Day 103: Figueres/Cadaques, Spain

We got up relatively early and hit the road by 9am to go see Salvador Dali's museum (most people probably know him for his drawing of melting clocks) which is about 45 minutes from where we are staying. Good thing we left when we did because about halfway through our tour of the museum people were streaming in through the entrance.

The cool thing about seeing Dali's works here is not only for the fact that he grew up in these parts but that he also designed the whole museum himself. So his artistic touch is evident in almost every corner of the museum. Even as you pull up to the building you can tell that the master of the surreal was here.


(Ilana standing in front of the Dali museum. Not only is the roof adorned with large eggs and emmy like gold statues, but the walls of the building are covered in tri-corner golden bread rolls.)

Inside the building it gets even more interesting with a courtyard that displays "Dali's Cadillac". It is an open-air courtyard with a boat suspended upon a high stack of tires. The statue of a woman is harnassed to the boat as if pulling it, but the statue stands on the front hood of an old Cadillac, which inside as it rains (waters falls from the ceiling of the car) sits a mannequin and vines growing about. The courtyard is circular and made of stone, and about 3-stories high. In the windows of the courtyard stand emmy like gold statues facing in toward the center of the courtyard. I have to say that when Dali wanted surreal, he got surreal.

My pictures didn't capture it as well as some on the web.

http://flovoyages.chez.com/Catalogne/Dali-cadillac.jpg

The museum is full of odd pieces and montages. Dali was surely prolific in his day. Here are some other pictures from the museum.


(Ilana in the museum courtyard.)


(Supposed to look like Mae West. To view this piece you actually need to walk up a flight of stairs and look down across the room. The eyes are actually two pictures hanging on a wall, the nose sitting on the floor, the lips are a small sofa, and the hair is suspended in a large door frame.)


(Ilana strolling through the museum.)

When we got back to the hotel in Cadaques, the sun was shining so we got some pool/sun time in and made a plan to walk around the town closer to dinner time. From our hotel balcony we can see an old church amongst the houses on the hill rising from the bay, so we made our way over there and looked around what is considered to be the old section of town. The road that winds along the bay is the main drag, and if the waves are high enough they spill onto the road. We walked around town then found a mellow place to grab some tapas as the sun went down.


(Statue of Dali along the bay.)


(Ilana on one of the narrow streets in town.)


(Ilana on another small street.)


(Dinner.)


(Walking along the main road.)


(My artist shot taken while Ilana ran into a clothing store to look around.)

A great combination of relaxing and sightseeing today. This small town is definitely a spot we would recommend to others. We wish that we could have spent another day or two here just relaxing and strolling around town. It has a great mix of restaurants and energy, while obviously consisting of mostly tourists, it has a particular charm and does not feel too crowded or annoying.

FJ