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Published: June 13th 2010
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So on my birthday morning I got up and took the train into the city. Firstly, I found the bus station to find out about getting to my next place, which was good practice for my Spanish. Other than that, I've had a kind of hard time practicing, since everybody at the places I'm staying speaks English (and no Spanish at all), and at museums and stuff people automatically speak English to me, even if I start in Spanish. At first I was kind of annoyed, but then I realized that they're just trying to be nice - if I worked at a museum in the US and somebody came who spoke Spanish I'd probably speak Spanish too!
After the bus station, I walked to the Picasso museum, which was super cool. The first several rooms were pretty underwhelming, but then the last three rooms had all 44 versions of Las Meninas, which was a painting by Velasquez, and then Picasso did 44 weird interpretations of it that are so cool. I'd never been that crazy about Picasso before, but standing in the room with all the Las Meninas' I couldn't really even help myself from just smiling. I would
Woman and Bird
Miro's sculpture at the Parc Joan Miro have taken a picture to put up, but I couldn't, so here are some links. The original Las Meninas is here (http://exterior.pntic.mec.es/fhua0001/tutelageo/Viajetoledo/velazquez-las-meninas.jpg) and my favorite one that Picasso did is here (http://islaformosa.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/picasso-las-meninas.jpg) and the other 43 are equally as weird, and it's surprising how varied they are, too!
After that I walked around a while, and then went to the Museum of Chocolate! The ticket in was a bar of chocolate (70% cocoa, which pleasantly surprised me), and then the exhibit was a little information about the origins and history of chocolate, and there were a ton of chocolate sculptures too! So I guess it was a pretty cheesy and not-very-informative museum, but I didn't expect something a lot more serious from a museum of chocolate, so it was really fun!
Then I walked around a lot more and observed a tourist lose about 50 euros in one of those scams where you have to guess which box the ball is under. It was really interesting seeing how they did it - the one guy shuffled the balls around and talked really quickly, and he had some of his cronies there who posed as unrelated bystanders who would
The Magic Fountain
It was a lot cooler in person play a little bit - sometimes losing, sometimes winning. After a couple rounds of that, the main guy would find an onlooker and put a 50-euro bill in their pocket and say "Which one? Which one?" The guy who I saw was a little hesitant, so the cronies were shouting "You got this, man!" He points to a box and the main guy says "You turn it over," but when the player put his hand on the box the main guy holds his hand down and says "Show me your money." Most of the people I watched pulled their hands away at this point, and the guy took the 50 euros back, but this one guy didn't and gave his own 50 euros away. I'm not really sure how, but apparently he lost (it was hard to see over everybody), and tried to get his money back, but everybody, cronies and main guy, just kept saying, "you lost!" The guy who lost seemed really mad and tried to argue, but he didn't really speak English (I think he was German), and he eventually left. I watched for a few minutes more, and then, suddenly one of the cronies whispered something
La Pedrera
One of the weird chimneys - each one was different and equally weird! to the main guy and he picked everything up and just disappeared. I looked around and saw a cop coming by, so I guess it's illegal to do that little scam... I didn't know that.
After that I went to a kind of touristy gelateria and decided to get myself a birthday treat, so I ordered a crepe with gelato and chocolate, and then the girl got out this little thing of batter and started cooking the crepe right there! The "gelato" was no such thing, but the crepe was awesome, especially when it was soaked with melted ice cream. After that it was almost 6, so I was gonna go see the Joan Miro Museum, which I thought closed at 8 and then go see the Joan Miro park before going to this Magic Fountain that I'd heard about, but it turned out that the Museum closed at 7, not 8, so by the time I got there I would have only had about half an hour inside. I still wanted to see the Magic Fountain, which started at 9:30, so I decided to go see the Joan Miro Park and then spend about 2 and a half hours walking around. The sculpture was really awesome, and way huger than I thought it would be, and I ended up hanging around in the park for the whole two and a half hours! I laid down on this wall next to the sculpture for over an hour kind of half-sleeping, and then I got up and read my book for a while. Then I went to the Magic Fountain, which I guess is kind of like the laser show at Stone Mountain, but with a fountain instead. It shoots water and lights shine on it while music plays. It was pretty cool, but not the greatest thing ever, and once it was over I took the train back to the hostel, and me and some of the other people here hung out for a while and looked at their menagerie, which was really cool, and got in the pool, which was really cold.
Today I got up and went straight to the Joan Miro Museum, which was really awesome. It closes early on Sundays, though, and instead of making an announcement when it closes, they just send museum employees throughout to brush everyone out as fast as they can.... it was weird! They just say, in broken English, "It's closed," and then firmly, "there is the exit!" After getting kicked out of that museum, I went to Gaudi's building La Pedrera, which was the last thing on my combo ticket (7 museums for 22 euros!). The roof has all these crazy chimney things in really weird and whimsical shapes. After that I walked to look at the outside of the Sagrada Familia, but decided not to go in, since it was way too expensive. It costs 11 euros just to get in, and then I found out that it costs 2 more to go to the top, and I'd talked to people who'd been in, and apparently you can't really see anything on the inside because it's all covered with tarps and scaffolding and stuff since it's still under construction. But the outside was way cool!
Tomorrow I'm going to a small town about 2 hours north of here called Banyoles, which I found kind of arbitrarily through CouchSurfing. It's not in the guidebook, so I don't think there are any tourist attractions there, but it's easy to get to the Dali Museum in Figueres, so I'll do that one day and then probably hike a little bit the next. I'm really excited to get out of the city! I think it'll be easier to practice Spanish in the country, especially when I'm staying with an actual Spaniard (his name is Panxii... how cool is that?)!
Thanks to everybody for all the Happy Birthdays and comments and wall-posts! It's nice to hear from everyone!
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Gram
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Thanks for the great updates and the pictures, too. I'm feeling a little jealous, you're having such a fun adventure. I really like your descriptions of things you're seeing, and the food too. You probably need to eat some weird seafood while you're near the coast, although I guess you can get that anywhere in Spain. We're leaving Tuesday for our bike trip, won't get home till July 5, so I'll look forward to catching up with all you're doing when we get back. Love you - keep having fun and stay safe. Gram