Picasso Museum

I had wanted to go to the museu Picasso for a while, so I took the opportunity to go during this trip. We tried to get there early because I had seen some enormous lines some other times when I had walked past it. However, like always we got caught up on the trains and then found some people on the street, so we got there later than expected.
At first the line looked so long that we would have had to wait until night to get in there, but it moved surprisingly fast and we were inside in about half an hour.
If you buy the combined entrance (special exhibition + regular entrance) you go first to the special exhibit. This time it was the art that was in Picasso's apartment at the time of his death. It was really nice to see it first because you could see the influence of some painters in his work. He had a lot of African masks and sculptures which can clearly be seen in his Demoiselles D'Avignon and Las Meninas.
Afterwards you walk into the permanent collection where it goes in chronological order from his youth. I thought there should have been more cubist and rose period peices. Everything was very well presented though, with one or more rooms devoted to each phase.

The only bad thing about coming here is going out to eat after the museum. Every place around there is very touristy and not authentic at all. Frozen and reheated.

On my last visit to Barcelona we stopped at the Altair bookshop. I would recommend this place to any travbuddy visiting Barcelona and with a little extra time on their hands. The entire bookstore is dedicated to travel. There are sections for each continent and country. You can find guides, maps, and the Altair magazine. There are three levels of amazing books. I particularly liked the National Geographic portraiture books, and nature books. They also had calendars from each country, with great pictures.
It's in a convenient location, walking distance from Placa Catalunya. I ended up spending a lot of my day here, I only came out when it was getting dark. At the end I came out with a book on Rome, which I will explore next year and my father got a magazing on Mongolia. To plan our trip this summer (hopefully).
I'm sure to go back on my next trip to Spain, the information and pictures you can find there are great, almost as good as travbuddy haha.