Nothing Gets My Heart Racing Like…

FREE MUSEUM DAY.  Yep, that’s right.  After spending a small fortune on museums in the past two weeks (See: One-Woman Revival of Spanish Economy), the blow to my wallet was softened today by the first Sunday of the month rule.  That is, the first Sunday of each month, several museums are free all day.  This includes the Picasso Museum, among others, and my goal was to get there and max out my visit while minimizing the euros I had to fork over.

But first, a quick digression to last night.  At around midnight, I realized that I had no intention of sleeping and every intention of getting gussied up and Metro-ing down to the beach clubs.  This was helped by the fact that the Metro runs all night on Saturdays, which made going out infinitely more appealing.  Chasing down a taxi in heels and having to pay 15 euros for the 3-mile ride home is something of a drag.  Naaman was game, so we made plans to meet up at our usual Metro junction at 1:15 AM.  Game on.  Still smarting from the “niñas” comments we received last weekend, we put on our Big Girl outfits and prepared to rock out.  We collected flyers from all the promoters in the two blocks to the shore, and were about to join the queue at Shoko when… “Are you ladies heading to the clubs?” No, I dress like this on a normal basis.  But we heard him out.  Eric, as he was named, got us VIP access (cut the line, get a card for free drinks and a VIP area or something like that… we never found the VIP area) at a club called Solavento, at one end of Club Row (just made that name up) on the beach.

The lines snaking in front of each club seemed rater tedious, so we accepted the offer and – voila! We were in.We walked downstairs and, to our relief, found a club packed with people.  And, an even bigger relief, Naaman is super awesome and likes to dance.  So we boogied.  Over here, over there, checking out the club and laughing our asses off.  After about ten minutes, this incredibly drunk man came up, grabbed my hand, and kissed it.  He was very strong, so I couldn’t pull my hand away, but he was pretty harmless.    And tall.  He drunkenly got down on his knees and bowed down to me, then put his hands on my shoulders and started trying to dance, on his knees, with me, which involved him swaying.  Naaman and I escaped to another part of the club.  At one point, we grew tired of the mediocre DJ, who would stop the music ever 2-3 minutes and was playing some lame house music that killed the dancing mood.  We decided to check out the other clubs and left to peruse the boardwalk selection.  Unfortunately, it was late enough at this point that the ticket vouchers were no longer accepted and we would have to pay the 15 euro cover charged at most clubs after 2 AM (or without a voucher).  We returned to Solavento

This indicates "Second time's the charm", not "peace"

and proceeded to meet some wonderful people.  The first was a group of boys from Ireland, who were very nice and would have been hilarious to hang out with, but it was their last night in town.  The best discovery of the night was Rangi, a 27-year old (who looked 20) from Scotland who was here on a 3-day holiday with some friends and would dance in our little triangle and protect us from keepers.  After we left the club at about 4, we chatted outside for a while with him.  He went to UVA and Naaman is from Virginia, so we had a few small-world moments.

As fun as the night was, the drama had yet to begin.  The club was hot and sweaty, and my Metro pass (stealthily kept in my bra) was soaked through and tore as I tried to pull it out.  FAIL.  Naaman, comforting me, slipped her sweaty Metro pass into the machine… and it got stuck.  The manager at the station was pretty pissed off at us, and had to open the machine up to take Naaman’s tattered ticket out.  

Oops.  So, Spanish Pro Tip of the Day: never let your Metro pass get sweaty.  Sweaty Metro passes are for amateurs, a stage that we have hopefully overcome.  Then there was the Metro ride.  Literally hundreds of people leaving the clubs attempted to cram onto the Metro in a show of drunk defiance and camaraderie.  We had a grand old time; one loud American even wanted to start a wave, but we were too squished to execute this master plan.  A grand night, indeed.

Now on to today.  After procuring a replacement Metro pass, I headed to the Picasso museum on 3.5 hours of sleep.

The line stretched on interminably.  As always, I was armed with my Kindle and continued to battle Bill Clinton’s autobiography.  Here’s to productivity!  Anyway, I didn’t have particularly high expectations for the Picasso museum because it focuses on his early work and seems to get mixed reviews.  But too bad, critics, I loved it.  I feel like elementary and middle schools only show you Picasso’s famous periods (Rose, Blue, Cubist, etc) but they don’t show you where the artist begins.  Seeing Picasso’s work as a child, he is an undeniable genius.  It made me take his later work less for granted and understand his deconstruction of everyday scenes a lot more.  Plus, you can really see his passion in this museum.  He seems to have painted everything his eyes feasted upon, and on every scrap that he could find – paper, canvas, boards, probably even rocks.

Interesting things I learned:

1. In (at least one of) his self portraits as a teenager, he painted himself as being thinner.  I never pictured Picasso as the calorie counting type, but who knows?  Adolescence is an awkward time.
2. Picasso is actually Pablo Ruiz Picasso, but he dropped his father’s last name because he was closer to his mother.
3. Most of Picasso’s famous early works are things that won honorary mentions or second place in competitions.  It makes you wonder what happened to the first place winners, right?
4. Picasso dabbled in/created basically everything.  For example, he created over 40 interpretations of Velasquez’s Las Meninas AND is credited with creating collage as an artistic technique.
5.  He got into ceramics in later life.  And developed an obsession with pigeons.

A few choice works:

 He did this when he was about 14, and I love it.

 As with many of his pieces in the museum, this one seems unfinished.  Look closely (you can click on these pictures and usually they get bigger) to check out the Pointilism.

 This was Picasso's third wife, Jacqueline, who donated many of the works found in the collection, particularly those from later in his life.  Her large eye is supposed to show how she was ever watchful.

 This famous painting, entitled Margot, or The Wait, shows the color and vivacity of Picasso's Paris.  I really liked it until I found out that she's probably a morphine addict.

And, in keeping with the tongue-in-cheek love of artists' titles (See: Miro), THIS (Disclaimer: Rated NC-17) is a rather racy painting entitled simply, "Two Figures and a Cat."  Let me know if that's what you get out of it, because judging by the murmurs and giggles in the gallery, people's focus was not on the cat.  Well, that's Europeans for you.

After a long luxurious lunch, I rallied and headed out for more tourism.  After being foiled by a confectioner whose website lied about the shop’s hours (see future post for more details on my upcoming successful mission to said candy shop), I walked through the Barri Gotíc to see the the Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar in the Ribera district.  It is massive and beautiful, with brilliantly colored stained glass filtering light into the dimly lit room.

Note the ship integrated into the altar, a shoutout to Barcelona's roots as a fishing community and port

While Gaudí plays with his light to create a mood, these architects knew how to shut you up in awe, if nothing else.

And, to end the day, I indulged my sweet tooth.  I returned to the churro shop to try their other offerings, including a small flat piece of fried dough covered in sugar (yum), a chocolate churro (very yum) and a fried, sugary pastry filled with some unknown sugary substance (not as much of a fan).

The woman at the shop already remembers me, so I’m well on my way to being a regular (two trips in three days).  Once I got started with the food sampling, I couldn’t stop.  I passed a frozen yogurt place and decided to sample it so that I could surprise Naaman with my discovery.

The nicest way to put it is: Spain has a long way to go in the froyo department.  It’s relatively primitive, with only 2 flavors and cough syrupy/synthetic-tasting toppings.  Major disappointment.  They had a blood orange topping, too, so of course I got my hopes up.  Oh well.

And to finish things off, Spotted: A Metro preacher getting feisty this morning.

He was reading passages from a gigantic Bible, but also adding his own flair to try to make converts out of us all.  There were lots of references to a fiery end in Hell.  He even worked me taking his picture into his mediocre sermon.