Rosona'sTravelogue: 2016 August - Les Bacarès and Figueres

I just came back from vacation a week ago. The first week was at a dance camp on the coast of France, in Le Barcarès, about 20 minutes by car east of Perpignan. We then spent 2 days in Figueres, Spain, where Dali had lived (and saw his museum as well as the really cool fortress) and then 2 days in Barcelona (and this time, I didn't get robbed).

Contents of this installment:
(1) Dancing in Le Barcarès, France
(2) The (mega) Fortress (40 soccer fields!) in Figueres, Spain
(3) The Dalí Museum (at night!) in Figueres, Spain

next time: Barcelona.

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(1)Dancing in Le Barcarès, France.
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The first week was at dance camp in France; our lodgings were pretty minimalistic, but fine for a place to sleep and shower.

I managed to speak a little French with the natives, especially with the woman we shared a 2-room place with, but in general I stuck to English. I just can't do conversational speed yet with more than one other person, and I kept missing snippets of what people said, either from volume or whatnot. Also, a few times when I did try, I got the look, and the other person would switch back to English.

I have no pictures of the dance floors, set up inside of tents which were half-open to the outside.

Due to some scheduling issues, I ended up with my lessons mostly canceled for the first day, so I went to explore the beach. It was very wide and sandy:

view along the beach to the beach bar and the Pyrenees

This kind of beach is not that interesting for things I like doing (e.g. snorkeling -- too much sand and no rock formations, so water was murky, and what one did see was jellyfishes sometimes), and the water was rather brisk. Good for cooling down and quite refreshing, but not something to sit in for that long.

Another view of the beach bar, from the beach:

Every night, there was live music from the bands at the beach bar, from 6pm to close to 8pm, when dinner was served. The guitarist in this picture was also one of the organizers, and played along with most of the bands:

Beach bar band

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(2) The (mega) Fortress (40 soccer fields!) in Figueres, Spain
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[Day 1 in Figueres:]

Our train from Perpignan to Figueres was very very delayed, but we still managed to find time after checking into our hotel to eat (it was so-so), get some gelato (it was amazing) and call head to get a guided tour (a very well-spent €15) of the Fortress San Fernando.

Fortress San Fernando

The tour is with a jeep, around the 40-soccer-fields sized fortress, then in a boat through part of the cisterns (enough water for 4,000 men for a year, and we only saw 1/4 of it).

View leading up to fortress:

The following is a schematic of the fortress.

The outer part is a bit green and is a wall made of dirt/stone. The darker areas are either walls or ground. The inner turtle-shaped thing protects the actual part of the fortress where people lived. The walls were designed so that the ground wall on the outside blocked the view of the inside series of walls so that any approaching army couldn't see how big it was and how many walls were involved.

This next picture is close to the tail of the turtle (the tail is to the left). The divets in the walls all housed canons, back in the day.

Look back up at the schematic; the ground above/past the "head" of the turtle they had to construct an artificial portion of the hill, and it looks kind of crown-like, with tunnels. Everything else was stone, this was all squishy soil. As a result, they built really ridiculous things , "counter mines". Tunnels, where miners (during a siege) were to sit and wait and listen for enemy tunneling in, and, if they heard it, they would then start tunnel towards the enemy --- and then leave dynamite to try to blow them up. Which would then also connect the two tunnels! This tactic was never put into use.

diagram of the counter-mines

During the Spanish Civil War ["1936 to 1939 and was fought between the Republicans, who were loyal to the democratic, left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, and the Nationalists, a group led by General Francisco Franco."], the Republicans had a cache of weapons in the fortress. As the nationalists seem to be winning, the Republicans blew up two parts of their fortress to get rid of their cache of weapons. One part was an entire gate

picture of the gate, none of which still stands

The other part was a stable. Thankfully, they didn't blow up both stables, so we can have a feel for the size of the building they blew up. The stable could house ~450 horses. Here's a view from one side to the other of the remaining stable:

view along the stable

Damage on the building next to the stable which had been exploded:

nice view, in part due to missing stable

nice view, in part due to missing stable

The white thing in this next picture is part of the innermost part of the fortress. Anyone who saw them would know this. The architect messed something up, and these were actually visible from beyond the first/outermost wall of dirt, so when Napoleon invaded, (and surrounded them with 10,000) men, the soldiers destroyed them. They have since been rebuilt.

I don't have any pictures from the water part (I was worried about taking out my camera and having it fall in the water), but it was pretty cool. We had about 20 minutes after the whole tour to walk around the place, which is when we went to see the remaining stable.

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(3) The Dalí Museum (at night!) in Figueres, Spain
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[Day 2 in Figueres]

We had a full day prior to the museum to see a bit more of Figueres. We mainly slept in.
Had lunch at Can Punyetes. Everything there is roasted/grilled over a wood fire. The rabbit was something else; an entirely different (and delicious) texture from any rabbit I had had before. The incredible heat we were experiencing led to sampling some more gelato -- this time at La Recuiteria, across from the toy museum. The tiramisu tasted just like a big scoop of tiramisu, it was awesome.

If you try to figure out what there is to do in Figueres (using our trusty friend, Google), the first result you'll get is the Dali museum.

Museum during the day, in front of Church where Dali was baptised

Turns out, he was gentry, which explains how he could afford to spend his life painting, and also later on in life design and build a museum (which he donated to his city). He is also, oddly enough. buried there. The epitaph sits amidst the jewelry exhibit which he designed the pieces of. They weren't particularly surreal, so there are no pictures :)

Dali's bones

In the summer, they open the Museum up to 500 people per night and are open again from 10pm to 1am. Smaller crowds, no screaming children, and a glass of Cava comes with the entrance price. Additionally, a silent film showing the building of the museum, complete with Dali overseeing with his wild mustache.

So, the Dalí museum was, as expected, a bit surreal.

The museum was built from the bombed-out (from the Spanish civil war) remains of a theater. In the next picture, you can see that they left the destroyed roof still off. That yellow thing is an upside-down boat, with artistic water coming out of it. The white T-shaped lights flickered in some pattern.

In person, the following very strongly looks like a naked woman walking away, with a kind of pixelated background. In this picture, it looks like pixelated Lincoln.

wartime: "happy horse"

I want to call this guy "the mathematician"

So, one of the more famous Dalí paintings is at the Art Institute in Chicago:
Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment

Lacking said painting, another artist created an installation of something like an apartment setup realizing the picture. There's a lens up some stairs which you can look through to see it all "assembled":