Carcassonne

• Albertabrandts's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Carcassonne

Trip Start May 12, 2009 Previous
Entry Trip End May 12, 2009 Next
Entry

  Carcassonne, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Yesterday we left Barcelona and headed out to the Salvador Dali Museum in Figueres, near the French border.

It is hard to think of where to start with Dali.  Aside from the usual melting pocket watches, this guy was both deeply talented and deeply wierd.  The kids enjoyed the wierdness and talent very much.

The Salvador Dali Theatre Museum is a work of art - of Dali himself.  It is an old theatre which Dali turned into his art gallery.  It is set up as a purposely confusing maze, making it hard for anal people like me to neatly tour the thing, starting with Room 1 and continuing onward.

Since Dali was a Surrealist, there is no official guide or anything.  You just run around and soak it up.

There was a car in which it rained on the outside, while  the exterior remained dry.  There were paintings of ordinary rocks on the seashore, which looked deeply erotic, but I can't explain why.  There where half-finished paintings splattered with red paint.  Maybe he got a paper cut, Nick thought.

There was an entire room which turned out to be a portrait of Mae West if you looked at it from just the right angle.  There was a very large painting of Abraham Lincoln, where Abe's cheeks were actually Dali's wife's butt cheeks.

There was a painting of Dali painting a portrait of his wife in a mirror, from behind the artist.  The entire mirror arrangement (there were 6 of them) was the title of the painting. 

There was a room full of paintings of Christmas trees - though most of the trees were feathers, or angels' wings or whatever.  Very beautiful, but very wierd.

The kids laughed and pointed and generally had a great time.

Then today, we had a look at the walled city of Carcassonne.  It is a very well preserved 11th century city.  It feels like being a fairy tale.  We paid a bit too much to see a jousting match.  It was all in French.  There was a story line, which had something to do with a princess, and involved jousting, axe fighting, sword fighting, and something like bar fighting.  It operated on the same level of complexity as professional wrestling, so the language barrier was not a problem.  We cheered for the good guys and booed the bad guys and had a great time.  The good guys won, after suffering some initial setbacks.

A word about the French:  They have wierdrules, and lots of them.  For instance, this campground has a very strict dress code in the pool:  Men must wear Speedos.  No other swimming attire is acceptable.  Huh?  I clarified - do they mean no cotton shorts?  No they said.   Speedos.  Only Speedos for men.  I asked why.  'For 'ygenic reason' I was told.

I did notice that the pool is utterly empty.  Where are the usual old fat guys in Speedos?

Print this entry Share

Previous Entry Next Entry