Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Montjuic

This building is so subtle that S walked past without noticing it. I like the way it vanishes into the background ... the original was built for the 1929 International Exposition and was considered so unremarkable that it was demolished afterwards; this is a reproduction. Note: I might have entered this for Mono Monday: Patterns. It's nearly mono as it is, but I didn't want to lose the hints of green.

Yes, we are in Barcelona. We are actually staying in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, a suburb, but its a quick 15-minute whiz on the metro into the centre of Barcelona -- an opportunistic trip resulting from a house-swap request.

Today we found that despite being one of the most tourist-infested places in Europe, possibly the world, Barcelona is closed on Mondays. We set off to Montjuic planning to visit the national museum, housed in a ghastly  Renaissance-style building. It was closed. We didn't particularly fancy the exhibitions at la Caixa, so we set off to have a look at the Olympic park, which we found uncomfortably fascist in style. I took some photos of Calatrava's communications tower, which is designed to function as a sundial when all modern communications have failed, but I wasn't that impressed. So we headed back down the hill and into town. An unremarkable and expensive salad for lunch in the Boquería; I know a lot of people rave about it, but to me it's not a real market, it's just for tourists. 

As we were nearby, we though we'd visit the Palau Guell -- nope, closed on Mondays. Picasso museum? Closed. We did go to the tourist office and a very helpful man gave us some tips for jazz clubs. Although we didn't seem to have done much, my feet were tired, so it was back to base to cook a chicken we'd bought in the much more authentic market in l'Hospitallet. Several glasses of cava have been consumed. I've looked at my photos and most of them are rubbish. It was this or a pink pigeon.

I didn't bother blipping yesterday, but Saturday is backblipped.