Our time in Barcelona is flying past, and much like Paris, it feels like we’re settling into local mode: we have our grocery store, recognize people in the street (even in the Gothic Quarter where we’re staying, which is heavy in tourists, there’s a strong local community), return to wander the same streets without looking at our phones all the time. It’s a good feeling.
I wrote to someone as we were in Paris that I felt like I made sense there. Everything about me that feels a little strange in California was just par for the course. Also, returning to my second language was a homecoming. Here, in Barcelona, Dan says the same. It has a wild pirate edge that appeals to who he is. What a gift to find places that sing to our spirits! And I’m loving this city and area as well. Surrealism, modernism, so many movements that influenced each other. So many museums! Such incredible architecture! Music… everywhere. Fabulous graffiti everywhere. People eat dinner at 9 pm. Children are running in the parks at 10pm. Darkness is a tropical cloak. We’ve been doing a lot of our wandering in the evenings, enjoying the buskers and the way the city lights up. Two days ago, on the recommendation of our friend Tom, we took the train to Dali’s hometown of Figueres, about an hour away from Barcelona. The Dali Theatre-Museum, the largest surrealist object, did not disappoint.
“I want my museum to be a single block, a labyrinth, a great surrealist object. It will be [a] totally theatrical museum. The people who come to see it will leave with the sensation of having had a theatrical dream.”
~ Salvador Dalí,
We’ll continue our adventures today as we go walk around some of the great examples of modernist architecture (all over this city, an architecture buff’s dream). Have already been to visit Gaudi’s Parc Guell (which I had the joy of visiting about 15 years ago, but nowhere near as extensively. Dan and I can comb every corner of a sight, museum etc. Often we visit a museum over two days (definitely for the Louvre!). We went to an orchestral concert in an old church last night, then tonight we go the to modernist Palau de la Musica Catalana to hear the work of composer Luciano Berio, known for his experimental and electronic music. I love how we bounce, every day, between the modern and the ancient.
