We have a full day planned today. Getting a car and driving out of the city, north, almost to the French border. So, we are of course, up and out first thing – before the announcement that we are cleared. We chose to take the city shuttle out of the port – instead of the blue port shuttle bus, which will stop at other terminals. May have been a mistake. They said the first shuttle was at 8:30, but as it turns out, it doesn’t leave until closer to 9:00. In the meantime, the blue bus has already come and gone. Oh well…not much we can do….we have all day, we just want to be back here before 5:00 so we don’t have to drive through Barcelona in the dark.
The bus finally leaves, and we make our way up the Paral-lel to the Sixt office. It’s an easy walk, Ed has checked in already, so we just show his passport, sign the form and we are off an out in our little orange and black Smart car. How cute – it’s our first Smart car and it is great – roomy inside and just the right size for Europe. 
We get off to a good start, heading out of town on the ring road near the water. But then construction hits. Argh! There are lots of diversions here for construction around the Olympic stadium and we end up missing a couple turns, trying to listen to Alice and navigate closed roads and new turns around road construction. At one point we get stuck in the middle of an intersection, on the trolley tracks with an articulated bus in front of us.
We finally manage to get out of the city construction mess and out onto one of the thoroughfares that will lead us to the highway. We lost about 15 minutes, which at this point could be an issue. But, we’ll just play it by ear as we go.
Our first destination is Figueres, home to Salvador Dali and the museum he created in an old burned out theater at the center of town. We navigate there beautifully once on the major highways – after paying enormous tolls – wow – they know how to keep their roads funded, that’s for sure – and watching the Alps come into view. It is a gorgeous day and the mountains look just like a painting off in the near distance. There is no way to get a good photo unfortunately, but trust me, they are absolutely stunning out in the distance ahead.
We drive into Figueres without further issue and find the garage behind the museum easily. We are lucky it is not summer, or a weekend. All the reviews say the museum gets packed and the line to just buy tickets can be over an hour. Off season, we are able to walk right up, purchase our tickets and walk straight into the museum. And what a museum! Dali is an incredibly interesting – and incredibly odd – man. He has taken the burned out hull of the municipal theater, ruined at the end of the Spanish Civil War, and turned into into the largest surrealistic object in the world.
It totally defies description! We enter into the courtyard where we are immediately immersed into Dali’s strange universe. An old car with mannequins dressed as Dali and other passengers inside, a warrior chick statue on the hood, an odd ship of some sort on a pole towering above, and naked mannequins perched in all the tower windows surrounding the courtyard. Truly bizarre.
Once inside, the oddities don’t stop. In the stage area, there is a huge mural we don’t really understand – but hey – it’s Dali. We’ll have to get a book when we get home to sort out all of this. There is also this amazing portrait of a naked woman, painted from behind her. When you look at it with the naked eye, you see the woman and all sorts of cubes of color. When you take a photograph of it, you see a man’s face who resembles (is???) Abe Lincoln. Cool.
The museum winds you through a total of 22 rooms with various displays – from Dali’s works –paintings, sculptures, installations - to other artist’s works to jewelry designed by Dali. To get to all the rooms, you use the rounded corridors of the theater, also lined with art and sketches and bizarre installations – like this one made of corn cobs, baby dolls and hanks of hair that, from a distance, looks like a face in the doorway.
There is also the Mae West room – a huge installation that uses a sofa in the shape of lips, some bizarre other sculptures and 3D paintings on the wall to approximate Mae West in 3D. From the ground – it looks like random pieces of bizarre art….
…but once we wait in line and climb up to a platform above the installation, the framing of the photo makes it appear like a 3D face….
The whole place is like this! Even the rooms where he lived are an interesting mix of styles – which a representation of his famous watch painting above his bizarrely footboard bed and the totally cool sofa next to it.
We could spend hours here (and I’d love to post more photos, but that will have to wait until we fix the photo reduction program), unfortunately we don’t have that luxury, so we wander through, marveling at all the different periods and styles Dali has gone through. He really is prolific and we are both interested in reading more about him and his life.
Perusing the gift shop, I find another glass case with Port Alguer, one of the paintings that I love, so I snapped it up as a back up for my Monet case, which I use every day and am terrified it will break one day and I won’t be able to find a replacement.
That purchase made, we head back to the car and on to Girona. There is much more to see here in Figueres – like the Rambla, the castle, the other Dali museums, including his house and his castle – but not today. Maybe on our next visit…next year.
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