Dioramas are an old-style fixture at many museums around the world, but how often are they made out of chocolate?

At the Chocolate Museum in Barcelona, Spain – or the Museu de la Xocolata as it’s called in Catalan – I learned that chocolate sculpting can be a highly creative art form.

Bullfighting scene at the Chocolate Museum

When I was there I saw a bull fight with both matador and bull made out of chocolate. That’s about as close as you’ll get to the real thing in Barcelona, given that bull fighting is Castilian not Catalan, and as an animal lover that’s fine by me. I also saw a chocolate tableau from the Asterix comics, a chocolate forest scene featuring Bambi and a chocolate Ben Hur, plus machinery used in chocolate making.

Seeing all that chocolate made me hungry, but luckily I could nibble on my ticket – made of chocolate of course – and then stop for a hot chocolate on the way out. It costs €4.30 to get in to the museum, but it’s free to enter the café area.

There are plenty of things to do in Barcelona and this is NOT a must-do, but it is mildly entertaining and it is centrally located near the Parc de la Ciutadella. It could be quite fun with small children, though it’s not a cheap diversion given that the exhibit space is quite small.

The museum is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 7pm and Sunday 10am to 3pm, and closed on Tuesday.

Comerç, 36
08003 Barcelona
Tel. 93.268.78.78
Fax 93.268.78.79
museu@pastisseria.cat

Photo credit: Caitlin Fitzsimmons, used with permission (all rights reserved).

Caitlin Fitzsimmons is a journalist and travel writer based in San Francisco. She blogs about travel and food at Roaming Tales.

Related: Dreaming of Spain and Costa del Sol; Taller de Tapas in Barcelona, Spain.

The tapas crawl is a nightly ritual in Madrid. Residents and tourists alike take to the streets, hopping from restaurant to restaurant sampling portions of tapas like jamon and cheese, along with glasses of wine and vermut. For those who want to stay in one place while still sampling a variety of the best food Spain has to offer, the Mercado de San Miguel is the perfect place.

Inside the market you’ll find plenty of vendors selling goods you can take to go and cook at home, but the real fun is in standing at the counter of in moving from stall to stall as you stop and sample the goods. Order up a heaping plate of jamon serrano or jamon iberico plus some artisanal cheese like manchego, brie or fontina, plus some crusty bread. The move on to some fried croquetas, some fresh oysters, or some creative tapas like grilled octopus on toast with artichoke hearts.

For dessert, nibble on chocolate truffles, pastries and cookies. To drink, you can take your pick from cheap glasses of Rioja wine, vermut from a tap, flutes of bubbly Veuve Cliquot or, in winter, even some steaming cups of hot gluwhein.

The market is open from 10am to 10pm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday, and from 10am to 2am on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Photo Credit: Katie Hammel

The Reina Sofia is the most famous museum in Madrid, and one of Spain’s best museums. Four floors of modern, contemporary and post-impressionist art, it would require you to spend days inside to see it all. But most people come here for one thing  – Picasso’s Guernica.

The Guernica takes up nearly an entire wall of the museum. It is 11 feet tall and almost 27 feet wide. The painting is one of Picasso’s most powerful works, and depicts the bombing of Guernica in the Basque country during the Spanish Civil War.  At first glance, it looks like chaos, and then slowly different scenes start to emerge – a woman grieving for her dead child, a fallen man with a broken sword. It seems the more you look, the more you see.

Surrounding the painting are the sketches Picasso made when preparing his masterpiece. You can take photos of these works, but not of the main painting.

Of course, Guernica is just one of thousands of pieces of art in the Reina Sofia. Other artists represented include Miro, Munoz, and Dali.

The Reina Sofia museum is open Monday through Saturday from 1oam to 9pm and Sunday from 10am to 2:30pm. It is closed on Tuesdays. General admission is 6 euros for adults. The museum offers free admission Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 7pm to 9pm, Saturday from 2:30pm to 9am and Sunday all day.

Photo Credit: rogiro via Flickr

Barcelona is the home of the modernisme architectural movement made famous by Gaudi, the architect best known for his unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia. But there are other places to see the master’s genius at work.

Park Güell is a municipal park and garden just outside the city center. It is free to the public and provides some of the best views of Barcelona (including of the Sagrada Familia, which towers over the buildings around it).. The park is open every day during daylight hours and is free to the public. It’s a beautiful place to wander around and enjoy a day outside, but it also provides a deeper look at the works of Gaudi. The most notable part of the park is a large square lined with a tiled bench, covered in brightly colored mosaics, that snakes its way around.  The park is also home to Gaudi’s house, which was designed by the architect and is now a mini-museum, featuring furniture Gaudi.

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