Tried to take in as much of the city as I could today. Started off at the attraction closest to the hotel, the Sagrada Familia. If I’d have known I was going to pay $11 euros to see a half-finished cathedral, I might have had second thoughts. No offense, but you actually charge for this? Kidding!--halfway. It’s more interesting to read the history of the place. Gaudi with whom I only had a passing familiarity prior to this trip was apparently completely devoted to finishing the cathedral to the point of monomania. The story is equally harrowing, noble and pathetic. Once I get past the technical proficiency of the structure, I’m left a bit cold. I think it’s the Catholic iconography that tends to bore me. I get irritated at the self-aggrandizement passing as sanctity. There is something galling about walking into an already opulent church steeped in decadence and seeing a kiosk asking you to donate money in order to help finance more gilded altars. Besides that, I think I prefer the clean lines and uncluttered facades of secular monuments. Give me the Guggenheim (any one of them) over this kind of structure any day.
The next hour I spent looking for the Museo de Picasso. I’ve poured over books of his works many times, but I believe I’ve only seen a few of his actual paintings. There may have been an exhibit at the MoMa years ago. I ended up overshooting the mark and found myself in the marina. I took the opportunity to take in the aquarium. The largest tank with the sharks and this huge sun fish was worth the price of admission ($17 euros…yikes). Took a snapshot of a really old submarine. Kept thinking of the Ringo-led Beatles song for about the next hour.
Finally stumbled upon the museum I was looking for. The output of some artists is just overwhelming. I wonder how many pieces Picasso created. It must number well into the thousands if you include every doodle, every sketch. I need to pick up a very good biography of the man.
I finally got to see the oft-mentioned “Blue Period” of the greatest artist that ever bestrode God’s green (as per the museum's hagiography scattered throughout never lets you forget). The gallery ends right at the cusp of his emergence as a Cubist master and the works and style so many people associate with Picasso. His early stuff was quite good. I don’t know how it’s considered in the art world today, but I especially like the use of color in his portraiture. He really seemed to capture his subjects’ moods.From there I wandered around until I found yet another cathedral (I don’t even want to imagine what Italy must be like). This happened to be near the central shopping district. Took in a few of those sights and inadvertently snapped a few pics of a few well-known Gaudi buildings. They were pretty hard to ignore. Something struck me while walking through the area: American cities with a few notable exceptions (New Orleans and D.C. come to mind) are aesthetically dull things. Even New York, the greatest city mankind has ever conceived (if for the ingeniously simple use of a numbered grid with prominent street signs alone!), is frankly an ugly place compared to any of the cities I’ve seen on this trip. One of the best things NYC has to offer, Central Park, while invaluable from a utilitarian point of view, just isn’t all that visually arresting.
After a brief repose at the hotel, I headed back out to La Rambla and walked all the way down to the pier. I got a free pass to what was billed as a “New York Style”-party at a local nightclub. How could I resist? I wanted to see what exactly the party people of Barcelona thought New York-style was. Turns out to be pretty New York. Well a certain kind of New York actually. You had the same burly door guys deciding who could get in and when. Bottle service was de rigueur if you wanted priority. The music was pretty much what you’d hear in any club in NYC on a Saturday night. Lots of hip-hop, then a bit of house later on. People dance the same in Europe; no real surprise there. Most doing the same awkward two-step many casual partygoers favor. I had to leave after about 45 minutes because the smoke was just too much. Even before the smoking ban in NYC, the pervasiveness of smoking wasn’t that high in clubs. Nowhere like here where everybody seemed to light up, especially the women. Maybe that's how they stay so thin. That and the high-cost of eating.
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