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June 2024
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Side Trips in Catalunya
So little time, so many places to go. But I managed to visit quite a few nearby locations during my short stay in Barcelona.
I went to Girona, a city 100 km northeast of Barcelona, with a
population of about 100,000 people. Many streets and buildings in the
Barri Vell (Old Town) still look the way they were in the Middle Ages,
which attracts not only tourists but also film crews. Part of season six
of Game of Thrones was shot there. For example, remember the
scene where Arya Stark is begging for money sitting at the bottom of a
long staircase in Bravos? I sat down on those same steps (nobody gave me
money, though). I visited the two main churches (Basílica de Sant Feliu
and Catedral de Santa Maria), the Sant Pere de Galligants Monastery
(which now is the archeological museum and also where Samwell Tarly went
to study to be a maester), the old city walls, and the Arab baths. I
had lunch at the main square (a decent steak with an honest glass of red
wine) and ate the local xuixo for desert (it's a deep-fried,
sugar-coated cylindrical pastry filled with crema catalana).
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Girona
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Sant Pere de Galligants Monastery
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I also went to a few medieval villages.
Besalú (population: 2,467) has a 12th-century Romanesque bridge over the
Fluvià river, which by itself is worth the visit. Castellfollit de la
Roca (population: 956) is a little village built on top of a cliff
created by the overlaying of two lava flows. The name literally
translates to "the crazy castle on the rock". Tavertet (population: 111)
is 900 meters above sea level and has a beautiful view over the cliff
(the Cingles de Tavertet). And Rupit (population: 193) is famous for its
food (it also has a quaint rope bridge). There I ate the delicious
local dish vedella amb bolets (veal and mushroom stew).
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Besalú
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Cingles de Tavertet
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Vedella amb bolets
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I visited Lloret de Mar (population:
37,350), the same coastal city where I lived and worked as a DJ over
forty years ago. It's grown and more developed, of course, but I was
able to find all the places so familiar in that part of my life,
including the Don Juan Hotel, which still has the same pool where I gave
swimming lessons and the same stage from where I played classics like Tainted Love by Soft Cell and Don't You Want Me by The Human League.
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Lloret de Mar
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From there I took a boat to Tossa de Mar
(population: 5,584), the next town on the Costa Brava. Much smaller than
Lloret de Mar but more interesting. It still has a good part of the
wall built in the 12th century as a defense against pirates, as well as
old cobblestoned streets and a few medieval buildings. It was in Tossa
de Mar that the movie Pandora and the Flying Dutchman was made
in 1950, and the town has a statue of Ava Gardner to celebrate that. For
lunch, I had the delicious local dish cim i tomba (fish and potato
stew, mine was made with scorpionfish).
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Tossa de Mar
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Cim i tomba
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Another trip I made was all about Salvador
Dalí (who in 2024 would be 120 years old if he was still alive). First I
went to Figueres (population: 46,381), Dalí's birthplace, to visit the
Dalí Theatre-Museum, which is his main museum and for a time was also
his residence. From there I went to Cadaqués (population: 2,752), where
Dalí's family had a vacation house when he was a child. It's a gorgeous
little bay full of white houses (it reminded me of Greece). I had lunch
there, looking at the very blue sea and stuffing myself with king
scallops au gratin. Lastly, I went to Port Lligat, which is part of
Cadaqués but in its own little bay, to visit the house where Dalí lived
and painted. It was originally a fisherman's house, which Dalí kept
expanding by buying the neighboring houses and by building extensions.
In 1982, when his wife Gala died, he closed the house and never
returned, leaving everything as it was, making the place a historical
document. Fascinating.
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Dalí's bedroom
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Cadaqués
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Port Lligat
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King scallops au gratin
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And the problems with machines?
The iPhone was easily fixed. I left it at the Apple Store, they replaced
its innards, and a couple of hours later it was ready to be picked up.
The computer was a bit more complicated. I found a company here in
Barcelona specialized in data recovery, and after a month of work they
were able to retrieve almost all files from my old computer. It was
expensive, but it cost less than 25% of the estimates I got in the USA.
At the Apple Store, I traded my broken computer for a new iPad, and
traded my old iPad for an Apple Pencil. Now the only old piece of
equipment I have (not counting the owner) is my Fujifilm camera. I hope
it keeps working for a long time.
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What else?
I also found time to take a two-month course at La Central del Raval called Puertas de Entrada,
a mix of philosophy and literature. The reading list was intense,
including books by Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Ricoeur, Foucault,
Deleuze, Baudrillard, Debord, plus four novels and a dozen short
stories. Interesting and entertaining.
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And now what?
Next stop, Sarajevo, capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But that's a story for another time.
Ugodan dan! (That's "have a nice day" in Bosnian.)
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Besalú
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