The fourth day of the trip, our second day in Barcelona, and the celebration of the 24th year of my birth :)
That morning, after the very interesting hotel stay, my was looking through the hotel brochure and noticed that it was a chain and they had a rather nice, new hotel in a better pat of town for the same price! So we packed up our stuff and headed over to the Hotel Barcelo Raval. It was awesome. Granted, in ten years it will probably look a little ugly, but for now, it was pretty sweet!! I showed Houston some pictures of it and he said it looked like a strip club. haha!
here is the room my bro and I shared. We walked in to a room with one bed and a see through shower!! eek! But, it worked out, good thing the bed was a king.
After we got settled in our new digs, we set out to explore the town. Once again, it was a little rainy but that didn't stop anyone. This was in the old part of Barcelona, the plaza de sant juame.
We walked around for a while then stood in line to see the Picasso Museum. We were in line for a while! But, while standing in line you will never guess who walked by!!! ........
VERN YIP!!
as the avid HGTV watcher that I am, I was SOOO excited!! I have loved him for years!! Especially when Trading Spaces first came on, on TLC, he and Laurie Hixon-Smith were always my favorite designers.
Back to the Picasso Museum, after the long wait we ended up getting in free which was great! One thing about most of the museums around here, they all have a certain time during the day where admission is free, so if you look it up ahead of time, you don't have to pay to get in! The Picasso Museum was my favorite thing we did in Barcelona. First of all the museum itself was gorgeous. They took this really really old building and turned it into the museum, so there were exposed brick walls and parts where the floor was glass so you could look down into what used to be the cellar or something of the sort. And the actual art work itself was pretty awesome. They organized it into different parts of Picasso's life, explaining what influenced certain works, etc. The best part was the Las Meninas exhibit. Just the day before we saw Velazquez's Las Meninas at the Prado, and Picasso took that painting and did his own variations on all theses different aspects of the original. It was pretty awesome, and I'm not usually much of a museum person!
After the Picasso Museum we walked around a little bit more. This was another church in the plaza de sant maria. Walking around here I saw Vern again!
Then we walked past the marina and down to the beach. It was a little chilly but the beach was still hoppin, and beautiful!
We ate lunch at this little cafe on the beach. We had a hot dog, pasta, crepes, and something with ham on it. Definitely a very eclectic lunch. We had american, italian, french, and spanish. These spaniards sure do love ham. Ham and tuna. They put it in everything!
some of the surfers on the beach, enjoying the waves.
we went back to the hotel to relax for a bit and get ready for dinner. As I'm hanging out in the hotel room, my parents surprised me with a room service birthday cake! It was pretty cute. The girl who brought it up was really sweet and came walking in the room singing happy birthday in english!
the fam all ready for some birthday dinner. missed my sister!!!
the guy at the hotel recommended this restaurant, La Fonda. It was sooo good. Definitely one of the best restaurants we have been to so far!!
If you know me you're probably not surprised...had to cap off the evening with a little birthday ice cream cone :)
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