Professor Sharon

Well, we spent yesterday – or at least half of the day – in the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres. It’s really quite difficult to explain – as all Dali pieces really are! It probably is one of those things in life that has to be seen to be believed!

Here’s a flavor of one room. This is a picture we took through a large magnifying glass (think huge serving size plate for size) standing on a platform about 9 feet off the ground on one side of the room (by the way, the glass was hung from the stomach of a huge dromedary). This is Dali’s tribute to (guess who!). To give you another idea of size, the lips are the size of a huge sofa.

He is buried in the next room that was too large to get in one shot with the camera. The best part is that the tombstone with his name, etc. is outside the bathrooms!

We are Dali fans, which lots of folks aren’t we know, but I really think this place explains a great deal about how he thought. We also feel that we enjoyed his work more having spent time in Spain and this area of Spain that was his home.

Tomorrow, we are going for a day and night to Cadaques – an hour bus ride from Figueres. There’s his home there – although we may not be able to get in since you need advance reservations, but we figure we’ll enjoy seeing the outside at least. (And, there’s a beach at the hotel!).

It’s unbelievable that we are down to our last days in Spain. On Thursday, we board the train for Nice France. Here in northern Spain where they speak Catalan, we’ve managed well with our Spanish. I’m nowhere near as fluent as I had hoped to be; but I have enough vocabulary to deal with stores, and trains, and hotels. And, most importantly, after years of working at Spanish part-time, I “get” how it works; and I think and hope that it really is now a matter of study and finding conversation partners at home so I don’t lose what I have and gain more vocabulary. As our Spanish teachers said: “Habla, habla, habla!”