expiration date 

this entry is written by ari, who’s helping me catching up with the Europe Travel entries.

After a few days of waking up early, we decided to take our time on our last day at Barcelona. We even had time to publish an entry for this blog.

We left the hostel at 10 and took the train to Jaume to get to Museu Picasso.

We were planning to visit the museum on Sunday (museums are closed on Mondays), but since the museum’s entrance is free after 3 every Sunday, the place was packed. And since we’re already have tickets, we decided to go today.

The museum is housed in one of the old buildings in the El Born district. The building is beautiful, decorated with small arcs here and there. Aina looooved playing inside it.

We didn’t take any pictures inside the museum, but it was just amazing. They have so many detailed sketches of painting studies, making it so interesting to see and observe.

There are so many kids in the museum. It looks like there are a few school trips going to this museum today. It’s amazing to see elementary school students, not much older than aina, sitting around looking at Picasso’s cubism work.

As for Aina? Well, she fell asleep her stroller. I guess she’s not that art-versed yet to enjoy Picasso museum :)

After the museum visit, we walked down little alleys towards the beach, La Barceloneta. It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies. The neighborhood around the beach felt drastically open compared to the clustered narrow alleys of the Gothic area.

It was such an uplifting feeling, we decided to get some seafood to munch on while we were at the beach. we visited the Litoral Restaurant.

Amazingly fresh garlic clams and tasty paella with a glass of white wine and coke with lime. There was even a small travelling musical group consisting of a guy with a trumpet and another with an accordeon playing. It was a moment to remember…

After the meal, we walked towards the gondola to go up to Montjuic. We heard that the view from the Gondola passing by the water, climbing all the way up to the highest peak of the Barcelona would be amazing.

Unfortunately, the gondola was under construction and closed for the time. The lady at the entrance told us that we can go by the other tower and gave direction by bus. So we took the bus to Paralell and walked to the other tower. To our disappointment, that tower was also closed. And we didn’t feel like taking the bus up to the mountain. Well, no Montjuic for this trip, then.

So we decided to wander around Rambla Del Mar, trying to figure out what we should do.

Meanwhile, we took pictures at this beautiful boardwalk on Port Vell, alongside people basking int he afternoon sun. Soon, we passed by the Aquarium. There was a carousel ride in front of it and Aina got to ride the carrousel. She was so happy…

We got a message from Gary, we were supposed to meet up with him for dinner and drinks this evening. We had half an hour to burn, so we walked around La Rambla and went to check out Palau Güell, just from the outside.

We wandered around up to Plaça Reial and hung out there for a bit before we started to head towards the meeting point, the Colombus statue.

Gary looked the same. He seemed a bit tired, perhaps from travelling from Germany just the night before. We chatted along the way, walking around El Raval.

According to Gary, it is a colorful neighborhood of immigrants, probably due to its proximity to the port. Apparently, there is a large community of Filipinos and Indonesians here. We updated each other about our lives over a beer at a bar at Rambla de Raval. We talked about Barcelona, Gary’s ground-breaking movie project, our European adventures, and Chupa Chups, while Aina played with the Raval Cat, a giant cat statue by Botero.

A neighborhood Tapas place was our next stop. We got octopus with potatoes, blood saussage and our soon to be favorite, the fried green chilli. We had good long conversations with Gary at this restaurant over an excellent meal :) Aina fell asleep in the restaurant.

At around 11, we left the Tapas place and walked around the neighborhood again at night. It didn’t feel scary or unsafe at all, even though Maddy told us that we shouldn’t walk around El Raval after 9pm. Especially with Gary telling us that its not any more dangerous than walking around the East Village in NYC at night.

We walked by the Modern Art Museum of Barcelona (MACBA) to see the inside of the building, but it was closed. There was a pretty lively skater scene there at night. It was an interesting area which we’ll definitely come back to explore if we come back to Barcelona.

At the Placa De Catalunya, we bid farewell to Gary where he went to catch his commuter train, and we walked back to our hostel a few blocks away. With Aina in the stroller, asleep. Back at the hostel, we packed for our next adventure in Paris, and went to bed as soon as the packing was done.

For more pictures, the rest of today’s pictures are in the Flickr’s 13 March 2012 archive.