Day 2 in Barcelona and we didn’t have a busy day planned, but we needed to start somewhat early, we had tickets for the Picasso Museum mid-morning.
Oh my, what did I do to myself yesterday, everything hurts. Oh yes, those stairs.
So now we were heading to the museum and what I hoped would be a leisurely time studying all of the art work of a modern master. The Picasso Museum houses a large collection of Picasso’s work from the very beginning of his painting through his modern paintings, the ones that most people are familiar with.
Breakfast done and on to the taxi stand to get a ride to the Museum. Luckily I had the address since the Museum is down a narrow set of streets away from the main roads. Once the taxi left us off, we wondered through the maze to get to the entrance with only one or two false starts.
We made it on time for our tickets and found the counter for the audio guides. Note to visitors, there were lockers where we could leave our backpack and hats while we walked around.
The audio device was like an old fashioned flip phone from the early 90’s. Now that would not be bad, but the long winding staircase from the day before really did something to my already painful back. You had to lean into the audio device while standing and looking at the piece of artwork. This was ok for awhile but people bumped into you and pushed you out of the way while you were “listening”. I needed to find the “sweet spot” for visiting this museum. This was not it.
There are well over 100 pieces of Picasso’s work housed in this Museum spanning his entire career. It was an amazing collection. However the slow pace, standing and listening was exhausting and for me quite painful. After a few hours I had to sit down and that was not an easy task. After a few breaks and a few more paintings, we thought we had seen just about every room in the special exhibit and then were ready for the gift shop.
The gift shop was even more fun than the museum — prints of the well known and not so well known paintings, sayings — all things Picasso. We had to remember that whatever we bought we would have to carry for the rest of our trip and home. We had to buy a few things (my Man of LaMancha mouse pad is my favorite and I use it every day) and we were ready for lunch.
Plan for lunch…..let’s go walk around and find someplace that looks interesting (without knowing Spanish). We walked for a while and made a few turns here and there. Our map was trying to help but we had no idea where we were. Wait we are back at the port area. There had to be a few places to eat here.
We wandered into what we thought would be a nice little place with outdoor seating, except for the guy smoking a cigar. So we moved inside. The menu was really not my thing, but we stayed for the cold beer and my husband always finds something he likes…I muddled through.
After lunch it was time to shop. I was going to find real Spanish espadrilles. I was prepared with the names of the best espadrille places in Barcelona on La Ramblas.
After a few more wrong turns and a long darkish street, I was ready to abandon the shopping. My spouse who believed we were going in the right direction, would not let me give up so easily. Once we found La Ramblas and all of the people in the cafes and stalls lining the middle of the area, we knew we were going in the right direction.
Time for a break and the nearest nice looking air conditioned restaurant. Drink and snack and off we went to find the shoe store, which as it turns out was across the way.
Toni Pons espadrilles are the best spanish espadrilles. Without much hesitation I found a few pairs to accompany me home.
Ready to call it a day. And yes, Toni Pons ships to the US.