Travel – Page 41 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Barcelona – Last Day

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It’s our final day in Barcelona. We are taking it super easy as we are pretty much exhausted. Tonight we pack up and we take a 4+ hour train ride back to Madrid where it all began.

Today we got up, got dressed and headed over to the Boqueria for breakfast. We’ve come to love our little cafe there for a cafe con leche and a Spanish omelette.

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After breakfast we walked over to the Museu Maritim De Barcelona.

I’ve been to a number of nautical and military museums in my life. This is, by far, the best one I have ever seen. The building itself is the restored Drassanes Reials (Royal Shipyards of Barcelona) and at it’s center is a Full sized reproduction of the galley from which Don Juan d’Austria oversaw the defeat of the Turkish Navy at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 to give Spain mastery of the Mediterranean.

We specifically got there early so I could make sure I got this particular shot of the replica

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You really should click to see the full size….especially you, Joe Linbeck!

We’re back in the Hotel resting a bit. We’re going to head out here shortly for another walk around the city.

We’re going to miss Barcelona

Building

Winding Down

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Things are winding down as we near the end of our trip. We’ve seen the big sites and we’ve accomplished most of what we wanted to accomplish.

Today we took it real easy. We witnessed the dancing and then we just walked about Barcelona, taking it all in.

We had a nice big lunch around 2 pm in pizzeria style Italian restaurant run by an Asian family.

This city is beyond cosmopolitan.

La Sardana – Band Leader

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Barcelona – La Sardana

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Sundays at noon (or thereabout) the locals have a tradition of gathering in the square in front of the Barcelona Cathedral for some traditional Catalan circle dancing called La Sardana.

A small orchestra gathers on the steps of the cathedral and the dancers form a circle in the square.

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There are instructors there to teach those who want to learn and the main circle gets quite large

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If you want to join in the dance you go into the circle and drop you coat and/or bags in the center of the circle and join hands.

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Soon you see smaller circles of dancers popping up.

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These appear to be family groups or groups of friends.

The music is traditional Catalan and very pleasant to listen to.

Initially the square was jammed with tourists, but after the first few dances many wandered off to see other things and the remaining dances were less crowded with onlookers.

Cynthia and I both tried our hands at learning the dance, but we couldn’t quite get it right…but it was sure fun to watch!

It’s a shame that the one time we visit Barcelona that the cathedral is being renovated. The scaffolding is not as picturesque as the front of a Gothic church would have been as a backdrop…

Here’s a fairly representative Youtube video

Writing On The Wall

Waiting For The Train

Dali Museum

On the agenda today was a day trip to Figueres to go to the Dali Theatre and Museum.

It’s a two hour train ride from Barcelona and it’s not the good train. It’s the commuter train that stops about 10-12 times along the way in various small Spanish towns.

It’s a rather joyless train ride and when you get to Figueres there is only ONE thing to do, and that’s visit the museum. Figueres itself is rather bleak and unpleasant.

You walk from the train station for about 5 minutes, following the signs to the museum. You definitley know when you’ve arrived as the building is quite unique.

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As far as art museums go, this place is very cool. It’s more of a theater than a gallery. There’s plenty to look at and some of the art is interactive.

There’s two things in the museum worth noting.

The first is a collection of various pieces in a room that are rather interesting and unusual.

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You then see there’s a staircase and an odd piece of glass that people are climbing up to look through…

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When you climb up and look for yourself all of the objects combine to form the face of Marilyn Monroe

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The other item that blew me away was the ceiling painting of dali and his wife Gala ascending into heaven or dancing in the sky…?

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I can’t convey in words or pictures how cool this painting was. To even capture as much as I did in a snapshot I had to set my camera up, set a timer and lay it in the middle of the floor at with the lens at it’s widest angle (18mm).

After our tour of the museum we headed back to the train station and made our way back to Barcelona. Our adventure left us a bit worn out and since it was rather late we opted for dinner in the hotel and we watched the rugby match.