Picasso down low, Miro up top

The Picasso Museum is a bit weird because it’s really all about his formative years when he was a much more traditional painter – the paintings that made him famous don’t feature. Added to which I have some queasiness at the way they described his later artistic obsession with the female form without mentioning how he treated women.

I am finding Barcelona really strange. After a visit to the local market which was all about selling stuff to visitors, I had lunch in a little piazza about 100m off Las Ramblas. Not a tourist to be seen, local prices, and the owner of the bar was volubly thrilled to have an Australian customer (although he thought I was German at first). It’s like there’s a whole different universe just beside the tourist places.

That was evident again this afternoon when I walked up to Montjuic to the Miro Museum. The streets on the way are the poorer part of town, filled with small shops, people bustling about, washing hanging from balconies and not a tourist to be seen. Of course that may have had something to do with the fact I was walking up a hill in extreme heat. The Miro painting entitled something like Man confronting the Sun, resonated strongly. I do like Miro a lot so the gallery was entirely worth the effort.

Once again the walk was entertaining enough that I changed my plans and also walked back. This through an even poorer part of town. But again, a few streets on, you pop out into crowds of tourists.

Anyway that’s been my couple of days in Barcelona. Tomorrow I head North to Bilbao – which ought to be a bit cooler.