Travels to Spain - Barcelona, Part II

Barcelona is unlike any other city in the world. Where else can you see a 14th-century Gothic cathedral competing with the most unusual modernistic cathedral in the world -- the cathedral of the 20th century -- Sagrada Familia for the right to be called the main cathedral of Barcelona. You can find here Romanesque paintings of the 12th century, Venetian columns, Picasso's and Miro's paintings, Arc de Triompf, Olympic stadium and bullfighting ring. There is something for everybody.

Quick Tips:

Barcelona Articket costs 15 euros and allows you entry to 6 museums: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Fundacio Joan Miro, Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Fundacio Caixa Catalunya. I think it’s a good investment even if you don’t go to every museum on the list. Don’t even waste your time on Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona unless you really like weird ultra-modern art. You definitely want to visit Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Fundacio Joan Miro (ticket to that museum alone costs more than 7 euros) and Fundacio Caixa Catalunya (Casa Mila). Fundacio Antoni Tapies exhibits Tapies’ paintings which if you don’t have time to see in Barcelona, you can always see at Centro Reina Sofia in Madrid, so don’t worry if you can’t fit it in your schedule.

Best Way To Get Around:

Renfe is Spanish National Railway Consortium, and you can check train schedules for all the cities that are covered by Renfe at their website. The information is available in Spanish and English. The suburban trains are called cercanias. Here is the timetable of Renfe trains:

a) from the airport to Sants station in Barcelona on working days is as follows: First train – 6:13am, then every 30 minutes until 8:43pm, after that 9:29pm, 9:59pm, 10:56pm and last train 11:40pm.

b) from Sants to airport: First train at 5:43am, then every 30 minutes, last train at 10:16pm.

It takes 20 minutes to get to Sants, 25 minutes to Placa Catalunya, 27 minutes to Arc de Triomf, 31 minutes to Clot Arago.

For more information on public transportation also check out my entry on Hilton Barcelona.

Website is here.

I made my reservations through Hilton website, then confirmed them with the hotel staff by e-mail and everything was in great shape. \ The lady who answered my e-mail was very friendly and helped me to reserve tickets to the Liceu theater during my stay in Barcelona. Liceu is definitely worth a visit especially considering that cheap seats for a performance will cost you about as much as the visit to the theater alone.

The Barcelona Hilton is located near metro station "Maria Cristina". To get here from the airport is easy and cheap. Buy a ticket for 10 trips (you will have to get to the city from the hotel anyway), this way you can go by train from the airport to Sants station, there change to the metro, and as long as you travel on both within 90 minutes, it will cost you 0.58 euros for both! \If you buy a single ticket, it will cost 2.25 euros for the train alone, and metro ticket will cost another euro. Trains from the airport go from the Renfe station that is connected with terminal B by a covered walkway. Even if you have luggage, carts are free of charge and there are escalators everywhere in the airport, so it’s no big deal to take a train, everybody does. If you have a lot of luggage, you might be better off taking a taxi, since Barcelona metro mostly has steps especially when exiting the metro station, not many escalators. Trains leave from the Renfe station in the airport sometimes earlier than the timetable says, so come a little bit ahead of time. You can get a timetable at the information desk in the airport or in the ticket office of any metro station, but always check the time of the train departure at the ticket office right near the trains.

When you exit metro "Maria Cristina", ask for Hospital (pronounced [ospit’al]) de Barcelona, since everybody knows where the hospital is and you will see its name in large letters from the metro exit, but not many of the locals know where Hilton is – they don’t stay there. The hotel is right across the street from the hospital, and about 3 blocks from the metro. Hilton is a tall building made of concrete and glass, very modern with atrium that spans all the way to the top floor. Taxis are always parked outside and you will never have any problem with getting a taxi even late at night if you have an early train or plane.

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The executive lounge is on the 4th floor; here Hilton VIP’s have continental breakfast, snacks throughout the day, drinks in the evening and you can watch large TV all day long if you have nothing better to do. Also here with the help of the hotel staff you can get some brochures about Barcelona sightseeing and check the opening hours of museums. Here in the executive lounge we met a lady from England who just came back from a day trip to Montserrat and highly recommended that. I am glad I listened to her since that proved to be an unforgettable experience.

So far so good, but don’t forget, you are in Europe. Even though the hotel is modern, rooms are small by American standards, especially for three people in one room. The room has a queen size bed, large but not very practical wardrobe with safe, writing desk with chair, couple of night stands. They squeezed in a rollaway at my request. The rollaway is rather short and narrow for an adult, and I am not very tall. The bathroom is pretty large with toilet, sink and bathtub. We had a corner room with windows on two sides on the building, so we had a good view of the street beneath us and the roofs of shorter buildings.

The hotel has free internet access for guests on the first floor in front of the reception area. Also on the first floor are pay phones, restaurant and a large sitting area with lots of newspapers to choose from. A block away (across from the metro entrance) is El Corte Ingles where you can buy anything: food, clothes, shoes, electronics, photo film.

Overall, the location is not central but very easily accessible by public transportation. It’s very close to the metro station, train station, there are several bus routes that stop near the hotel, and it’s on the way of the Bus Touristic. I would recommend staying at this hotel if you aren’t traveling with a large family.

Phone: 93 622 03 60
Website: www.mnac.es
Open: Tues-Sat 10 am–7 pm, Sun and holidays 10am–2:30pm, closed Mondays, Jan 1, May 1, Dec 25.
Free entrance on the first Thursday of the month, Sept 11 and 24 (permanent collection), May 18, Oct 12 (permanent and temporary collections).
Transportation: Metro Espanya (lines 1 and 3), buses 50, 55, 9, 13, 30, Montjuic bus on the weekends; free parking for cars.

When you exit the subway and walk across the Plaça d’Espanya to the left and along the Palace of Congresses, up on the hill you see a magic palace that would look more in its place somewhere in Santiago de Compostela than here, in its very modern surroundings of the Plaça d’Espanya. However, it’s not as old as it looks -- it was built in 1929 for the International Exhibition and since 1934 it has housed an amazing collection of art including the largest and the most extraordinary collection of Romanesque murals anywhere in the world.

To get to the entrance to the museum, you either need to take stairs or escalators, which start to work when you step on them, so don’t think that they don’t work -- they are just energy efficient.

The museum is organized so that from the lobby you can enter each of the portions of the collection separately, and choose which one to visit first. I started by going straight across the lobby to the beautiful oval hall that looks like a Roman amphitheater. The dome of the building is closed to the public until 2004, it is currently under the restoration and if you sneak a peak you can see that it has murals painted on the cupola that very much remind you of the style of 1930s.

You have to start your visit with the Romanesque collection which takes up two floors. The murals are from the 11-13th centuries and have been taken from several of churches in the Pyrenees to prevent their destruction by time and people. They are shown here pasted on the wooden frameworks that repeat the shape of the original walls and ceilings of the churches and even have opening for windows just like in a real building. The most important is a very large well-preserved mural "Christ in Majesty" from the church of Sant Climent in Taüll -- it is considered one of the symbols of the museum and is on the cover of all the catalogs. If you really enjoy Romanesque art, your next trip should be to Leon, Spain to San Isidro church and Royal Pantheon which is considered #1 historic religious monument in Spain and one of the top historic sites in the world.

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MNAC also has a large Gothic collection that shows the development of art in Spain and in particular in Catalonia in the 15th century. The most noted works here are by Jaume Huguet who is considered one of the greatest Catalan Gothic painters, and his famous works "Saint George and the Princess" and "Altarpiece of Saint Michael and Saint Stephen" are here on display.

The MNAC museum also has a small but very interesting collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings mainly from private collections donated to the museum, which include works by Titian, El Greco, Cranach, Rubens, Tiepolo, Goya, Fragonard, Zurbaran and Velazquez.

If you have time, visit Museu d’Art Modern of the MNAC located in the Ciutadella Park which continues the tradition of exhibiting Catalan art and in its collection are works of the 20th century famous Catalonians: Dali, Rusinol, Casas and Mir to name just a few.

Phone: 93 443 94 70
Open: Tues-Sat 10am–7pm, Thur 10am–9:30pm, Sun and holidays 10am–2:30pm Prices: 7.20 euros – adults, 3.90 euros – students and seniors, free entrance for children under 14, or buy an Articket and avoid the lines.

The foundation occupies a two-story building that was built in 1975 and reminds of the building of Foundation Maeght on the French Riviera with white outside walls, exotic roof design and large windows giving the building great lighting perfect for showing works of art.

This museum has a very large collection of Miro’s surrealistic art - paintings, tapestries and statues, which are exhibited inside the building and on the roof. The most famous of Miro’s works are here, most of them donated by the artist himself.

When you enter the first thing you see is a large tapestry with red, yellow, blue and green colors that takes up the whole wall. Miro became interested in tapestries in the late 1970’s and his inspiration came from Catalan tapestries to which he added his own inventive way of looking at things. He would leave some threads cut and hanging on the side or use different weaving techniques or he would add objects that don’t usually belong to a tapestry like ropes, buckets and umbrellas that you can see in some of his other tapestries.

The majority of the works in the collection of Fundacio Joan Miro are from 1960’s-1970’s. Here you can see some of the most famous of his works like his "Self-portrait" with bold black strokes defining the contour of the figure, or the series in the so-called "letter" paintings which are considered pure symbolism, the amazing model for "La Defense" that looks like two unearthly but very friendly creatures, and of course his famous paintings with blue background like "Woman, Bird, Star" or "Personages, Bird, Star" that you can see in every catalog. Then there are paintings like "Woman in the Night" with bright yellow, green, red, purple and black defining the images on the canvas and making them three-dimensional and almost mythical and "The Gold of the Azure" which made me remember the bright yellow sun and beautiful blue sea of the French Riviera.

And of course who can forget the surrealist statues on the roof painted in the so typical to Miro bright colors of yellow, green, red, blue – the statues that don’t look like anything that you’ve ever seen before, and everybody who looks at them may find his or her own associations with these figures. Also here from the roof you can get a magnificent view of the city since the museum is located high on the hill.

On the first floor near the ticket office there is a bookshop where you can buy some postcards or books, a café and a contemporary art library. Photography is allowed without flash.