. We collected our luggage, and headed to the bus station.

I had broken my last big bill at Otto's, so I went to use the ATM at the bus station. We had to use it the day before to get our bus tickets as they didn't process credit cards. Michele had propped up her legs on our luggage and my backpack was sitting on the seat next to her. When I got back, the backpack was gone. We had cleared it out of valuables since we intended to take it with us onto the overnight bus. However it still had souvenirs, chocolate, and the books we were reading. Here's the list I had when I made notes.

• Umbrella
• 2 packs of cards
• 4th Twilight book in English
• The Road between the worlds
• Post cards
• Uneaten tickets to Chocolate Museum
• Gaudi book for mom
• Gaudi coloring books for kids
• Gaudi refrigerator magnets
• Sagratta Famila bookmark
• toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental floss
• Spanish dictionary

There was a police station next to the bus stop, and we headed over there in hopes that the police might know of a dumping area where we might finds useless stuff. Unfortunately, they didn't have anyone there who spoke English. They had me fill out a police report, but I'm sure it went straight into a filing cabinet. I've never really had anything stolen from me, so the whole indecent was kind of shocking to me. If nothing else, sitting in the police station we were sure nothing else would be stolen.

While I was filling out the police report, someone came in to turn in a backpack she had found on the metro. The reason she turned it in was that there were music books an an envelope with 130 euros in it. I guess the money was to pay for music lessons. While the college age woman was filling out her paperwork, a frantic woman came to the police station with a child. Sure enough, it was her backpack and her missing money. So even though I had something stolen, that kind of renewed my faith in humanity.

When we got on the bus, the bus driver was puzzled that we had a one way ticket. He asked us something in Catalan, which neither of us could understand. Michele asked him to ask the question in Spanish, and she was able to answer that our sister was a teacher and we were going to Villanueva to visit her. The bus driver was so amused that two people would leave Barcelona for Villanueva without having a way back already planned out. There were only six or seven people on the whole bus, and I think we were the only two who rode the bus all the way to Villanueva. Overnight bus rides save time, but they are not a comfortable way to travel. Neither of us got much sleep on the bus, but it did get us safely to visit Caroline at her home away from home.