Picasso, Gaudi, and CosmoCiaxa

As bad tourist as I am, I still managed to hit some of the Barcelonian highlights.

Picasso: The Picasso museum was interesting. Most of it really isn't what you expect to be Picasso at all. Apparently before he turned all abstract and cubist and blue and rose, he did lots of run-of-the-mill type of paintings. And most of them are quite average. Particularly his attempt at copying the impressionists paintings -- they were flat out bad. But the story goes that he didn't really know what impressionists were, and all he had to go on were newspaper black/white prints of the impressionist paintings at the time. So he tried to copy those and failed spectacularly. It just goes to show that it's much better to create than copy ;)

Gaudi: The Gaudi buildings are interesting. They look like they were built for the smurphs. It's definitely things that would get tiresome to look at after a while -- kindda like a crazy party dress, you can only pull it out of the closet once every few years, but when you do, it's fun. It's definitely not your classic black gown that stands up to the testament of time.

CosmoCiaxa: The science museum of Barcelona. Fantastic! As soon as we walked into the CosmoCiaxa, it became clear that the three of us are undeniably nerds. As much as Picasso and Gaudi were interesting to look at, put us in the science museum is like dropping 3-year-olds off at Willy Wanka's chocolate factory. The museum's exhibits were all very hands-on. You get to apply magnetic field to this fluid and watch its viscosity change; you get to wind up this hand-shaped wire, then unwind it, apply heat, and watch how it goes back to the exact original shape; you get to apply strobe lights of various frequencies to a bunch of bouncing balls enclosed in a while glass box; etc. The museum had an indoor rainforest, too. There were some pretty big fish swimming around the tree roots. There was also this room called "Toca Toca" that we didn't get to see -- you could touch rats and turtles and what not. And then, there's an outdoor science park, with an archimedean screw and many other things. Anyway. It's a fun time. I would definitely go back there if I were ever in Barcelona again.