When we booked this trip, I only had the first few nights in Barcelona and the Monserrat hotel reserved. There are many vociferous negative opinions of Barcelona on the internet, and we decided to leave our options open in case we ended up hating it and wanting to go somewhere else. As it turns out, people on the internet are stupid and Barcelona is awesome. Before we left for Monserrat we re-booked the same hotel for the rest of the trip and went straight back to our old neighborhood.
We only had one rainy day. We decided to get up and go straight to the Picasso Museum before it got crowded. We had tried to go once before, the day we arrived, but it was a madhouse and we were exhausted. This time it worked out great. The Picasso Museum is in El Born, only a few minutes walk from our hotel, inside several old medieval buildings that are strung together. One of the most important features of the Picasso Museum is that (TIP!) you can access the bathroom, which is in a courtyard next to the gift shop, without having a ticket. Good to note for future days of wandering around in the city.
The museum doesn't allow photography, so no pictures - but it was really fantastic. The concentration is mostly on Picasso's early life (spent in Barcelona) and development as an artist, which I thought would be boring but was actually fascinating. It turns out he was quite a good painter! Who knew!
After the museum I needed coffee so we popped into a little tapas bar just across the way. The guy also talked us into little pastries.
This was a really picturesque place!
When we got back to the hotel, I looked it up and discovered it's one of the most famous tapas bars in the city. Apparently it had opened only seconds before we arrived, because normally it's packed at all hours.
Revitalized with coffee and sugar, we set out to go to the Barcelona City history museum.
I don't mind a rainy day on a city vacation so much - it was nice to have the streets a little quieter.
This city museum was also amazing! It's built over the top of Roman ruins. There was a lot of really interesting stuff in there, and, just as importantly, almost no people.
The Roman ruins underneath Barcelona show clear evidence of what existed thousands of years ago - a winery, a fish sauce processor, shops, churches... These big vats were for wine.
As you leave, there is a beautiful, deserted great hall and chapel from medieval times. Why tourists are outside taking selfies on a park bench rather than seeing these amazing historic things is beyond me.
Still raining.
We found another tapas place to get a late lunch and hopefully wait out the rain. They had the fried eggplant with honey that we ate so much of in Andalucia.
We did a little more wandering in the rain but ultimately decided to go back to the hotel and relax for a little while. This is when we discovered the tapas bar from the morning - El Xampanyet - was wildly popular, so we hatched a plan to go back right when they opened after siesta for an early (you know, 7:30pm) dinner.
When we got there it was already packed. We snagged the last stand-up table and were soon joined by other patrons crowding around, including two Eastern European businessmen and an Austrian couple who split their time between Barcelona and Vienna. We ordered a few things and had a great time chatting with the Austrians. They love Barcelona and gave us several recommendations for various places to try.
The rain had passed and we wandered some more through El Born, stopping for ice cream before retiring for the night.
This was the best Barcelona day! Great from start to finish.
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