I loved visiting Barcelona, I love that they are dog-people. And they have great coffee… and food, and seem to be very chill. Our final day started out with of course, good coffee and amazing carrot cake in a beautiful café, complete with crazy-eared pup.

Next stop: Montjuïc — a quick walk south west of our AirBnB to see some of the museums and views of the city. The most impressive of course was the Museu Nacional d’Art Catalunya‎ which is a monument presiding over the hill with a grandiose avenue leading to the base from Plaça d’Espanya.

Museu de Architectur — a large outdoor museum in puebla de barcelona showcasing different architecture and customs from all over Spain. Strangely, they had a really nice collection of contemporary Spanish art here. One thing I notice was that there weren’t very many women artists featured in the collection… to which I was dying to ask, “Doesn’t Spain have any female artists?” The rest of the outdoor museum was actually quite interesting and I felt even more so that Spain is so rich with tradition and history (and fiestas), especially the tradition of castells — people towers — in Catalonia… a terrifying event where they literally build people into a pyramid 5-6 people-high… I found this article to explain…

Back to the AirBnb for some rest and a goodbye to Marisa and Niko before they caught their 6pm flight. We had also gotten lucky and figured out that a lot of museums are free on the first Sunday of the month. I was able to snag free tickets to the Picasso museum, which I had been to before and was glad I went, but wouldn’t say that it was my favorite museum experience. But for free? I’d gladly go back! Jess escorted M&N to the airport bus while I gulped nescafé to recharge for the last evening. Jess made it back in the nick of time and we hopped back on the metro to get to the Picasso museum.

Alcoba Azul / La Alcobita