Day 10: Last day in Barcelona.

We started off our last full day in Barcelona with a trip to the Museo Picasso, which we had tried to visit earlier but were thwarted by a big lineup.  Honestly, when we finally got to visit, it was a bit of a disappointment.  The audio guide was really poor, maybe one of the worst I can remember.  Worst still, the museum omits entirely Picasso's Rose Period.  There is no collection.  So you are going through the Blue Period and then wham, it's cubism. Nothing from the Rose Period at all.   Very disconcerting.  How you can dedicate an entire museum to Picasso and omit the Rose Period I don't know.  It's like airing The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but leaving out the limo fight.  What follows then makes no sense.   Anyway, despite its inclusion in the 1000 Things to See Before You Die, which we are slowly working our way through, the Museo Picasso gets a big meh from me.  I took no pictures but you know how it goes.

We stopped for lunch at El 4 Gats, Picasso's favourite local hangout.  You know the menu he drew for them, his first commissioned artwork: 

The service here was pretty terrible.  But I suppose if you are drunk out of your mind on absinthe, it doesn't matter so much.   We were sober, but tired, so after lunch we opted for the touristy cop-out of a couple hours on the hop-on, hop-off bus that runs in a giant loop around the city, linking both major and minor points of interest.  Declan appreciated that the bus was not only double decker, but also convertible. 

The Columbus monument, marking the spot at the end of Las Ramblas, where Columbus reported to Ferdinand and Isabella tales of his explorations of the New World.

Captivated.  We were all pretty worn down by this point, all three of us longing for a pop-up Kids' club.

A Gaudi apartment building.

We decided to end our trip where we began, with a walk along the Barcelona beach, and dinner at an ocean side restaurant, Agua. 

Pre-dinner dunk in the Mediterranean

Our last Barcelona meal was yet another spectacular one, replete with some yummy sangria.  I did order one local delicacy which was our first culinary misstep. that plate of fried whole tiny fish.  Neither Shane nor I cared for those, even after the sangria.  You can see the other tapas staples, pan con tomates, marinated sardines and patates bravas.  Yum.

 This dinner was a perfect farewell to Barcelona, and we enjoyed watching the sun go down and the nightlife fire up along the boardwalk as we leisurely tapas-ed it up.  Our trip home the next day was uneventful.  I really can't remember it at all, so I might have been in a fugue state after the previous week and a half of adventure.  If you have made it this far in reading of our travels, I feel like you should win some sort of prize.  I could give you a Disney cruiseline keychain, but you deserve a medal.  My hope is that recounting all this will help keep the memories for Declan, who I wish were a little bit older for his first trip to Europe so it would make an impression on him.    I still remember my first trip to Europe in great detail still, but I was 16.  Oh well, with any luck, at least Declan will remember those foot-pedal sinks.  That's just a great idea, I don't care where you are.