La Costa Brava

Riding in an obnoxiously large tour bus, listening to my iPod, drowning out the din of sorority girls chippering about nothing in the background = recipe for a blissful catatonic state of sleep.

All 100-something of us IES students rolled out of bed on Friday morning, cursing the 7:30 AM departure outside the Hard Rock Cafe in La Plaça Catalunya and the fact that we had to tote our bags on the metro to get there.  But was it worth it?  Yes, especially after konking out on the bus, definitely yes.

First stop: La Jonquera

As you approach the Catalonian border between France and Spain, you'll stumble upon La Jonquera, a small and quiet town that pays hommage to the hundreds of thousands of Spanish Republicans that fled their native homeland with the rise of Franco, an asshole among the ranks of Hitler and Mussolini.  Many of these exiliados passed through La Jonquera into France and then elsewhere and so it's here that they erected the Museum of Exile.

But first, a coffee to wake me up...

Una palmera 

Elephant ears in English

Up on the second floor, the permanent exhibition is set up as an educational tour through time and an emotionally charged memorial to a defining, somber moment in Spanish history.

"The freedom to live far from here, and this is exile"

translated from Catalán to the original English of Shakespeare's King Lear

The museum had a sobering effect but not the kind of soul-riveting, blood-curdling effect Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem) has on its visitors.  But I'd rather not have occasion to build museums like Yad Vashem nor the Museum of Exile; let's try to keep those kinds of humanitarian disasters to a minimum, yes?


Next stop: Collioures
Through the Pyrenees and down onto the southern coast of France sits the colorful city of Collioures.  And here lies Antonio Machado, the famous Spanish poet who died just a few days after his mother passed, just after having crossed the border into France after Franco brought the war to a close and  ushered Spain into an era of repression...

La tumba de Antonio Machado

Excerpt from his poem, "Caminante, no hay camino"

Caminante, son tus huellas

el camino, y nada más;

caminante, no hay camino,

se hace camino al andar.

Al andar se hace camino,

y al volver la vista atrás

se ve la senda que nunca

se ha de volver a pisar.

Caminante, no hay camino,

sino estelas en la mar.

***

Wanderer, your footsteps are

the road, and nothing more;

wanderer, there is no road,

the road is made by walking.

By walking one makes the road,

and upon glancing behind

one sees the path

that never will be trod again.

Wanderer, there is no road--

Only wakes upon the sea.

Despite cemeteries typically being places of mourning, something about European cemeteries (maybe the space in family mausoleums) makes me think of after-death parties.  I imagine these festive occasions where these people return from their graves to mingle with each other, to host a fiesta that's equal parts cocktail soiree and potluck dinner.  So I directed a little photo shoot across the street:

In hommage to the dead party people

My artistic directions: "Diva harder!"

 It did cross my mind that this was entirely inappropriate behavior right in front of a cemetery but...the dead party people understand and they appreciate the entertainment.  If anything, they welcomed our upbeat attitude in the sea of depression drowning the fun out of their final resting places.


Now the city itself has tight, winding walkways between brightly painted buildings all around the shore. There's a ton of flowers sprouting from every which way and gelato on literally every corner.  It's a good place to be dead but even a better place to be living.

A typical pass

My roommate, unconsciously having matched her outfit to the city, points to

something really worth paying attention to...

Like the crystalline Mediterranean Sea.

And what did this quaint French (and culturally Catalonian) seaside city have looking over it?  Hell yeah it was an old castle.

Some cacti growing behind me in a dried up moat.

If the moat were full, the castle would have been just like the one in Disney's The Swan Princess.

Holding some boats, motha-uckas

Living life on the edge

i.e. perching on a high ledge with my foot sticking out.  Notice water's clarity

Mediterranean in every way and then a windmill and another castle..?

And then lunch is served:

Creme fraiche pizza with fresh smoked salmon, black olives, mushrooms, and onions

Pizza Collioures topped with their famous anchovies and other stuff.

No me gustan las anchovas...nunca.

Can't leave the French seaside without having ordered Moules Frites!

Tastes like the ocean in a surprisingly good way

The beautiful flowers explain themselves

It was a beautiful day in a beautiful city to be walking around and exploring but I didn't know enough Catalán or enough French to get around with ease so I just exhausted my merci's.  It was somewhat of a relief then to get back on Spanish soil.


Stop Número Tres: Girona
We drove back south to Girona and stayed at the Hotel Ultonia, which I'm really missing right now.  They had soft beds and fluffy down pillows, the showers had glass doors, a rain-style shower head and the bathroom was tiled from floor to ceiling; it made me homesick for my own bed and shower.


Anyway, the city itself is pretty quiet but historically significant.  It sits on the road that once connected the Iberian peninsula to the Roman Empire and as it is situated in a strategic position along the Pyrenees, has been the subject of various territory battles throughout time.


We spent our first night drinking a less than impressive cava sangria and explored the city's old quarter in the morning.  The old quarter is dominated by churches and buildings built in the gothic fashion, high ancient walls and cypress trees sprouting from every which direction.  In other words, it's awesome.

The first church I encountered after crossing the footbridge over the river

Greenery and old stone

Cypress trees and a glimpse of a gothic bell tower in the background

Light through a cupola in the ceiling of the Arab Baths

More of my favorite trees!

A gutsy one-legged pigeon

He's the pigeon equivalent of a honey badger; he just don't give a shit

The second widest gothic nave next to St. Peter's in Rome

Waiting at the foot of 90 steps for the boy in blue to return my sunglasses to me

Número cuatro: S'Agaró
We were taken on a half hour hike along a cliffside overlooking the sea where some fancy old mansions were perched, adorned with flowery vines and wide balconies overlooking the rolling waves of the Mediterranean before crashing against the rocks.  The hike began with clear skies and a refreshing wind and ended with clouds and a gravelly pebble/sand beach.  My memory of this afternoon is somewhat bitter because of the 2 hour wait for lunch which was just a baguette with chunks of canned tuna on it (I added mustard, mayo, pepper, and vinegar on my own) and because it started  to rain.

One of those grand houses to my right

Endless sea straight ahead

My fellow classmates playing volleyball and sitting on the sand to my left

I took all those photos from the beach bar where I sat huddled in a chair, closer to the parking lot where the buses were coming to get us and farther from the grains of sand that insisted on digging themselves into my feet.


The rest of my night was fairly uneventful.  Showered, read more of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, and stepped out only briefly to get a pistachio gelato in its natural nutty brown coloring as the proprietress made sure I knew.  But the natural goodness really did shine through: a little bit salty, a little bit sweet, and all over delicious.


La quinta parada: Figueres
Oh, Dalí...
Said with a sigh after a fit of laughter, a kind of sigh that accompanies your friend's name because you just click with them, love them, and appreciate them for just being there.  That was the way I felt when I first did a preliminary study of Dalí's works in high school, when I first fell in love with "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening", when I discovered "The Lobster Phone" walking solo through Dalí Universe on the Thames when I was annoyed with my whiny stepfather, and that was definitely how I felt visiting the museum he created himself in Figueres.


Now just to clarify, I don't in any way assume that we have sort of personal connection and that we share a trans-generational, extra-mortal friendship of slaps on the back and light chuckling at the dinner table; I would like for anything in the world if I had that with Salvador.   I just love him because having considered myself for the entirety of my conscious life (ca. 1996) a dreamer (my sisters can confirm what an annoying dreamer I have been), Dalí was for me the depressed genius-artist whose neuroses and phobias I would have tolerated and even tried to comprehend to keep him running, performing, and producing his out of the world art.  I guess that's why I also love Gala.  I used to think that if I had a son, I'd make his middle name Salvador and as of this weekend, a daughter: middle name, Gala.  Maybe at least my kids will be that inspiring and inspired.

The exterior of the Dalí Museum in Figueres

Courtyard entrance

Stairway to heaven perhaps?

Opposite wall of entrance in courtyard area

Main interior chamber under the glass dome

A giant photo of Abe Lincoln Dalí painted over.

Abe's face can only be see through a lens or in a reflection.

Master of optical illusions: check

The museum not only houses his works but his now deceased body.  During the final years of his life, it also housed his living body.

The great man's tomb under the main chamber

The famous "Galatea of the Spheres"

I took minimal photos hoping that you (my friends and family) will have an opportunity to see his works in person.  Photos don't do them justice.  They're larger than life not only in size (since many of them are quite small) but in the multiple dimensions that a single painting holds together.  But I'm done talking about Dalí...it's helpless trying to express myself in words.  Plus, I'm feeling increasingly pretentious by the minute.


Last but not least: On to Cadaqués
North from Figueres you pass port city after port city and then you drive up into the mountains, watching endless groves of maturing olive trees pass you by.  The road is incredibly windy as you traverse the mountain passes and dodge cars coming from the opposite direction.

In the valley of the gods

Above the valley

 And from around some arbitrary corner in the mountains, Cadaqués, a city robed in white, appears.

Bienvingut a Cadaqués

There was an outdoor market dominating the center of the city, right off the water.  I'm not sure if it's because the weather was nice, it was Sunday, or because of both or none of these things but it was amazing.  If you all don't know, I love outdoor markets, especially when it features food.

An attractive, long-haired cheese vendor

Might just be attractive because of the cheese

His partner in cheese

 My friends and I walked up and around to the other side of the bay and had lunch at a quiet outdoor cafe before parking ourselves on a sunny cliffside.

The city from across the bay

Couldn't resist the photo opportunity

 And of course the food photos:

Tomato, mushroom, arugula, and gorgonzola pizza

Pizza Cadaqués: oregano and black olives that look like

they'll sprout legs and start walking around

Gazpacho with fresh onion, tomato, and butter croutons.

Perfection

Pristine sea green

Reading my book while my roommate tests the waters

The attractive bread man

He had a gut; definitely the bread that made him sexy

And that was it.  My weekend on the "rough coast" (translation of "costa brava").  Back on the bus, I plugged my earphones back in and let the bus work its magic, the sorority girls having more material than ever to chipper about in the background.  Let's not forget a snack for the road though:

Empanada of bonito, tomato, garlic, and onion

A few hours later, I woke up to find myself skin caked with the grime of stale bus air and back in front of the Hard Rock Café; I was thusly quite unceremoniously jolted back to reality.  Another work week before my next weekend getaway: Sevilla.  

Till next time...