The Dali Theatre Museum

Yeah, I know I said we went to Figueres in the last post, but we didn't exactly get there until this post, but it was the same day in real time, honestly.

So we arrived in Figueres and tramped all around the outside of the museum to get into it. Just piss-poor parking planning, that's all. And why "theatre"? Because that was what the building was before Dali moved into it and made it into a home and studio, and now a crypt. But that's only one little bit of it. They tried to convince us there is a floor plan and that you could follow some sort of scheme to get around it, but we pretty much gave up on that and just wandered. That means we probably saw some of it several times and perhaps some of it not at all.

Once again, there were screaming brats-in-arms, toted by clueless idiot parents. Listen, geniuses: most educated adults can't really grasp Dali. You think your darling DNA trophy in a poop-bag is going to get it? Yeah, right.

It was very hot and crowded but luckily, air conditioned, and we tried to tune out all the distractions and just enjoy the crazy work. Here are a few shots.

The outside:

Back:

Front:

And all the miscellaneous junk that seems to be strewn randomly all over the place? That belongs to the museum, too. As big as it is and as many displays as it has, it's hard to believe it's not the world's biggest collection of Dali, but it isn't. That's right here in Florida. We saw it when we first arrived, and now they have a new one, even bigger. We're going to see it next week, and I'll make that the final entry to this entire trip blog.

But back to the one in Spain, well, Dali is weird, and everything in the museum has some inexplicable aspect to it, and that's why it's fun.

Here's one of my very favorites. It probably has a formal name, but I call it the "Dripping Ship."

Here's something Joyce likes, I guess.

Here's a courtyard:

And a weird painting with some of the same objects it it as one we have at home.

And finally, a distant shot and a close up of a sculpture that's really eerie, yet attractive.

After all that, we had had enough stairs, and Joyce asked them to reverse the front turnstile to let us out, which they did. We went around a corner to the Dali jewelry exhibit and went in through a dark revolving door into a dark exhibit area, where you had to let your eyes adjust before you could see anything. When we were ready to leave, we saw the exit was up a lot of stairs again. Remembering the revolving door, we decided to go out that way. Well, the sentry, who was outside, decided, no, we weren't and started screaming in Spanish. For a moment, she trapped Joyce in this thing, which was as dark as a grave, but Joyce is big and strong, and forced her way out, yelling, "Let me out!" at the top of her lungs. Of course I felt it stop, then I heard the yelling, then I felt it go forward again (all while in the dark), and I burst through, whereupon the woman tried to push me back in. She didn't know me. I pushed her out of the way very easily, yelling, "No!" and "Stop it!" I have no idea even now how she thought she could physically trap us in her part of the museum. And to what end?

Then she started swearing at us and insulting us in Spanish and told us to go back to our own country, and we said we would be only too happy to do so, if this was how we were going to be treated. And then we went back in the other way and reported her to the museum, and also to our tour guide.

As I said several posts back, every once in a while we would encounter someone really mean. And this kind of thing can have a negative effect on our desire to travel. I mean, what if such a person was the first one someone met when going abroad for the first time? How much more of that would you like to absorb in the name of exploration of other cultures?

So it behooves us all to be nice to visitors in our own countries. You want to make a good impression and keep those tourist dollars coming? Be nice. Be nice anyway.