Picasso, Gaudi and Betty Ford’s??

After about ten days in Barcelona, our friends Lish Banks and Jim Butler joined us for a few days on their way to Malta and Majorca.  Lish is a high school classmate of mine who initiated the meet up after reading this blog!

Together we ventured out to Barcelona’s wonderful Museu Picasso, the only museum of his works to open in his lifetime.

No photography is allowed in the museum, so you’ll have to take my word for what a remarkable collection this is.  From his early works, you are taken sequentially through the many periods of his paintings.   Picasso is now much more understandable for us after seeing the progression in his works.  For example, in three rooms are 57 works – painted in a 16-day period – inspired by one painting by Velázquez, Las Meninas. .  The audio guide for this museum was outstanding!

From here, we embarked on sort of a Gaudi orgy. Casa Battló (pronounced bye-yo) is a beautifully restored and maintained example of a residential building designed by Gaudi. It is right in the center of Barcelona on the Passeig de Gracia in a block full of remarkable buildings, all in different styles.  The block is sometimes referred to as ‘Discordia’ because of the lack of harmony among the structures, apparently built by wealthy people in the early 20th century trying to show each other up!  The audio-visual guide was the best we’ve ever encountered, taking you through the house at just the right pace and providing photos of rooms you were in with furniture as it would have been long ago, and pointing out unique features of each room.
        

Of course we included a visit to Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s famous, and still unfinished, church.  We bought tickets for a guided tour in English on line so we avoided the lines AND had a great tour.  This place is so massive that it’s impossible to capture in iPhone photos, but I tried.  The crucifix over the altar is quite unusual and the stained glass windows present a palette of colors (blues and greens on one side of the church, and reds and oranges on the other).
           

Our final Gaudi stop was La Pedrera, also referred to as Casa Milá.  Also in the center of Barcelona, this is a large apartment building where people still live.  It is most remarkable for its roof terrace and its chimneys, but the building itself is cool to look at…kind of like a petrified wave!
  
       

And now, finally I’ll get to Betty Ford’s!! This was a lively bar in our neighborhood that we discovered on our second night in Barcelona.  We met the owner (an Aussie) and his girlfriend (a Brit) at a sushi bar and they invited us back to the bar for a drink after dinner.  We were there at least every other night thereafter, and we took Lish & Jim there one night, too.  We got to know most of the bartenders and, once again, Rick was able to walk into a bar and they knew what he wanted (a Negroni Spagliato, if you please!).
    

On our last Barcelona night, we went with Lish & Jim to Tickets, an upscale tapas bar owned by Albert Adría, the younger brother of Ferran Adria of el Bulli fame.  Reservations are hard to come by, but Lish went on line a couple of months ago and snagged these.  It’s a fun place with a sort of movie theater theme and an amazing array of beautifully presented tapas.  We opted for the ‘surprise’ menu…’just bring it’… and we were not disappointed.  I took a photo of each of the twenty (!) courses (I’ve only provided a sample here…), but a few picture of the place will give you the idea.  It was a very special Valentine’s Day treat!
                 

After leaving Barcelona, we drove to Paris, stopping one night along the way.  We turned in our wonderful leased Peugeot (with over 10,000 km on it) and spent the weekend in Paris.  The highlights – beside were reconnecting with our friends Anne & Jeff and going with them to see a wonderful art exhibit at the new Fondation Louis Vuitton.  The FLV building is a Frank Gehry creation rising up out of the Bois de Boulogne.  Both the art collection – a remarkable array of modern art (from Impressionists to Picasso to Matisse and several Russian artists) amassed by a Russian collector named Chtchoukine – and the building were worth the visit.
     

We are leaving the continent now, headed for a week in London and then back to the states for a month…Baltimore, Oregon and Colorado.  If we are lucky enough to see you during that time, we’ll be glad.  If not, I hope you’ll keep following along.