Spain: Day 4

Playing: Take My Hand-League
Reading: Harper's Bazaar July 2012

My dad made us wake up extra early to go stand in line for the Museu Picasso, since the day before, we had gone, only to find a line that went on forever and ever. We showed up 45 minutes before opening time and still ended up something like twelfth in line. This is a picture of the line five minutes before opening. I couldn't even see the end of the line. Pretty crazy, huh? This was one of the few art museums from my trip that I think is worth visiting, but definitely get in line early! I suggest having one person wait in line, while another goes and gets breakfast for everyone. That way you have something to munch on in line.

Once we got through the museum, my dad took us to the Parc de la Ciutadella. It's well known mostly for this fountain, which I think depicts the birth of Venus. It took us awhile to figure out what it was, but then my Percy Jackson skills kicked in and I remembered everything. You can see Neptune, Venus, Apollo, and hippocamps on this fountain plus tons of ducks swimming around. The whole park is incredibly beautiful and I highly recommend visiting it during your trip.

For lunch, we found ourselves at a buffet focused on healthy eating. We were actually walking to another museum, but I started to get fussy with my dad and complained to him, "We've been up for five hours already and it's one o'clock! I'm starving and it's freaking hot." So to shut me up, he pointed to two restaurants across the street and said, "Pick your poison." I chose TERRABLAVA because it was the cheaper and cleaner of the two. It actually turned out to be pretty tasty and I recommend eating there, if you're running low on money. For 10€, I got unlimited orange lemon juice, pasta salad, croquettes, potato salad, pasta, chicken wings, roasted veggies, and all sorts of other things. It didn't have a lot of meat, but I didn't mind. The roasted tomatoes were incredible and I wish I saved room in my stomach for more. They even had dessert there, which was all included.

While at TERRABLAVA, we gave up on heading towards the Roman and medieval museums, deciding that we had already seen enough, while we were in Rome. We had to convince my dad to take a cab to Parc Guell, which is on practically every postcard. The taxi ride there was hot and stuffy, but it was worth going to the park. It was another one of Gaudi's creations, so my family and I walked around the park and admired the mosaics. I spent a lot of time people watching and I found this group of cute British guys. You British girls have no idea how lucky you all are to have such good looking men. It seems you have a higher cute guy to girl ratio than I do, where I live. Actually, I think I've mentioned this before, but seriously Europe, why do you get more handsome men?

At Parc Guell, they had a band performing and I decided I want to go to a park with my friends and play music. Since I lack any type of musicality, I shall be the chick with the tambourine that just dances around and lends background harmonies. Sounds good to me. By the way, the girl in this band actually did sing. I'm not trying to make fun of her. Introducing, The Mananers, the only band I know that's "high everyday."

We took a cab back to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, where we had explored the parks earlier that week. Since they were open this day, we decided to go and I got in for free because I'm still considered a minor. A lot of these places offer discounts for students, so bring your student ID with you! I personally didn't like this art museum because it consisted of mostly religious paintings. However, on the second floor, they did have some pretty impressionist paintings, but none of the artists there are well known except for Picasso. I do recommend walking around this area because there's a lot to look at. The Plaza Espanya became my go-to area for whenever we had free time mostly because it was close to our hotel and look at how pretty the MNAC building is!

We went back to Las Ramblas for dinner and this time round, La Boqueria was open, so we went to go check it out. I recommend going earlier on in the day because it was starting to close up, when we went. It was interesting to see all the meats they had there that we don't have in the USA or at least in the USA, they're considered specialty meats such as: goat, rabbits, and some other unidentifiable meats. I was tempted to buy some of the candy there, but I was all out of cash.

For dinner, we just chose a place along Las Ramblas that way I could people watch and look for cute guys. (Man, do I have a brain that's focused on one thing or what?) We ended up eating at Pita House, so I ordered a prosciutto pizza, but I think the rest of the world has a different definition of prosciutto than I do. The meat on this pizza is called ham in the USA, not prosciutto. The pizza was truthfully kind of soggy and bland. I don't recommend it at all. If you're going go try Pita House, go inside the restaurant to the less touristy part and order the Persian food. When I went to use the loo, it smelled so good in the restaurant part! On the bright side, the table next to me had these two really cute guys in colored jeans. I didn't know you could do this, but a man tapped one of them on the shoulder and asked for a cigarette before walking away and one of the guys just gave it to him! I mean really, in the USA, I've never seen a complete stranger bum a smoke off of someone unless they're hitting on the person. If they were flirting, he would've stayed, not walked away, right? Crazy stuff you see out there, right? (I am most certainly overreacting...)