I am thankful to have had a running friend on the trip. I did not sleep much the night before. I woke up at 1:30 am thinking it was morning. There was a lot of street noise and weird sounds outside. I fell asleep again around 4:00 am and my alarm went off at 6:15 am. Seeing the sunrise over the ocean was a nice way to start would could have been a tough day. This was also the day the crackhead decided to run with us and I thought I was going to have to fight him. Good times. But that sunrise!
OK, sunrise and the endless cappuccinos in the hotel. And these little spoons. I need more of these tiny spoons in my life.
Lucky for me, today was going to be a low-key day. We had a morning museum appointment and the afternoon off. The museum was a short walk from the hotel and I was able to take in the street art along the way.
And a ton of contemporary artwork once we arrived. This was the Contemporary Art Museum of Catalonia and it was cool for Emily to get to see a big exhibit of textile art.
And I saw a lot of favorites here, Basquiat, Judd, Guerrilla Girls and of course, Calder.
And Miró.
Emily and I finished the museum and the gift shop and had time to rest a bit while waiting on Katherine to finish up. Everyone else had left as I suspect they were visually and mentally full and ready for a rest. A large group went to the Bodies exhibit that was in its final day near the hotel. Our little travel buddy group had smaller plans of just walking and exploring the city.
We began with a short walk to a restaurant Emily found. We kept seeing people hawking Mojitos but we know there's no mojito like a Cuban mojito so we steered clear. Until lunch on day 4. Apparently mojitos are a thing in Barcelona so we did as Barcelonians do.
We all ordered the same thing and it was pretty tasty. Some sort of kabobs with rice and fries.
Then we walked around with no research and no agenda. We just explored.
And right away we were rewarded by surprise. We turned a corner and found the Caganer store. I stopped because I saw the butt. Then I noticed what was under the butt. Then I noticed the entire store was filled with these little hand painted figurines. I almost ran inside with joy. We got the story of the Caganer from the employee who was also hand painting the figurines. These are traditional Catalonian figures directly translated to "the pooper". They are hidden each year in family Nativity scenes and the person who finds the figure gets a prize. The pooper symbolically fertilizes the ground for a prosperous new year. It's Christmas and butts and humor, everything I love all together in one store!
I had all but forgotten my lack of sleep. We were relaxed enough to realize we were in Barcelona and we started to really enjoy looking around and realizing how old and beautiful this city is.
We took the time to document ourselves having fun and enjoying the afternoon off.
Looking back, I can see this was a pivotal day for us. There had been a lot of group interaction and all of the adjusting you have to do when you're with a group. No one likes to do all the things you like to do when you like to do them, so your days are filled with compromise. Having only 3 people in our group today gave us a chance to drop the group mentality and just do what we wanted.
Another nice surprise was this cool gallery with sculptures and huge hollow formed steel doors.
Everything was beautiful.
The three of us wanted to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCO). This was an art celebrity trip for me. In the first gallery there was a Haring, Warhol, Dalí, Murkami and Kusama. The Haring was an original subway drawing. So very cool.
This was the large Murkami painting.
In the next gallery there was this cool KAWS sofa made of stuffed KAWS Snoopy plush animals.
and a couple of KAWS sculptures and paintings.
...along with several Banksy pieces.
There was a special solo exhibit of Guillermo Lorca's large, beautiful paintings.
There were some cool, interactive photo spots. I matched the art.
This exhibit blew our minds. Infinity mirrors on all surfaces with LED lights inside diamonds. We picked up a few more people inside the museum as well.
After the museum we did more shopping/exploring in the city. I saw more cool street art.
Apparently the sculptors did not want to be left out when it came to graffiti. We saw a lot of pre-made sculptures that were stuck on to the buildings. Skulls abounded. We did a little shopping on the way back to the hotel but by this time our phones were all dead and we needed to recharge our legs and our batteries so we hit the hotel for a short break before going back out later for dinner.
We were with a larger group now but the three of us had not eaten so we stopped at a German place on the waterfront to eat. This may have been the only not so great food we had the whole trip. The sausage dog wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly local or flavorful either. For those of you who haven't been to Europe, every meal would hit you up for a 4.50 Euro charge for a bottle of water in addition to any other drinks you ordered. We take water for granted here and I started to get a little embarrassed about that.
We walked around the fancy mall they have on the waterfront and then we walked along the water as we headed back to the hotel.
All day I was hyper aware that it was my daughter's birthday. As I was eating dinner, Violet was having her homemade birthday cake from my mom at Sunday lunch. I was tired and my brain was full and I was sad that I couldn't celebrate with her.
I was ready to sleep when we finally got to go to bed. Tomorrow's schedule called for an off day and we had already made plans.
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