Portugal and Spain: The final tally

We spent a day with a private guide, seeing the city of Girona and then stopping in at the Dali Museum in Figueres. My focus for the day trip had been the Dali Museum – I had long been fascinated with the exterior of the building. Now that I’ve been there and dragged my way through the exhausting and endless crowds, looking at his erotic and bizarre art, I realize that the only real thing that holds Dali and I together is our joint love of bread. The exterior of the museum sports a bread and egg motif – all those tiny brown dots are bread loaves. There is bread worked into many exhibits and numerous pictures of Dali posing with bread. And it’s funny – because remember how Ron’s viewing of Gaudi’s Modernista tile work resulted in long lectures about how our garage is going to become a mosaic tile art factory? Well, Ron had nothing to say at all about the bread art! But just so you know that I appreciate my trip to the Dali museum, here is the exterior shot, a close up of the bread, Gaudi posing with bread, and then the entrance courtyard:

We moved on to Girona, which was a fun surprise. Someone – you? – must have told our guide that we devote our entire life to Game of Thrones tourist travel because he pointed out many many sites where Game of Thrones was filmed and none of our continuing statements about how we’ve never watched the series dampened his enthusiasm. Despite our ignorance, we found the city charming, with a lot of greenery and a nicely intact medieval wall:

I like this picture of Ron especially – he’s touring a garden in Girona and I think he is showing an impressive amount of touring energy with that forward momentum step on Day 25 of this long trip. It’s almost like…in his REI zip off pants and Sherpa polar fleece…he’s part of the battle for the Iron Throne.

And then I liked this picture, below. The bottom part is what’s left of the Roman wall (9th century) and then the smaller rocks are the medieval wall (14th century), where they just built right on top of the Roman wall.

From Girona, we headed back to Barcelona, leaving us with one more day to tour my amazing Barcelona. I had two more Modernista sites on our list: Palau Guell and Palau Musica Catalana.

Palau Guell is a mansion designed by Anton Gaudi in 1886. It was built for a tycoon named Eusebi Guell and he lived here with his family for twenty years. It was not used as a filming site for Game of Thrones. These are not my pictures as I was not capable of recording the scale of this place:

Here is me on the typical Gaudi crazy roof of Palau Guell. There are 20 of these spires and they cover up the 20 chimneys:

With a brief stop for lunch at a Burger King (Jim, I am truly sorry), we headed to the final site of our trip: Palau Musica Catalana, a concert hall from 1905, designed by Modernista architect Montaner. Here’s the approach:

Once inside, we were treated to a quick organ concert and given time to just sit inside the amazing performance hall. Here’s the stained glass ceiling and then the mezzanine windows and seats:

And that’s it! From the concert house, we headed back to our hotel to pack up. It’s been a spectacular trip and I know you listen to me gush about so much that I worry you think me some sort of travel Pollyanna but I am not and so I want to talk with you, briefly, about the shower situation in Europe as a whole. I am concerned that European architecture students must have all been on a massive coffee break during the lesson on how large a shower must be to allow for actual human cleansing. I think they must have remained on at the cafe, perhaps lounging with a cigarette, when the professor discussed the proper dimensions for a step down from the tub and the options available to keep water in the shower stall.

I spend a lot of time choosing lodging in an effort to get access to a bathroom where we won’t fall “out” of the tub while trying to exit. For this trip, I can recall looking at pictures of showers in Barcelona hotels for an entire four hour Seahawks game (we lost). And so I chose the Apartments 64 for Barcelona, number 3 on TripAdvisor, stellar reviews etc. And we were given this bathroom, which might be the worst one ever. It ticks a lot of the “danger” boxes: the tub is high up from the floor and the enclosure does not prevent water exit. The floor is nice and slick and they didn’t have any budget for a grab bar. And it has, as an added feature, the smallest possible means of egress. It is difficult for me – a very small person- to exit that tub, stepping onto the slick floor, wrapped in my little towel, trying to fit into that space between the sink and the toilet that is not blocked by the immovable glass partition.

Here’s a few more actual travel shots for you, just so we don’t end on yet another bathroom note. These are a few pictures from our walk back to the hotel:

And I need to give you the final shopping tally. I don’t know what happened to us on this trip. Three university sweatshirts, one Australian polo shirt in a fun blue pattern, one t-shirt with sardines on it, one pair of leggings, three pairs of Lacoste socks, five(!!!) pairs of expensive patterned Japanese socks(I am aware we were in Spain), the pink flowered Birkenstocks, one umbrella, Mayra’s black and red sweater, the Body Shop Banana conditioner, one baseball cap, and two new black shirts from Uniqlo. We also, just in case, bought a new little tote bag with a nice Gaudi print on it:) We are leaving for our final Barcelona dinner in a minute and we have both agreed not to purchase anything between the front door of our hotel and the front door of the restaurant.

Here’s the last two shots: Ron, trying on his Australian polo (yes, he hit his head coming out of that dressing room) and then, with further proof that Ron should not be allowed to access the camera, me, trying to close my suitcase. It’s a bad picture, I know – but let’s all be grateful Ron doesn’t know how to add audio to a picture. In October, we head to Italy and I’ll talk with you all then.