Barcelona, Part 2!

Okay, days 4 and 5...

Day 4 - Went to the National Catalonian Musuem of Art. Which is in a palace. The

National Palace, actually. There's a lot of famous artists who were either Catalonian or from the area. But, due to renovations, the Renaissance and Baroque sections were closed. These were the sections I was most excited about, too. Boo. Major boo. But still, looking at the oodles of apses of churches took up a large part of my day. The rest was taken up by making sure I found nearly all of Gaudi's houses in the area. I thought about going in one, but turns out the wait was two hours AND it was 18 euros. So it didn't happen. I then returned to the hostel for a chocolate making session and another fabulous dinner with fabulous sangria. Paella this time.

I also met Extremely Negative Man. ENM was a European who absolutely despised Americans. Granted, everything he sited was pretty true: we dress badly, don't try to learn the local languages, and tend to unthinkingly assume that everyone will have the same manners we will (American's like to talk, even to strangers, and sometimes about things that other people consider offensively personal). But he was so negative about every culture he mentioned, I just couldn't take him

seriously. According to ENM, Russians are drinkers, the Spanish can't speak English, and the Portuguese refer to everyone who's not from Portugal as a foreigner. Which offended him so badly that he eventually moved away from Portugal (he's not Portuguese; they wouldn't accept him as a local). There's my first run in with an extreme anti-American.

Day 5 - Day 5 was spent at the Picasso Museum and back at Park Guell enjoying the last few hours of sunshine and going to the Gaudi Museum. The Picasso Museum was awesome except that I'm not really a huge fan of Picasso. I love his early, Impressionist work and some of the Blue Period. The man was an artistic genius. But then he became cubist and surrealist and he loses me. I just don't like him. This actually seems to be the opinion of a lot of people I met - so a poll - anyone like Picasso? The majority of the museum is his early work though, so that was neat, and it was also set up in chronological order with explanations of what happened in his life and in the world at the time of each of his major movements. It was neat. But chronologically, the early stuff he did is better, IMHO (heh, "I liked Picasso before he was popular."). The Gaudi Museum was neat, but after looking at his architecture, his chairs were a little less exciting...

Final thoughts -

I have pity on anyone I try to speak a foreign language with. Thanks to eighth grade Spanish, I can sort of get through a minor conversation. I at least know "hola" and "por favor." The difficulty is that, in my brain, there are two pathways. They are "maternal language" and "other language." No matter how long I stand in line thinking "Speak Spanish, speak Spanish" it would come out as French/Spanish. "Hola, je prenne uno mas? Por favor... Merci!" It was truly a disaster.

Anyway, at 11:45 PM I hopped on the bus back to Aix. After a surreal ride of being woken up several times and informed we needed to get off the bus (for the required breaks), I ended up at my apartment and crashed for the rest of the day.

Until my conversation exchange - my exchange family bought me peanut butter!