Our morning is pretty relaxed, since we don’t have anywhere to be until 9:15. And since we are back-to-back we can actually have room service, so we make the most of our last morning in our suite. We’ve been packed for 2 days (its simple when we know we aren’t flying and only moving down one deck!), so there isn’t much to do as we wait to meet to get our new key cards activated.
As they are making announcements for everyone to leave the ship, the 30 or so of us who are on the next voyage settle into the bar area outside the main restaurant. Richard, the Hotel Director arrives, and they shut the water tight door, effectively closing us off to the rest of the ship. Hmmm. Is that always what they do? Or is it just because Richard has some news….Surprise! We aren’t going to Gibraltar or Madeira, but instead spending on overnight in Tenerife, Canary Islands. There is yet more bad weather out there heading our way, and we need somewhere safe to harbor – that has fuel. Tenerife can guarantee fuel – where as some of the other ports are having shortages and say they will probably have it, but no guarantees. Richard says they looked at 11 alternates trying to find the best plan, and this is it. Well, heck, as long as we are safe and the seas aren’t too bad, why not? It’s not like we haven’t been to both Gibraltar and Madeira (I can’t even tell you how many times we’ve been in Madeira), so Tenerife will be a little change of pace (we’ve only been there 3 times!).
With that interesting news, we head off for a day in my favorite city. We have a prime dock location at the World Trade Center, so we can walk right off and into town – no shuttle or blue bus necessary. Today’s agenda is to go all the way over past the Gothic Quarter and visit the Picasso museum and the Chocolate museum, neither of which we’ve been to before. It’s a long walk, but nice to traipse through the alleys and cobblestone roads in the cool, sunny morning.
We make the museum by 10:15, stow our backpack and begin our explorations. The museum houses over 4200 of Picasso’s work – paintings, engravings and ceramics. It opened in 1963, in large part due to Jaume Sabartes, who was a friend and eventually became Picasso’s personal secretary. He began developing the idea for the museum in the’50s and collaborated with others to make it happen. The art is mostly devoted to Picasso’s younger periods with the bulk of the work between 1890 and 1901, before he started on his Blue and Rose Periods. The Blue and Rose Periods are also represented, along with an interesting set of drawings that give you an idea of his creative process during the Blue Period. There are also works from his later years, like the Las Meninas series, which is the only series of works he painted on display all together in one museum.
Its an interesting visit (no photos allowed, thank you), with good explanations in multiple languages in each room so we get the basics without having to deal with another audioguide.. A quick stroll through the really pricey gift shop, and we are onto our next stop – MX Barcelona – Museu de la Xocolata, the Chocolate Museum.
We don’t know why we haven’t been here before – I seem to think it was really pricey in the past – it isn’t now – so we figure it will be a good way to spend an hour or so before we look for lunch spots. Just opening the door is an experience, the chocolate smell envelopes you even before you are fully inside. The entrance is into their cafe, where a very busy counter girl is serving a couple of people. Once she gets to us, we pay our entrance fee and get our tickets – which are chocolate bars with an entrance QR code on the back that we scan to enter the museum. Cute!
Inside is a long room divided into sections specifically detailing plantations and the process of growing, storing, shipping and making chocolate with dioramas and information boards. There are sections explaining the cultural bridge chocolate has made through history, how chocolate featured broadly in art and advertising, and then how chocolate is related to tradition. The information is very good, and interesting, providing us with a few new facts and tidbits. But probably the most interesting are the sculptures situated all along the museum halls. They are fabulously all chocolate!
And the details! They are amazing. Faces, flowers, berries, a bullfight – with sprinkles as the arena floor – cowboys, cowgirls, an elf type diorama, a statue with a bird on its head – even Don Quixote!
Then, at the very end, past all the chocolate machinery, a replica of the Sagrada Familia. Excellent!
A very nice little diversion. Exiting the museum, we can see all the different classrooms and activities you can reserve here. There is a large class learning to mold chocolate, and what looks like a culinary class in the main kitchen. That might be something fun to do in the future! We manage to successfully exit the building without buying any more chocolate (after Valencia, we are pretty well set), and turn our attention to lunch.
We are a far piece away from the pier, so we decide to just start heading back in the general direction of Las Ramblas, stopping at any random little restaurant we see. We aren’t being very successful and are toying with just going to Los Caracoles, even though we know it’s totally expensive, and hasn’t been getting the best reviews lately. But before we make that decision, we of course, end up on Placa Reial. When don’t we end up there when we are in Barcelona? And being that it is a gorgeous sunny, cool day, we decide, what the hell, we’ll just peruse the menus here and eat on the square. The only mandatory is that we are NOT eating at Colon Cerveseria. That is definitive! So, we end up at MariscCo, the seafood restaurant in the corner of the square.
We’ve been here before, and even though they don’t have caracoles, which is what we are yearning for, they do have a pretty good list of seafood tapas from which to choose. We pick a table in the sun (and have help from the propane heaters they start putting up right after we arrive), and order our beer, wine and an excellent assortment of mushroom croquettes, snails and grilled sepia tapas. They are all excellent, but the mushroom croquettes are exquisite – and they are going on my trip recipe list to try to recreate at home!
After lunch, we walk out to Las Ramblas and walk through the waning crowds (it is decidedly not as busy as we have seen it in the past with lots less buskers and 3 card monte players), pass by la Kioska, that cute little bar in the wall and head back to World Trade Center to go through passport control and get back aboard before our afternoon muster drill.
Later, as we sail, we sit on the balcony and prime ourselves for the next couple of (what will be rough) sea days.
No comments:
Post a Comment