Aventuras en Espana!: Oh, Just Another Weekend

While I have traveled to other countries while studying abroad (Ireland, Italy), I had my most exotic day this past Friday-- I awoke in Barcelona, ate lunch in France, and had dinner in Girona (Spain). How crazy! I went on a trip this weekend with a group from school. We went up to northeastern Spain, into southern France, and then back to northeastern Spain.

On Friday, we went into France. We were supposed to go to this town on the water but the power has been out in parts of the area since Monday because of the snow so we had to go to another town called Perpignon. This was a regular city (so spoiled... just a "regular" European city!) with a canal and a castle.

We were staying in town called Girona so after the castle, we checked into our hotel. On Saturday, we went to the Dali Museum and then to the coast to a small town called Cadaques.

The Dali Museum was incredible. He designed and created the entire thing. It is in the town where he grew up and used to be a theater where he actually had his first exhibit. The town offered him the theater for a museum so he created an homage to himself. The center of the museum has his first Cadillac in it with a figure meant to represent himself standing on top of it attached to an old boat. The combination of the car "car" and boat "naval" makes "carnival" so it's celebrating Dali's life as a carnival. But there are gold figures like the Oscars awards cheering on Dali's life. I couldn't get a good picture of this but here's the outside of the museum.

Now, here's one of my favorite paintings in the museum. This is Abraham Lincoln and Dali's wife, Gala, mixed together. There's a Freudian idea behind it... when Dali decided to marry Gala, his family wasn't happy (Gala was a married woman) so Dali had to choose between Gala and his family. He chose Gala and became estranged from his family. Freud said that for a man to truly be a man, he had to disown his family so Gala was Dali's emancipating force, like Lincoln was in the U.S. for the slaves.

In the afternoon, we went to the coast. The mountains were snowy but it was a warm day.

Cadaques.

Street-turned-river (from the snow).

Port Iligat (where Dali had a summer house)

Pals.

That night, we went out to a little bar/restaurant. This region of Spain (Catalunya) has its own version of champagne called Cava and we decided to try pink Cava. It was quite delicious.

Today, we walked around Girona. This is an old city known for it's Jewish quarter and importance in the Roman Empire. It was built in 200 B.C. to control the passageway through the Pyrenees (there is one spot that's significantly lower than the rest of the mountain range and that's how people cross them-- even today).