Easter Dinner

Hi. I see that no one has weighed in on your post. While I don't know about Spain, I can tell you that Germany closes up pretty tightly for Easter + some days before + after, because this is considered "family time" and many restaurants will close, as well as most stores. If you are at a real touristy place in Germany, such as Oberammergau, you will find some restaurants open + souvenir places open, but museums, department stores, etc, will close for up to 3-4 days.

Like I said, this would be true for Germany, and I don't know about Spain. You may have to do some deep internet digging, and it would be worth it to directly email the department stores/museums etc that you would be interested in.

I also lived in Belgium for a time, and I found that some stores would even advertise "Open Every Day!" with it just being "understood" by the community that of course, it would be closed on Sunday !

GOod luck, and tell us what you find! Of course, churches and cathedrals will be open for mass in Spain.

Susan, Easter is the first Sunday in April. According to the Picasso Museum website, the museum is free on the first Sunday of every month. The conventional wisdom here is that visiting popular museums during free periods is a false economy because they are even more crowded than usual. I went to the Picasso during a pay-to-enter period last summer, and my mind boggles at the concept of "more crowded than usual". It was a slow slog moving through the museum and trying to get close enough to read the labels beside the painting. The only area that felt non-sardine-like was the area housing the ceramics.

If you are a big Picasso fan, I understand that you will not be willing to bypass that museum. If Easter is the only available day, you'll just have to grin and bear it. If you are not a big Picasso fan, I commend to you the many other fine museums in Barcelona. The Miro on Montjuic was a very pleasant experience for me--spacious and uncrowded, and the (huge) Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya--also on Montjuic--is wonderful. The MNAC gets a lot of visitors but can readily absorb them and was not remotely packed during my August visit. Some galleries are very lightly visited. In addition to its traditional holdings, the modernism collection is very interesting, and there are fabulous medieval frescoes rescued from churches in the Pyrenees. And Barcelona has many, many more museums potentially of interest.

I spent Easter in Andalucia last year and was concerned that the restaurants would be closed on Sunday. The opposite - it's one of the biggest days of the year for them. I assume less religious Barcelona would not close up for Easter.

When I'm in Barcelona I mostly eat tapas and it's hard to land on a place that isn't good. I had an excellent lunch at Elsa y Fred (near the Palau de la Musica). The servings were artistically presented, and not overly generous, but 3 courses of the set menu were very tasty and filled me up nicely.

Thanks to all three of you for your input and suggestions. I was aware that Easter falls on a free entry day at the Picasso Museum, but there will be 5 of us so I have to thoughtfully consider where to spend our money and what we would be giving up. Also, we will have plenty of other costs in order to view Gaudi's work. If it were just me and my husband, it would be a no brainer!

Sounds like I can't go wrong eating in Barcelona. I was just looking for a true meal, rather than small plates. We will be eating small plates on the days proceeding and after so I wanted something different on Easter.

I went to the Picasso Museum last year. I am not a huge fan of Picasso but I like much of his work well enough. There was no line to get in (off-season), so maybe the museum was not as crowded as it is when there is a long line. I was able to view all the works easily but there were plenty of other people in many of the rooms - none of them is very big. The museum focused first on his very early works - when he was a teenager - and it was enlightening to understand his talent and development, rather than for the art itself. The second focus was on Cubism which doesn't interest me so I breezed through it. My memory is that it was the largest section of the museum. If you are huge Picasso fans and especially interested in the development of the artist and Cubism, then it's probably worth either spending the money or putting up with the crowds. Just don't expected to be wowed or to see any of his major pieces.