“Aaahhhht”

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, my life began with art. One of my earliest memories is when I was about four years old my mother would take me to an art class at our local museum, the Fleming. The classroom was up the main staircase and to the left. I remember being in a pink dress and tights and struggling to manage the very deep, low, steps on the staircase leading to the second floor. They were the type of steps that even as an adult you wonder if you should take them one at a time, or what the proper cadence for steps like that should be.

This past Thursday I travelled to the Montjuic region of Barcelona. It’s a hill region above Barcelona’s commercial port on the south side of town. It’s filled with galleries, museums and gardens. Becca offered some sobering, cautionary, advice to stick to the main paths in this area as in recent months there had been reports of women being abducted or raped when taking the paths less traveled. So, now that I am proficient with the metro, I took the train over and a bus to the top of the mountain to the castle. It offered wonderful views of the ports below and was a good reminder that Barcelona is in fact a major port. There were cruise ships that seemed to have 20 stories to them, gigantic cargo ships, and in one of the pictures below you will see a view looking to the left and behind a tall metal tower one of the harbors is for personal yachts. Yachts bigger than I have ever seen. Apparently there is a yacht club near there called One Ocean Club that is open to the public (not a well known tip) where you can enjoy a beverage and marvel at these vessels.

From the castle I wandered down to the palace, which is now the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. I wandered for several hours among spanish art through out the ages. It was wonderful. I started my college career in graphic art, art history and architecture and there is a piece of me that loves to feel that curiosity and appreciation again. I remember one of my professors during my first week of my freshman year telling the art history class that so much of daily living throughout the centuries disappears or gets erased somehow, but art, art is the one constant that can still teach us everything about those times.