Barcelona Day 4: Art and Opera
On Sunday we slept in, only setting our alarms for 9:00 a.m. to catch the tail end of breakfast: churros with chocolate, melt-in-your-mouth potatoes and eggs, and a salad (because I was craving fresh veggies after our meat-, cheese-, and bread-heavy restaurant diet). We perused the Picasso Museum that morning during a pocket of unscheduled time. Favorites included a blue still life with doves perched on a window and Picasso's many variations of Velazquez’s Las Meninas painting. Apparently, Picasso preferred to study the masters by copying their work at the Museo del Prado in Madrid rather than by sitting in a classroom. Afterwards, we picked out pottery and tile magnets at a shop, wandered around the greenhouse and lakefront fountain in the Parc de la Ciutadella, and shopped for a hand-made leather bag at an atelier.
We strolled north for a late lunch at Els Quatre Gats, the
restaurant where Picasso held his first solo exhibition. A delicious seafood
paella and brisket with gratin potatoes and mushrooms hit the spot. We finished
in time to pick out presents for my kids at Flying Tiger, a Copenhagen-based
store where I also bought some green and white ceramic bowls. We also popped
into a chocolate shop, where we sampled and selected a scrumptious bar of soft
chocolate made with bread crumbs, sea salt, and olive oil that complemented the
cava we sipped on the rooftop during intermission at El Liceu opera house that
evening. We made our way there along La Rambla, a famous pedestrian street that
used to be a riverbed and is now a tree-lined tourist mecca. The famous open-air
market La Boqueria was closed when we passed, perhaps for siesta or just for a
Sunday.
At the opera, we settled into fabulous second tier seats and
read up on the plot of Adriana Lecouvreur, a drama comedy with various
love triangles and deceptions set backstage at a theater in Paris and at the
prince's home. The singing was exceptional, especially by Adriana, and I loved
the double meaning of the lines spoken by her admiring stage manager. The cat
fight with the princess was also pretty fabulous. Alas, our heroine was done in
by some poisoned flowers–but at least she wore a gorgeous dressing gown during
her fateful closing scene!
Swooping our way home that evening along the curving
Cardenal Casanas Street, we passed the Santa Maria del Pi church with its
charming square. Along the way, we video-called my husband and kids, who were
running around our sunny local playground in NYC. They seemed light years away
and almost dreamlike compared to the bustling Barcelona nightlife streetscene
on our end of the call.
Read the full series here:
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