By Louis Berman & Danny Kraft
To start the day, we were split up into two different activities with Danny going to the Picasso Museum and Park Güell. While Danny did that Lou did the bike tour and got lunch. They then convened together to go to the FC Barcelona match.
My day started at around 9 am when Kirethia and I looked at getting tickets for the Picasso Museum. Unfortunately, the earliest tickets we could get were for 11:45 am so we took the time to explore around the city instead. We first went and saw this amazing statue in Placa St. Micheal Square that almost resembles a flipped basketball net waving in the wind. We then checked out the MOCA museum store. The MOCA Museum is a museum with a range of inspiring modern, contemporary, and street art and I visited their other museum when I was in Amsterdam. The museum exhibits artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy, Icy & Sot, JR, KAWS, Keith Haring, and Jeff Koon. Everything in the store was way out of our price range.
We then kept walking until we stumbled upon El Bon Cultural Center. It was amazing; the center is a distinctive archaeological site with the remnants of homes that were leveled when the Spanish War of Succession ended in 1714 so that a citadel could be built there. During the excavation, they found objects such as the personal belongings of the former residents shown, including dishes, weapons, jewelry, and toys. When we were walking out there were people dancing in the square.
Once we finally got into the museum the first collection we went to was about Carmen Calvo. The museum says is one of the most important visual artists in Spain. The museum goes onto say “Through her work, she investigates in a critical, yet poetic way, the vestiges of the past and the memory of our country. Calvo has carried out multiple exhibitions and has been the subject of many recognitions and public commissions.” The most interesting part of this exhibit for me was the piece A Cage to Live which is based on a real incident that occurred in 1997 that Carmen Calvo read about in a newspaper: a young girl who had been imprisoned for several weeks at the age of seven. Using dolls, stuffed animals, and other children’s playthings that can only be seen through holes in the box’s walls, Carmen Calvo recreates this tale in a white room.
The rest of the museum was just Picasso’s work which was interesting to learn about his back story and how it relates to Barcelona. He arrived in Barcelona with his family in 1895 when he was just 13 years old, spending his formative years here. He started his studies at the “Llotja” School of Fine Arts, where he also published his first illustration, made his first engraving and sculpture, and held his first solo show all in Barcelona before moving to France. In 1970 Picasso made the decision to give the entire collection of works that had been preserved by his relatives at his house on Passeig de Gràcia up to that point to the city of Barcelona.
After the museum we made our way back to the hotel and as soon as we got back, I joined up with another group to go try to see Park Güell. We took the subway there and then had what felt like a 90º angle walk uphill. Once we got up the hill, we had tickets waiting up there and finally got to go in. Throughout the tour we learned many amazing things about the design choices and its history. The park began to start being built around 1900 and the Modernism movement had lots of influence in the park.
As we split off into our different groups between the bike tour and the museum, the bike tour headed towards the city square to grab our bikes as well as divide into two groups that would tour the city. The group that I was a part of spent most of the time discussing not only the historical aspects of the different sites on the city, but also the cultural meanings of different views. As we biked around Barcelona, seeing different sites such as the Sagrada Familia, the Castle of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, the boardwalk, as well as many other smaller pieces of architecture, we not only learned, but bonded as a group.
During the bike tour, we had learned interesting facts that discussed the ideas that many of the walls in Barcelona were made from old headstone from Montjuic (a Jewish cemetery) as well as the fact that most of the boardwalk was created specifically for the 1992 Olympics, which created a mass displacement of homeless people within the city.
After the three-hour long bike tour was over, many of us decided to go get food to bring up the energy levels that we had lost from the long morning. We decided to go to a tapas restaurant where some of us got paella, patatas bravas, or bread with tomato on it. After lunch, many of us decided to go take a nap before the most exciting part of the trip, the FC Barcelona soccer match. Even though they lost the game 2-1, we were able to see a celebration as Barcelona had won La Liga and placed their celebration including the trophy presentation for that night. We were able to see all the players run around and celebrate with their trophy. Once this was over, we packed onto the trains to go back to the hotel to get a good night sleep for our last full day, not only in Barcelona, but in Europe as well. While the trip is coming to an end, we were able to finish the day on a very high note to provide us with lasting memories that will impact many of us for the rest of our lives.
