We check out of the Hotel Gaudi and leave our bags there and head out to do some final exploring of Barca.
We head to Drassanes metro, and buy a ticket. Annoyingly we only bought a 4 day pass not a 5 day one when we arrived, so we have to purchase singles for today. We but 4 factoring in the return metro journey, 2 print out and then the machine dies. Out of order. Bloody hell.
Sim pushes the assistance button while I look for a station officer. There's no one working here. After several attempts talking to the machine to the person on the other end we finally get her to communicate in English. We here vaguely, "I'm sending someone." After 5 minutes or so I see a guy in a metro uniform. I walk up to him and start talking. By his reaction I can tell he has no idea about the out of order machine. He also doesn't speak English. Sim try's to communicate using hand gestures and a lot of gesticulating, but it's quite lost on him. Frustrating for us and probably more so for him. He keeps talking in Spanish as if we somehow understand and sim keeps responding in English as if he somehow understands. I love language barriers!
In the end he leaves and we do the old 'shadow behind someone closely' trick and bum our way through the ticket stiles with the two we have.
We head out to Plaça Espanya again and up to Montjuic. The sun is out but there's rain clouds looming. We wander up the escalators and stairs again, passing the beautiful fountains again. We head to the Joan Miro Foundation Gallery passing through he beautiful gardens along the way.
We get to the gallery just in time for me to make use of the amenities. I feel like one of the 'Catenjer' dolls in all the shops here in Barcelona. It's a little figurine of a man pooing, apparently it's a Catalan Christmas tradition. We googled it yesterday. Literally typing into Google "why are there so many statues of people pooing in Barcelona?" All the souvenir shops sell them, now they have famous face ones, there's one of Obama, the Pope, Messi, Ronaldo and more.
The gallery is quite interesting. The building itself is great with lots of interesting volumes and spatial forms. It's a somewhat brutalist building, of concrete and brick painted white. The exhibition is interesting too. I must say I didn't know a lot of his work prior. Only what I had seen in text books.
Walking through the gallery and seeing the works they are mostly very simple and loose with technique, and probably done rather quickly I'd suggest. But they're filled with his ideology of non art and non-painting. It's interesting visiting so many galleries in a short space of time as it provides context and a chronology to the artworks. We've seen the imagery and symbolic filled paintings of the Renaissance and then coming here to see Picasso and now Miro, both questioning what art is and what form it can take. It's a sign of the early 20th century this questioning of what is, and it's very much related to the context and time of history. I've always been quite interested in the meaning or intent behind artworks more so than how they look. I think it allows viewers to understand and connect and the work in turn to communicate. A big part of visiting galleries is reading things in the context of time and history. Well for me anyway.
I remember being fascinated in school studying people like Duchamp and his readymades, like the bottle rack and the urinal. He questioned what art is. If I call it art is it art? Is it art because I'm an artist and it's in a gallery? These same ideas are what Miro was exploring. He didn't want it to be art. It was just a painting of lines and colour. But what's interesting is that even doing simply that, it has meaning and intent. It's very intriguing. I enjoy going to galleries as it gets your mind stimulated.
After a drink and a panini we head back down Montjuic through the beautiful gardens. We check out the Greek theatre briefly before wandering down to Avenue Parallel and to the metro.
We make our way back to the hotel, collect our bags and decide on a taxi to the train station rather than metro as it's now raining. Good timing!
We arrive at Barcelona Sants and it's all a bit chaotic and rather disorganised. We eventually work it out for ourselves where we need to go and hop on the train to San Sebastián.
A little over an hour into the trip however and the train grinds to a halt, literally grinds too.
The power goes out and everyone is rather confused. After a short delay the power goes on and we head off again. However at the next stop the train waits for over 30 minutes and then everyone gets up and heads off. We finally get someone to explain what's happening to us in English and basically the trains broke down and we need to switch platforms to get on another train. We ask one of the train staff where to sit and she says wherever you can find. The chaos and madness of earlier continues. We manage to find some seats and a place to stow our luggage, but it's a short 20 minute trip on this train as were advised that all passengers to San Sebastián and Bilbao are to get off and get another train on platform 4. Even the Spanish are confused and we just go along with the crowd. The train staff herd everyone into this waiting area surrounded by glass balustrades before allowing people up to the platform via a narrow ramp through small glass doors. Honestly feels like we're sheep being shepherded up the race.
We get back on the train and continue on our journey. So far it's been a long and confusing journey. The whole day really has been rather frustrating with little hiccups. All in all I'm considering it a good day, as at least I haven't shit myself, as that was a possibility at the start of the day.
We arrive finally in San Sebastián it's just after 10:30 and we finally get to our hotel. It's raining and we're pretty exhausted so head to bed rather then out.
Hopefully a big day tomorrow full of sunshine.
mat + sim
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