Day 4 – Barcelona

June 22, 2019 – Today for breakfast we had coco’s which are a typical kind of breakfast pastry here. I bought it at a bakery and had a great time with the lady at the counter asking her what it was. She spoke almost no English and my limited Spanish made it quite the hilarious exchange.  The pastry is flaky and a flat oblong shape. It has a little raw sugar on top and what looked like slivered almonds, so I thought it would be perfect for today since we didn’t have time to make breakfast. Actually, the lady was trying to tell me what is was on top of the pastry and finally push her nose up to make a pig nose and oinked at me….either she was telling me that I was too fat for this pastry or there is pork in this pastry!! We both laughed. It was pretty good. I guess those “slivered almonds” are actually pork cracklings.

We took the metro to the Gothic Quarter to check out that area.  This area has narrow medieval streets filled with trendy bars, clubs and Catalan restaurants.   It dates back 2000 years and is full of charm and history. This is really a cool neighborhood and it was a great place to wander around and get lost in. We saw the Barcelona Cathedral among other sites.

Pablo Picasso arrived in Barcelona the age of 14 where he spent his formative years. Barcelona is the place that he considered to be his home. He frequented the, now famous, Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats) cafe in the Gothic Quarter, where he would meet with other artists, and avant-garde thinkers (and drinkers) and became part of Barcelona’s Bohemian set. In 1900 he staged his first individual exhibition at Els Quatre Gats. We stopped here to have a look and sat down for a cappuccino.

We then headed over to the Picasso Museum which has over 3,800 works by the artist and is especially rich in Pablo’s earlier artistic forays, from when he served his apprenticeship right up to his Blue Period. We had an audio guide and spent the next few hours looking at the art of Picasso.

After the museum we headed home for siesta…later than usual, but it is Saturday and Wayne is not working today. We had tickets for Park Güell at 6 pm so the timing was perfect.

The Park Güell is a public park system with gardens and architectonic elements located on Carmel Hill, in Barcelona.  Parc del Carmel is adjacent to Parc Güell located on the northern face.  Park Güell is located in La Salut, a neighborhood in the Gràcia district. With urbanization in mind, Eusebi Güell assigned the design of the park to Gaudí.

The park was built from 1900 to 1914 and was officially opened as a public park in 1926. In 1984, UNESCO declared the park a World Heritage Site under “Works of Antoni Gaudí“

The Monumental section of Park Güell features peaceful greens, winding paths and many sculptures and mosaics designed by Gaudi himself. The rest the park lies within a municipal garden and it is a beautiful place to hike, look at beautiful plants and see the view overlooking Barcelona at sunset…which we did.

We stopped at the markets on the way home to grab dinner and we made dinner of chicken cutlets, pasta with tomato, arugula salad and bread.

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