Your day trip starts early so we can get you to Figueres (home of the Dalí Museum) before the crowds descend. Don’t worry about breakfast, you’ll have time to grab some at our favorite café before stepping inside the strange world of Salvador Dalí. When the doors to the museum open, we’ll be one of the first groups inside, so you’ll see the most popular rooms before they get too crowded. The most famous of these, which is also your first stop, features some of Dalí’s favorite small canvases, including an intimate series featuring his wife.
The rest of the museum defies easy description. Dalí himself designed this space as a gift to his hometown, repurposed from an old cinema. The result is a completely immersive experience, with many of the exhibits incorporating the architecture of the building into the exhibits (as in his version of The Sistine Chapel), blurring the line between art and space, so that you feel as if you’ve wandered into the mind of the artist himself. There are 3D models, mechanical inventions, an enormous portrait of Abraham Lincoln that can only be properly seen through a camera lens, and an entire room that, when seen from afar, looks like a portrait of Mae West.
All of this has to be seen to be believed, but your expert guide will be on hand to help you understand, interpret, and occasionally puzzle out everything you encounter. They’ll tell you about Dalí’s tumultuous life, his influences, his loves, and of course, his obsessions. At the end you might not understand everything, but you’ll certainly gain a deeper appreciation for the mad genius of 20th-century art.
A short drive from the organized lunacy of the Dalí Museum, the idyllic town of Besalú sits nestled in the hills. Crossing its jaw-dropping, Romanesque bridge, you’ll stroll around the town’s winding streets and learn how it came to prominence in the Middle Ages and played an important role in the unification of Catalonia. By now you’ll have worked up an appetite so you’ll sit down for a lunch of fresh local ingredients and a glass of wine at one of our favorite restaurants (included).
Your final stop will be the famous walled city of Girona. This ancient metropolis predates the Roman Empire and is packed with medieval architecture, beautiful cathedrals and an immense amount of interesting history. In the last 2,000 years, it has been conquered by everyone from the Moors to Napoleon Bonaparte; it’s fitting then, that it’s also home to a number of filming locations for the cult-status TV show, Game of Thrones.
You’ll see this, and other filming locations, along with the inside of the Girona Cathedral. Your tour also includes a stroll along the old city walls and finishes in the old Jewish Quarter which is one of the best preserved and most historically-significant in Europe. Here your guide will tell you all about the Jewish community’s fraught history in Spain and how their influence continues to shape Spanish culture today.
After that, you’ll have a little bit of free time before heading back to the bus. You’ll drive over a bridge designed by Gustave Eiffel and be back in Barcelona in just a little over an hour (traffic permitting).
First entrance to the Dalí Museum in Figueres
Snacks
