Barcelona

View of Barcelona from Gaudi Park

Monday Barcelona Grand Hotel Central

We are in our very modern room in a very old building in the central of the old town of Barcelona. For those of you familiar with the city, we are just across from the Cathedral. Our continental breakfast is about to be delivered and we are recovering from two more very late nights!

Our last day in Madrid included the completion of the IWF program with two interesting programs and the most fabulous flamenco performance. I’ll start there. We were taken by bus to Madrid’s community cultural center-an old building converted into a center for performing arts and art shows (why does this sound familiar) and in the courtyard (covered) is a stage on which the troop performed. It was composed of a well-known flamenco singer/dancer (whose name I can’t bring to mind) along with a drummer, guitarist and a saxaphonist/fluitist who has played with Chick Corea in the US and another singer and male dancer. Apparently their style is a bit modernized, but we were all mesmerized and I was just about dancing in my seat. The woman who sing/danced was incredibly talented.

That evening we met my good friend David Bork and his niece for dinner at a wonderful restaurant about a 20 minute walk from the hotel. While we were at the restaurant at 9:30, (basically opened it up), we didn’t leave till about 1:00AM! Another friend joined us about midnight whom David knows from the Family Business Network and we talked on and on. Jack and I walked back to the hotel and were so surprised to see the street wall-to-wall people at 1:30 in the morning!!! It was s0 crowded…just a typical Saturday night, I guess.

Well, it was way after 2 by the time we went to bed and we were up again at 6am to make our way to the airport for our flight to Barcelona. Oof. And there were hardly any people in the streets at 7:30 on Sunday morning….imagine that!


The coast of Barcelona

And we love Barcelona. While it is not as big as Madrid (under 2 million) it has so much more charm and warmth. The day was magnificent-warm, not humid with a soothing breeze It is hard to describe, but Barcelona has more of a unity of style and less congested (even though the city was full of people touring). It is a seaside town with a huge harbor and thousands of sailboats. We took the city tour bus and did part of the city including a wonderful hill top park with the Palace (now a museum) the buildings from the ’92 Olympics and the Joan Miro Foundation. The latter is closed on Mondays so we rushed in and enjoyed an historical perspective on one of my favorite artists.



We bumped into my friend Ann Schneider from the Arizona Women’s Forum and so we toured the museum together. We walked through stalls of a flea market. We saw some of the fabulous Gaudi buildings and, after we finally checked into our hotel, took a bit of a rest. Our room has electric shades, mauve walks, sleek, modern counters, glass wall for the bathroom, flat screen TV and a faux wall as a headboard. Meanwhile, we look out at a medieval cathedral!

After a short rest, we went to the Picasso Museum, very close to us, through small streets with old buildings made of stone. The Museum is in one of these elegant old buildings. The collection represented his early years and a few of his pieces later on. The most interesting experience was having seen Valasquez’ piece in the Prado (Las Meninas-the Maids of Honor) which we studied with the guide and saw a piece Goya took off from this..and then Picasso did a series of paintings based on these figures as well. What a wonderful and fascinating coincidence to see one of the most famous paintings in the world and then to see its influence on two other amazing Spanish artists-all in the space of several days.

We returned to the hotel and met Ann Schneider, Carolyn Warner and Lou Kerr for dinner at our hotel’s dining room. A wonderful meal and great conversation. After that, well, we had to check out the Barcelona casino! While it doesn’t have the elegance of some European casinos, it was fun and had some non-smoking tables which we appreciated. Unfortunately, we didn’t take any extra Euros home with us from this experience! But we did stay out late again (2 am again) and closed those very dark shades I described so that we didn’t see the light of day until 10 am..quite unusual for us!

So we are now off to see more of Barcelona and head home tomorrow.

PS Spent much time today (Monday) seeing Gaudi's art work-Cathedral, Park, Buildings
and the Ramba--the long walk in Barcelona-including the wonderful market place
and other beautiful views!


La Sagrada Familia-Gaudi Cathedral