Our last day in Barcelona began with a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, a Metro ride, and a long slog up a steep hill (estamos viejos, pero estamos fuertes) to Parc Güell, Gaudi’s outdoor fantasyland, and home for about 20 years. It was designed as a gated community for Barcelona’s upper class, but World War I and a few other issues changed all that and now it’s a public park. You do pay a fee to enter, but if you live here it’s not very expensive.

When I was in college at Oberlin, I had a summer job in the art museum doing simple restoration work on prints and other artworks that were available for students to rent for $1/semester to hang in their dorm rooms. For $2/hour, I rematted, reframed, and cleaned prints by Braque, Picasso, and an artist unfamiliar to me at the time named Joan Mirò. I quickly became a fan of her work. I say “her” because at the time I was anglicizing the pronunciation of Mirò’s first name. I learned, and Mirò remains one of my favorite artists.

One of the nice benefits of staying in the Barri Gòtic (the Gothic Quarter) is the easy walking access to so many interesting antiquities. One of those, the Basilica Santa Maria del Mar, is on the way back from the Picasso museum to our hotel. It was Sunday morning, and there were services being held, but visitors were allowed in in limited ways.

A short three blocks from our hotel lies the Museu Picasso, housed in an extraordinary building made of several connected Gothic palaces. It was our first leisurely morning since we arrived, as our tickets were for the 10:00am opening.

If you like art museums, you’d love the Museu Picasso. The most striking element about the exhibits to me was the perfect lighting that the curators have been able to achieve. No shadows, no glare, no color distortions—it just could not have been done any better. The flow of the museum was easy and natural. (Contrast that to the Dali museum, where there were many dead ends and needless loops.) Like the fabulous Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, the curators presented Picasso’s works in essentially chronological order, from some very sophisticated oils he did when he was 14 to his modern paintings and ceramics. Seeing his style develop over time is a wonderful experience.

After a full morning at the Sagrada Família, we decided that we’d spend the rest of the day rambling around the Ramblas. (I’m sure I’m the first person that has ever said that.) La Rambla is a wide, tree-lined street that forms the western-ish edge of the Barri Gòtic, the Gothic section of Barcelona that we’re staying in. Many folks say that you must visit La Rambla. Many others says you must visit Las Ramblas. Apparently either is correct. We walked down to La Rambla (the tree lined street part) and decided that there are only so many jewelry stores, fashion sunglasses shops, and galleries with 4 vases and two paintings in glass-enclosed brick spaces that one can take in, so we instead retreated back into the Barri Gòtoc and wended our way along the labyrinths that masquerade as streets and see what we could find. The answer is just about anything you could imagine, from gelato shops to trinket sellers to sidewalk cafes to remains of the Muralla Romana to the Erotica Museum. (There were no windows.)

Gaudi’s masterpiece, to which he devoted the last 43 years of his life, is due to be completed in 2026 on the 100th anniversary of his death. Finally. The story of its fits and starts is a fascinating one, from damage during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s to the 1950’s sale of part of the land to a developer who built apartments that now have to be repurchased and demolished to complete Gaudi’s vision, and too long to be recounted here. The ongoing construction produces some strange tableaus—portapotties on the roof outside of the Nativity spire, a basilica with three sides but not a back, and no main entrance just yet, but the effect of the spaces that are complete is difficult to describe with words, and I’m not sure pictures are much better. But here goes…

After a truly wonderful breakfast at our hotel (I don’t do food porn, but if I did you’d be seeing photos here) we mostly successfully navigated the Barcelona Metro to Casa Milà, commonly known as La Pedrera. Gaudi considered La Pedrera to be his masterpiece—at least up until he devoted the rest of his life to the Sagrada Familia. It’s easy to see why. The structure is based on 127 brick ribs that intentionally mimic the skeleton of a whale. This free flowing structure meant that there were no bearing walls to take into account when he designed the building, allowing him to use whatever organic shape suited his eccentric fancy.

We arrived in Barcelona at 6:30am after a flawlessly executed but not very comfortable (cramped, terrible food, and turbulent—but cheap!) 30 hours of travel that included two red-eyes. The Barcelona airport is a model of efficiency. Got through customs and baggage claim quickly and a ride to our hotel was waiting for us when we were done. We got to the hotel by 7:30, and although they graciously took our luggage, the room wasn’t going to be ready until around 10:30, which we knew beforehand. So—we had been awake and in the same clothes for 30+ hours, were dead tired, and had nowhere to rest. Let’s go exploring!