Let's Order a "Bikini"

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Last night's thunderstorms have cleared and it's now only slightly overcast. We set off for the Dali Museum in the town of Figueres, about a half hour's drive inland from Roses.

As we round the first corner after leaving the apartment we stop dead in the middle of the road and stare at the scene in front of us. The hills are all covered in snow. I'm pretty sure we would have noticed this if it had been there yesterday, so it must have fallen overnight. It seems to have fallen down to quite a low level. It's cool but I didn't think it was all that cold, and anyway it's still summer here. We're mesmerised, and can't stop staring. But it seems that not everyone's quite as enthralled by the scene as we are .... we're awoken from our stupor by a loud car horn behind us ....

We're pretty sure the museum is by far Figueres' most notable building, but it seems that the residents are keen to keep its whereabouts a closely guarded secret - signs to it are notably absent. In desperation we do the unthinkable and ask a random pedestrian for directions. He doesn't speak any English, but seems to pick up on the word "Dali" and waves us vaguely back in the direction we've just come from ... where there seemed to be lots of roundabout with roadworks, so that all you could do was make U-turns. We decide to give up on getting any closer by car; we park and prepare ourselves for a hike.

The museum's clearly very popular, particularly amongst school groups. Spanish school children must be very diligent; it's Sunday. I don't think too many of the people I went to school with would have been too enthusiastic about visiting a museum on a Sunday, or on any other day for that matter.

Dali was born in Figueres. The museum's on the site of an old theatre, which is one of the first places his works were publicly exhibited. The original building was burnt down during the Spanish Civil War; the museum was opened in 1974 and has subsequently been significantly expanded. Dali died in 1989 and is buried in a crypt under the theatre's stage. Apparently the museum holds the largest collection of his works in one place anywhere in the world.

The museum's amazing. It's on three levels around a large circular central courtyard, which is the first thing we see when we go in. There are gold figures that look like Oscar statues in all the courtyard's windows, and an old car with a large statue of a woman on the bonnet in the middle. Behind that there's a tall stack of rubber tyres that look like the trunk of a palm tree, and these support a boat with large drops of blue paint dripping off it. If the number of works on display is anything to go by, Dali must have been absolutely prolific. It seems that he was a master of many different art forms - painting, sculpture and jewellery making. He must have had an amazing imagination. One entire darkened room is set aside for a display that from ground level looks like a couch, a sculpture of a large pair of nostrils with two unrecognisable paintings on either side of it, and some coarse pieces of straw draped from the roof. When you climb some stairs and view it from a particular angle, you see that it's actually a portrait of Mae West. The couch is her lips, the paintings are her eyes and the straw's her hair. One entire floor's set aside for paintings of figures that all look they're made out of rocks stuck together.

We leave Figueres and head for our next destination, the town of Blanes at the very southern end of the Costa Brava. We decide that we'd better stop to take some pictures of the snow covered hills, or no one will believe us when we tell them what we saw. Issy's keen that I watch the road and leave her to keep an eye the landscape. She says she can't see any snow any more, and I can't either. Hmmmm. Surely it can't have melted already. I start to wonder if perhaps someone slipped some hallucinogens into last night's meal ... but then remember that we stayed in and dined on a feast of half a stale bread roll and a packet of chips. I hope someone believes us.

We drive up a steep hill on the north side of Blanes port in search of the Jardi Botanic Marimurtra. The signs say that we need to get a ticket to park, but all the ticket machines have covers bolted over them. I'm sure this is a trick to trap unsuspecting tourists. I try to pull one of them off, but it's secured with a large padlock, and so is the next one, and the one after that. I decide that I'd be more likely to get arrested for trying to vandalise a ticket machine than for parking without a ticket, so we give up and set off for the gardens.

The massive botanical gardens are built around the clifftop overlooking the port of Blanes. It's nearly three o'clock and we haven't had lunch yet, so our first stop is the cafeteria. There's not much to chose from so we each order a "bikini", which looks from the photos on the wall suspiciously like a toasted ham and cheese sandwich. I'm not quite sure how the humble toasted ham and cheese sandwich came to be called a bikini, so I consult the Google machine. I don't find any mention of sandwiches. I do however learn that women wore bikinis when they participated in weightlifting and discus throwing in Roman times; I suspect Roman men probably quite enjoyed that particular spectacle. Back on track again I Google "bikini sandwich" and learn that this is something exclusively Catalonian. It seems that there was a Bikini concert hall which opened in Barcelona in 1953. It had a dance hall and a mini golf course, and one of its specialties was toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. So there you go .....

The gardens have a very diverse and impressive display of plants from all over the world, including a large cactus garden, and an area dedicated to plants all the way from humble old Australia. I suddenly find myself feeling a bit homesick in amongst the gum trees and wattles. The views over the rugged coastline from up here are excellent.

Next up is a drive up a steep hill to a tower known as the Castle of Saint Joan. There's apparently evidence of a fort here from as early as the eleventh century, and at one time it had a moat around it. I wonder how they got the water up here. I suspect it'd take a lot of buckets to fill an entire moat, and I'm not sure I would have wanted to be the one doing the carrying. Anyway ... the views to the south over Blanes are excellent.

We head back to Roses and manage to score a table at the only restaurant in Canyelles that we haven't eaten at yet. The menu's all pictures, which is always good; it means we don't need to guess the Spanish translations. That said, some of the pictures aren't all that clear; Issy asks me whether one of them looks more like an eggplant or a mashed banana. I hope it's an eggplant; I don't think mashed banana would go too well with steak. I can't stand bananas, so I actually don't think it'd go too well with anything. The seafood that we order is however excellent.

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