Tata Barcelona

We started off the day yesterday morning with a visit to the rental agent to negotiate the ridiculously high late check-in fee and report the broken bed we've been 'sleeping' on. Fortunately they were quite amenable and we reached a settlement that we were fairly happy with.

I'd woken up with a stomach bug that haunted me the whole day, giving it a strange Dali-ike quality as reality shifted in and out of focus as we negotiated rain, traffic, queues and sidewalk crowds. So it only seemed logical that we would take a two hour train journey to the town of Figueres to pay a visit to the Dali Museum and get a closer look at the native Catalonian artist life and work.

Figueres is Dali's place of birth, and without that notoriety, or fame, it would just be another provincial Spanish town. However due to the presence of the museum in the downtown area, it now has a fashionable shopping district, the usual curio and touristy shops, and neat, clean pavements. Maybe towns like Somerset East, birthplace and home to the Walter Battiss museum, should take a few tips.

While the museum, a mix of the grotesque, monumental, curious and artistically intrigueing is a visual experience, it was extremely overcrowded and noisy. Museums/art galleries lose their impact very quickly when you simply can't look at a painting for more than five seconds without being shoved or someone walking past in front of what you're trying hard to make sense of. So we had to continuously dodge out the door into the cosy garden courtyards to catch our breath and escape the camera flashes.

Also, and this may be part of the Dali-ousness of the museum, there is very little information given about anything inside it, nor is there a logical flow guiding one's visit, and nothing that feeds the visitor's innate need to 'know'. Having to constantly dodge people didn't help, so by the end of the visit, I felt compelled to buy a museum guide to give the whole experience a bit more meaning. Probably very un-Dali, but then, I also don't have such a great moustache, either.

Interestingly enough, a fairly small part of the the whole Dali collection was classic surrealist, 'mad' painting and sculpture; it seems he also did a lot of work in other styles. Live and learn...

After an uneventful return to Barcelona and early-to-bed evening, we got up early this morning, Adeline went for a run, and I shot a few last photos around town. We're packing for the flight to Venice this afternoon, going in a sense 'home' to the place we both love. Don't know what the Internet connectivity will be like there, but hopefully we'll be posting more updates!