First full day in Barcelona

Slept until 11am, and then after a quick coffee, walked into La Ribera, a neighborhood of beautiful rambling narrow streets, where after a visit to the Santa Maria Del Mar (our Lady of the Sea) I fell into this internet cafe.

A little Spanish goes a long way. My restaurant vocabulary and reading comprehension have been enough to fend myself against a rude young man last evening, ordering food, coffee and so forth.

All is good -- Museum of Picasso was next, where I discovered that his sister´s name is ... Lola!!! The museum is housed in what used to be 4 small palaces now interconnected. Some of the rooms are preserved for historical purposes and don´t contain any of Picasso´s work. A lot of the artist´s early work is there, some representing other early periods such as the Blue and the Pink, and then the ceramics, ¨Las Meninas¨and the Pidgeons series.

In the afternoon, I did a walking tour (following a map and descriptions in my guidebook) of the Old Barcelona until just about dusk. This region includes Roman wall and tombs, Medieval period all the way to Gothic. It was a very special walk.

On the way, I stopped at the 4Gats cafe, where Picasso and other famous artists used to hang out about a century ago.

For dinner, I started with some tapas in Barri Gottic, and then walked back to my hotel´s hood for a nightcap.

Good night!