Pablo Picasso

Picasso's self portrait

We went to the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and saw many pieces of Pablo Picasso's art. Pablo Picasso was one of the most well known and famous artists. His dad was a art teacher so Picasso stated at a early age. 

"First communion"

A lot of Picasso's paintings were oil on canvas or oil on wood. At the age of 13-14 he most of his paintings were natural portraits and landscapes. This was one of my favorite styles that he used.  At the age of 14 he entered a piece that was called The First Communion in a competition. This piece was a oil on canvas and was one of his first famous pieces of art.  I think Picasso was a amazing painter for his age!


In Pablo's mid 20's he took a trip to Paris. After the trip his style changed, and he made one of his most famous paintings. As his style changed his art became more colorful. For a while he did a style called still life.

I liked his new style because it was more colorful and bright. I felt like it was happier. His old style was dark and dull. I also liked his new style because it was different than other art, and it was really creative.
  
In 1973 at the age of 91 Pablo Picasso died. 

His full name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. By Jaden

La Sagrada Familia by Beckett Turner

When we were in Barcelona, we went to one of it's most famous sights called La Sagrada Familia!  La Sagrada Familia (means The Sacred Family) is a big Basilica. A Basilica is a church in Spain. It was designed by a Antonio Gaudi. Antonio Gaudi was able to finish designing it, but did not get to see the whole building built because he got hit by a train in 1926.  Now In 2014 they are still trying hard to finish Gaudi's Sagrada Familia!

It was colorful, there were lots of high towers and he also tried to make it look like nature on the  inside. The columns looked like trees. It was probable the most unique building i've ever seen.

Click here to learn more about La Sagrada Familia!!!

Gaudi designed a schoolhouse for the children of the workers so that they could go to school!  This is us at one of the desks!

Camp Nou- By Jaden and Beckett

We went to the fc barcelona soccer stadium.  The 'fc' stands for football club and football means soccer in spanish. They are one of the best soccer teams in the world, and have the best soccer player in the world too; his name is Lionel Messi.

My favorite part of the stadium tour was the away locker room. It had its own hot tub so the players could rest before or after their game.  I also liked the broadcast room. I think they had the best view.  I also liked the field because they grow the grass, so it wasn't fake. By Beckett

We went to the camp Nou on our second full day in Barcelona. Camp Nou is BFC (Barcelona futball club) futball (soccer) stadium it holds about 100,000 people thats about 4 times bigger than the sounders stadium. Camp Nou was built in 1957 which is about 50 years older than the sounders stadium. The Camp Nou experience includes the museum, stadium, the visitor locker room, broadcasting booths, and the press room. In the press room we got a picture of my brother and I holding a trophy Barcelona FC won, it was about 2 feet tall and 1 foot wide.

Some of Barcelona FC's most well known players are Messi and Neymar JR. A cool thing about Barcelona FC is that they have UNICEF on the back of their jersey's to help promote them. UNICEF is a organization that helps children worldwide.

My favorite part was the broadcasting booth, the broadcasting booth is a room up really high and you can see the whole field super clear. It is where the announcers sit and watch, it is a long skinny room with a bunch of seats for people like the owners of the team and important people.

It has been my favorite thing so far because Barcelona FC is my favorite football team, and my favorite player is Messi. So it was cool for me to learn all about the team and their history. Barcelona is my favorite team because they mean a lot to their city and community and their goal isn't just to win games it is to make their town a better place and help people. Barcelona FC isn't just a soccer team they are a big part of their city.

When I was leaving Barcelona a guy tapped on my Barcelona FC sweatshirt and was like Barca, Barca and thought it was cool that a tourist kid was wearing a Barcelona sweatshirt. By Jaden

Here are some more pictures of our day at Camp Nou! We ended the day at the beach and rented some long boards :) They don't have helmets in Spain, so mom couldn't make us wear one!

The Barcelona Zoo-By Beckett and Jaden

We went to the zoo and saw different kinds of animals. We saw lions and tigers and bears,oh my! The most interesting thing I saw was a Tapir. It had a long a nose and had grayish brownish fur. My favorite part of the zoo was the dolphin show. By Beckett Turner

We went to the Barcelona zoo on our first day in Barcelona. The place where zoo is located is very interesting it is in the city park the park was humungous, it had to be because it had a zoo in it! It was huge even though it was in a park!

We saw a dolphin show that had two dolphins, and a guy in a wet suit told them to do tricks, when the dolphins did a trick he would give them a fish. The dolphins did all sorts of tricks including jumping like 3 feet high and over ropes, they also swam onto platforms and did flips.

We saw ostriches they were doing something that looked like they were cleaning each other. There were gorillas to. There was a little gorilla getting chased by an older gorilla it was super funny, they were throwing hay at each other. We saw lions, elephants, giraffes, a tiger, 4 lions, a bunch of birds, and some bears.

Our trip to the zoo was super fun. By Jaden


Here are some more pics of our day and of the zoo! We will be adding more soon!
 

Leaving Venice - Jaden

Hi everyone,

Has anything interesting happened at home?

Me and Beckett on our taxi (boat) ride to the Venice Airport

Yesterday, Feburuary 20, 2014  we left Venice. To get to Barcalona we first, we took a water taxi to the airport. It was kind of weird that the airport was on it's own island. The ride was pretty bumpy but we made it. The front of the taxi looked like a speed boat but the back was like a little room with benches all around it. The ceiling in the taxi was only like 4 and a half feet high. When we got to the dock we took about a 5 minute walk to the airport.

Our Welcome Cake at the Apartment we are staying

When we got to thne airport we went through 2 really long lines one for check-in and the other for security. Then we went and had a snack at a resturant.

After that we got on the plane. The plane ride was about an hour and a half to waste the time my brother and I read and played games.

Our first walk through Barcelona...Gaudi!

After about an hour and 10 minutes we could look down and see Barcalona, it was amazing I could see everything it was huge!  I could see 100,000,000,000 tiny little buildings that looked like a bunch of legos! My first thought was why are we only staying 5 days when the city would take 20 days to see everything?

A couple of  minutes later we landed at the airport. I thought that the airports size fit the city. Then we got off the plane and got our luggage and caught a taxi to our apartment. The ride was about 20 minutes  long. We were there but we couldn't find our apartment so my mom called the lady who owned it and she came down and showed is it. It was really cool and modern.

Our apartment that we rented...super awesome!

I hope everyone is okay. See everybody soon.     -Jaden    
more pics of Barcelona...check back as we will be adding A LOT!

PS...my mom is going to do a blog update soon with everything else that we did in Italy that my brother and I didn't cover in our blogs and she will post more links to pictures!
 

Our visit with Vally, Leo, and Emanuele -by Beckett

Me with Manuel and Leonardo!

After Rome we went to Treviso to stay with Vally and her family. We got here by a bullet train. We got to stay in their house. Vally was a foreign exchange student who lived with my grandparents, my mom, and my uncle when they were in high school for a year.  That was almost 20 years ago!

In Padova with Vally!

We met some of her friends too!  We went on a walk into down town Treviso. They taught me some Italian words. We met a girl named Elena.  Her mom knows 5 different languages and teaches English in Italy.  We went to Padova the next day, and went to dinner with her parents! it was fun spending time with people from a different country and culture!!!
See more pics of our time in Treviso and Padova HERE!

Our walk to Treviso with our new Italian friend Elena

We had a confetti fight at the square in Treviso during Carnivale.  It was lots of fun!

The food of Rome - Jaden

Ciao (hi),

Today I'm going to blog about the food in Rome. We went to a lot of trattoria's (restaurants) while we were in Rome because we stayed in a hotel and we didn't have a kitchen.

One of the most common foods in Rome is thin crust pizza it was really good but not my favorite food. Some most common kinds were Margarita, Salami, Funghi (mushroom) which I don't like, and Speck (smoked ham). Out of those 4 I like Salami the most it tastes a lot like pepperoni but it is a little bit different, the differences are really hard to describe but one of them is that salami tastes like it is a little bit oily.

Another common food is pasta. Some common pastas are Carbonara, Black pepper and parmesan, and pasta with red sauce and bacon. Out of those I only had Carbonara, which is pasta with cheese sauce and bacon. It was not the best dish I have ever had but it was still delicious.
         
In Italy they eat a lot of sweets! They have baked goods for breakfast every day! Some of the my favorite sweets are the croissants filled with cream sauce, the little pies filled with lemon curd with fruit on top, and creme brule'. My brother liked the crispy biscuit with cinnamon and sugar the most. Finally there is the gelato (Italian ice cream), it's AMAZING! They have a lot of different flavors. I saw one gelato shop with 150 flavors.

Some words I have learned are:
ciao(hi, bye)
bonjorno(hello)
gratsi(thank you)
prego(your welcome)
bambino(baby)
perfecto(perfect)
torta(cake)
scuzzi (excuse me)
si(yes)

Here are some pictures that we took.  We didn't take enough pictures of the food...so we will make sure that we take more during the rest of our trip...
click HERE to see more pictures of Food in Rome that we took