Where in the World is Sharon Daugherty2: Girona and Figueres, home of the Salvador Dali Museum

First a little Barcelona. On Tuesday, we had dinner on the Placa Reil at a restaurant we had gone to before. Good food and very reasonable prices; and then on the way home we stopped on La Rambla at the Cafe de L'Opera for a night cap; wine for Terry and coffee for me

Cafe de l'Opera Barcelona is a historic cafe on Barcelona's Las Ramblas. Situated opposite the Liceu Theatre, Cafe de l'Opera has a sumptuous modernist interior with neo-classical details, and offers a relaxed ambiance for enjoying Las Ramblas.

This place is the spot to be before and after the performance

The cafe dates back to the 18th Century when it started life as a tavern. During the 19th Century it was made into a chocolateria and decked out in Viennese furnishings, of which several mirrors remain.

At the end of the 1920s the cafe was given its current name, as well as a modernist make-over which it still sports today. The cafe is worth visiting for these period details, which make it the most attractive of the many cafes along Las Ramblas.

We found ourselves in the El Born area Friday night and decided to eat at a very colorful Mexican Restaurant called La Hacienda. Good food, so so Margueritas.

Saturday morning we had a tour scheduled and woke to rain in Barcelona. Went to the meeting place and boarded our bus for Girona. As we boarded, I was able to get inside the bus, but our tour guide wasn't quite ready for quick boarding and the majority of travelers, including Miss Terry, were left outside in the rain getting soaked. Not a propitious start to the day. It rained all the way to Girona, about two hours, and then rained some more.

The city of Gerona was founded by the Romans and its old town contains some of the finest historic architecture in the country: medieval walls, Romanesque and Gothic monuments, one of the best preserved Jewish Quarters in Europe

We crossed the river into the old city and stopped in a square where the guide told us about

The Lion of Girona

One of Girona’s most popular legends says that visitors to Girona must kiss the Lioness Bottom–a sculpture in Carrer Calderes, in Saint Feliu Square–and the legend is accompanied by this saying:

He who has not kissed the bottom of the lioness is not a good citizen of Girona.

The sculpture is actually a male lion and at one time was thought to be a monkey or a wolf. Nonetheless, the legend says that after having kissed the Lioness’s bottom, visitors will be guaranteed of a happy return to Girona.

I couldn't reach it, so guess I won't return. Besides it was raining really hard while we were here.

Stll raining

Monestery Sant Pere de Galligants

Some of the old city walls

Cathedral of Santa Maria - Built between the 11th and 18th centuries, it includes a series of walls and spaces in different styles, from Romanesque (the cloister and Charlemagne tower) to the baroque façade and 86 steps leading up to the entrance.

Monument to the builders of the Cathedral showing a map of the inside

The old Jewish Quarter or Call, with its beautiful streets and porticoed squares. The Call, or Juderia, was located in the oldest part of the medieval city until 1492 when Jews left Spain due to the Expulsion.

Jews began moving to Girona around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple as there is evidence of a Jewish population as early as the Saracen Invasion. But the first mention of the settlement of Jews doesn’t come until 890, when 25 Jewish families took over residences alongside the Cathedral.

Gradually they spread out forming the Call stretching from Roman via Augusta – the Call’s main street – and along the adjacent side streets. The narrow dim street runs parallel to the River Onyar. Some of the streets are quite steep as they weave in and out of the Call.

During their stay in Girona, the Jews influenced the economic life of the city as money lenders, merchants, craftsmen, bookbinders and businessmen. As a center of religious life where there was intensive study of theology in the 12^th and 13^th Centuries that led a trend toward mysticism, or Cabala.

When Ferdinand and Isabel married, they united all of Spain, chasing the Moors from the South. By then Castile included all of Catalonia. On March 31, 1492, the crown issued the edict expelling the Jews from Spain unless they renounced their religion in favor of Catholicism.

More than five centuries after Spain's Jews were forced to flee, convert to Catholicism or face execution without trial, their descendants are being invited to return and take up dual citizenship.

Spain's government has approved a draft bill that will allow descendants of those Sephardic Jews who were expelled in 1492, under the crusading Catholic rule of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, to seek dual citizenship.

One of the streets found in 1975 behind walls and re-opened. Leads to one of the old original Jewish homes.

Although most traces of Girona's rich Jewish history were wiped out when the Jews were expelled from Spain, a few remain. On Carrer de Sant Llorenc, a rectangular indentation that once held a mezuzah can be seen on the doorway of an old building.

The Placa del Vi (square) is enclosed by arcades, a Gothic-Renaissance building that housed the Catalan government administration of Girona in the 16th and 17th centuries, and by the City Hall and the Municipal Theatre, a remarkable 19th-century theatre that is among the most interesting in Catalonia.

This was discovered during a restoration of the ceiling of one of the vaulted arcades. It is a map of Ile de France, Paris

La Rambla, Girona

Characteristic of Girona are the picturesque houses overlooking the river Onyar. These were built over many years and give the flavour of a small Mediterranean city. The façades are painted according to a palette created by Enric Ansesa, James J. Faixó and the architects Fuses and J. Viader. One of these houses (at Ballesteries 29, Girona) is Casa Masó, the birthplace of the architect rafael Maso and can be recognized by its unique white color.

the Palanques Vermelles bridge (1827), which was built by the Eiffel company.

Free time after the tour ended. Just wanted to be dry, get a cup of coffee and some lunch. Terry and Pat from Boston, who we met on the tour and hung out with us. Nice lady.

We ordered little sandwiches and the the Girona specialty: Xuixo (pronounced Susu)

Xuixo is a viennoiserie pastry from the city of Girona. It's a cylindrical pastry filled with crema catalana that is deep fried and covered with crystallized sugar.

It is assumed that this pastry originated in Girona in the 1920s in a pastry shop owned by Emili Puig in the Street Corte Real. A French pastry shop showed him the preparation of cream filled pastry and this served him as an inspiration for the Xuixo.

Tastes like a filled yeast donut. Pretty good, but my favorite is still Portugal's Pastis de Belem.

Still raining

Placa de la Independence, designed by Martí Sureda on the site of the old convent of Sant Agustí. A porticoed square in neoclassical style, Plaça de la Independència is a busy place due to the large number of restaurants here. In the centre of the square stands a monument (1894) commemorating the 1809 defenders of the city of Girona, created by the sculptor Antoni Parera. Not much business today with the endless rain.

We walked around the old town a bit more, but soon headed back to the bus for the second half of the tour to Figueres and the Dali Museum.

Salvador Dali was born in Figueres in 1904. He studied in his home town untl 1922, when he moved to Madrid to study in the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts,

The second time he was thrown out of the academy, he moved to Paris where he joined the surreal group. During this period he pained famous works such as The Spectrum of Sex Apppeal".

In 1929, he met Gala, his friend Paul Eluard's wife, who became from that moment on his muse and inseparable sentimental companion.

They went to live in Portlligat, but soon moved to Paris where they lived during the Spanish Civil War. When the Second World War got to France, they moved to the USA where, thanks to his work but also to his extravagance, Dali became world famous.

In 1948 he moved back to Portlliigat where he captured Emporda's scenery in a great number of paintings and begain the period he named "mystic and nuclear", mainly oriented towards religious, historic and scientiic themes.

In 1982, Gala's death affected him and he moved to the Pubol Castle, a present he made to his wife, until he was too ill and frail to live there. After a fire in the castle he moved back to Figureres, where he died in 1989. His tomb is placed in the Dali Theatre-Museum.

Upon arrival the big geodesic dome prominent. One of the most noticeable features of the museum, the transparent reticular-shape like a geodesic dome that crowns the building, was entrusted by Salvador Dalí to the Murcian architect Emilio Pérez Piñero (1935-1972). That dome has now become the emblem of the Theatre-Museum and a great icon for the city of Figueres.

Still raining. Can we go inside now.

For sure this is the Dali Museum. Eggs on the roof

and what look like loves of Brioche on the sides of the building.

Inaugurated in 1974, the Dalí Theatre-Museum rises on the remains of the former Municipal Theatre of Figueres and is considered to be the last great work of Salvador Dalí. Everything in it was conceived and designed by the artist so as to offer visitors a real experience and draw them into his unique and captivating world.

The embryo of the Theatre-Museum project started at the beginning of the 'sixties. Ramon Guardiola, mayor of Figueres at the time, asked Salvador Dalí to donate a work for the Museu de l'Empordà. Dalí's reply came quickly: he would donate to Figueres not just a single work, but an entire museum:

"Where, if not in my own town, should the most extravagant and solid of my work endure, where if not here? The Municipal Theatre, or what remained of it, struck me as very appropriate, and for three reasons: first, because I am an eminently theatrical painter; second, because the theatre stands right opposite the church where I was baptised; and third, because it was precisely in the hall of the vestibule of the theatre where I hosted my first exhibition."

The statues look like very large Oscars and surround the perimeter of the entrance

The rainy cadillac. If you put a coin in he box next to the front wheel, an umbrella opens at the top of exhibit. This is also the actual car owned by Dali while living in America.

The various collections of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation include all types of works of art: paintings, drawings, sculptures, engravings, installations, holograms, stereoscopes, photography, etc. Among them 1,500 works are exhibited at the Dalí Theatre-Museum of Figueres.

In August 1929, Dalí met his lifelong and primary muse, inspiration, and future wife Gala, born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. Dalí and Gala, having lived together since 1929, were married in 1934 in a semi-secret civil ceremony. They later remarried in a Catholic ceremony in 1958. In addition to inspiring many artworks throughout her life, Gala would act as Dalí's business manager, supporting their extravagant lifestyle while adeptly steering clear of insolvency. Gala seemed to tolerate Dalí's dalliances with younger muses, secure in her own position as his primary relationship. Dalí continued to paint her as they both aged, producing sympathetic and adoring images of his muse. The "tense, complex and ambiguous relationship" lasting over 50 years would later become the subject of an opera, Jo, Dalí (I, Dalí) by Catalan composer Xavier Benguerel.

1976 - Dali’s title — “Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea", which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)” — provides a perfect description of this painting. Standing close, we see Gala with her back turned to us, looking toward the rising Mediterranean sun. That glowing sun doubles as an image of Christ, seen from above, ascending. In this way Gala directs our attention heavenwards and reminds us of the fleeting nature of beauty. But when we stand further back, twenty meters, as the title prescribes, we can see that the head of Abraham Lincoln fills the entire canvas.

This painting was inspired by a Scientific American article Dali read about visual perception which investigated the minimum number of pixels needed to describe a unique human face. Dali was challenged by that question and set about making this portrait of Lincoln using 121 pixels. In his canvas he pushes this concept of perception and external sight. This double image painting provides a meditation on the dual nature of things. In addition to the theme of sight and insight, the work alludes to themes of life and death and to Dali’s Spanish and American identity. The beauty of Gala is countered by references to mortality, including the focus on the assassinated president, the crucified image of Christ, and the dedication to Mark Rothko, a painter Dali’s age who committed suicide in 1970.

"Dali from the back painting Gala from the back"

"Gala Nude"

Gala - as you can see he painted her many times in many ways

I particularly like these next two. Not sure why, but they struck me.

The Spectre of Sex Appeal 1932

Phantom Cart 1933

So many different genre

The Wind Palace Gallery

The Apartment - in the Wind Palace Gallery. On a tapestry the famous "The Persistance of Memory" 1931. Melting clocks. Dali felt the melting clocks show time as a constantly moving phenomenon.

The Americas Gallery

The Mae West Room

Babaouo Diorama 1932

Dali crypt is in the museum

The Dalí·Jewels exhibition rooms, inaugurated in 2001, which contain the thirty-seven gold jewels and precious stones from the former Owen Cheatham collection, in addition to two jewels made later and the prior designs made by the painter. Here are a few of them.