Park Parrots and Eggs of Freedom

This morning I accompanied Brandon's drawing class to a nearby park here in Barcelona.  The park is filled with fountains, sculpture, palm trees, tall pines, and many species of trees and shrubs that I can't identify.  While the students worked on drawing, and Brandon walked among them giving lessons, I spent some quality wild parrot watching time.  I love parrots, and these guys were busy building huge nests, like the one in the photo below.  Several birds would work on a nest and they were flying about collecting twigs and industriously working to weave them into place, squawking all the while.  I recorded a few seconds of their noise and flapping from one of my favorite benches where I read my book and enjoyed the parrot show.  

I wish I had binoculars, or a better camera than my cell phone, because I couldn't get a close up view of the birds since they were so fast and so fluttery.  I think there were two species.  Big green parrots and smaller parrots with green undersides and teal and blue wings.  

The park wasn't crowded, but there were older men relaxing on benches reading the paper, small bent ladies crocheting, and parents with groups of small children.  It was a very pleasant place to spend the morning.  

I sneaked around taking photos of Brandon talking to the students.  This was their first day to use charcoal, so everyone was getting grubby and making big messy drawings in their sketchbooks.  

On our way back from the park we stopped to get some groceries.  The eggs in the store are not refrigerated, but just sitting on the shelf.  Six packs were the norm, and I'm sure it's because most people are carting their things home without a car, so they tend to shop more frequently and buy smaller quantities, which is the rhythm we seem to be falling into as well.  I like this neat box of eggs - "Six Eggs from Chickens of Freedom".  I'm glad to see that free range eggs are popular in Spain.  

While our lunch was cooking I had fun trying to translate the message on the back of the box.  I know I didn't get it quite right, but we had a good laugh at my translation, and I think I got the point.  

These eggs from Val de Mestral are eggs from chicken campers, with breeding in free air, having each with land vegetation.  They take bathrooms on earth and in sun for the land for it's privileged climate, fertility, and purity of the environment produced authentic quality eggs.  

I'm all about chickens with land vegetation, and I also support taking bathrooms on the earth, so these are my kind of eggs!  I can't say that they were up to Helen and Mrs. Hall freshness and taste though, but I appreciate the entertainment value they provided me.  

After a long siesta, which, by the way, is something I could really get used to, we took a stroll with Italian gellato in mind, and enjoyed our cones as we sauntered past Picasso's only public work in Barcelona.  The contrast of his simple childlike drawings with the ornate Cathedral next door made them both more interesting.  

After our evening stroll we decided to take the subway to a movie theatre that shows movies in English with Spanish subtitles.  We watched Star Trek, which I enjoyed even more that the first time I saw it.  It was fun to see all the movie posters in the lobby in Spanish, and I would like to go see Monstrous Universitaria someday.  The previews for movies like the new Wolverine, were dubbed over with Spanish.  And the voice overs were so deep and over dramatic that it made the serious moments of the film seem funny to me.      Something that was different about this movie theatre is that the seats are numbered and if you come during a busy time you buy a ticket for a specific seat.  Also, the lights don't come on in the room until all of the credits are finished, and most people sat through them all, so you can't just get up and leave without stumbling over people in the pitch black darkness.  After the movie we had falafal at a Greek restaurant and Brandon says it was some of the best restaurant food he's had since he's been here.  Now we know the secret to buying good meals - don't eat Spanish food!  

My luggage came today.  It was like Christmas.  So many socks to chose from!