Monday, September 1, 2008

Figueres and Cadaqués

On Wednesday, we took our third and final roadtrip for the summer. This time we went a bit farther north than the previous two days - first to Figueres and then to Cadaqués. The group included Brice, Me, Laurent, Sandrine, and Pol.
The morning actually started with a meeting, so we first attended that and watched the run-through of the final presentation for our team. The trouble with meetings is that they tend to spur additional meetings, and Pol and Sandrine got pulled into a long discussion about their section of the report.

In the meantime, I headed back and met up with Laurent and Brice. The plan for the Figueres trip was to see the Dali Museum. They were worried that we might have trouble getting there before closing (it was already 1:30pm and we hadn't left), so the plan changed so we would leave now, and Pol and Sandrine take the train and meet us as soon as they could.

For some reason there was no radio in the car, so Laurent, Brice and I decided to sing instead. They knew a bunch of French folk songs, and I tried to remember a few American ones.

Figueres is a cute town a few hours north of Barcelona. The main thing to see, as I mentioned before, is the Dali Museum. It was actually put together by Dali himself, and is a pretty crazy place. We spent two and half hours seeing everything. There are a lot of cool exhibits, like this one of Mae West, which only looks like a portrait from a particular angle.Pol and Sandrine arrived around 6pm, and actually were able to get into the museum. They did the express tour, and only took about 45 minutes.

When we were all finished with the museum, we headed to Cadaqués, the town on the sea where Dali had lived. Cadaqués is a really beautiful place. We walked around a bit, and found a cute restaurant up on a hill called La Sirena (the mermaid). We ate dinner there - I had sea bass - I'm a great seafood eater now. On the walk home, you could see tons of stars, which I absolutely love. Though walking while looking straight up is a bit of a challenge.

The drive home started with a dark, winding road through the mountains, for which I stayed wide awake, watching the road ahead for any signs of oncoming traffic. But after we made it onto the highway, I was out like a light. Everyone else was about the same, so that poor Brice, who had taken over the driving for the way home, had to chauffeur a car full of sleeping people back to Barcelona.

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