Today we went on a field trip to Northern Spain. The 17 Dartmouth students on my program, plus our faculty director and his wife, and our University of Barcelona program coordinator, Elisenda, got on a bus at 9AM. We drove for two hours through the flat countryside to this dramatic stone monastery on a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean in Girona, Catalunya, called Sant Pere de Rodes.
We had lunch in the visitor's center restaurant and the food was amazing, lasagna and then chicken with roasted vegetables. Delicious. But the real highlight was that the restaurant casually had an absolutely stunning view of the cliffs dropping off into the sea. Check it out!
After lunch, we got back on the bus and went back down the mountain to the little town. It was about 10 minutes of winding down very steep, narrow roads that had hairpin turns between the switchbacks. All I can say is that I'm glad I wasn't driving!
From there, we drove about 30 minutes inland to a city called Figueres, where we visited the Salvador Dalí museum. This is a photo of the exterior of the museum building. I thought this looked pretty ridiculous, especially the giant eggs on the roof. But inside the building, the art was even more absurd. Absurd in the best sense of the word. This was my favorite museum we've visited by far. I don't know anything about art and often it all looks the same to me, but this was all extremely interesting. Many pieces were more complex than they appeared at first glance, and some were optical illusions. In all seriousness, Dalí is officially my new favorite artist. I took photos of a few pieces that I found particularly cool.
The main room was created from a former theater, and patrons observe Dalí's art from what used to be the stage. The whole room is full of light from the glass dome, (see above photo). The tour guide told us that Salvador Dalí, or "Sal" as I'll call him from now on, is buried under the center of this main room.
From the main room, you could look up and see this enormous painting on the balcony. It's about 12x8 feet. It looks like a woman watching a sunset at first glance...
... but then you look through a camera lens or one of the scopes in the museum and you can see Lincoln's face! I have no idea how Sal did it, but I thought it was pretty cool.
Before the museum, I new Sal as a painter who painted the famous distorted clocks. Today, I saw that he was not limited to painting. The museum had a courtyard which was filled with other forms of art. There was a full size car that was decorated with statues and fake plants that was part of a larger fountain. The walls on all sides went up three stories and were covered with ivy. Each window contained one of these gold-colored human statues in different positions. One side of the courtyard was a glass window into the main room of the museum and when you looked through the reflection created the illusion of a massive monster on one of the paintings inside. Again, I have no idea how Sal did it, but it was SO cool!
This last one was particularly wild. The lips are the size of a living room sofa. The nose is a fireplace. Up close the paintings are city-scapes of Paris, but from a distance they form eyes. If I had taken this photo from farther back, you would be able to see there was a huge arc of blond hair. In the same room, there was a bathtub and a nightstand upside down on the ceiling. Absurd, in the best sense of the word.
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