la costa brava

We left early Saturday morning to travel from Barcelona to the Costa Brava ("brave coast") in the north of Spain. First we took a bus ride to the Dalí museum in Figueres. Here we saw several permanent art exhibitions. My personal favorite was a the Mae West room. This surreal area made up the image of Mae West's face throughout a series of objects placed throughout the room. In order to see that the sofa made lips, two pictures hung on the wall made eyes, and drapes made of hair were supposed to frame her head, we had to climb up steps to get to the top of the room- kind of like a treehouse. Then, when you looked down, you saw that it made Mae West's face. Many of the rest of Dalí's work was dark (Holocaust related or Christ related). It was all very beautiful though and the layout of the museum itself was an art exhibition.

Unfortunately, the weather did not hold up as we planned. As we traveled further and further north it began to rain. We stopped in the town of l'Escala for lunch and to siesta (hopefully on the beach) but it was 50 degrees and pouring! We did visit an anchovy factory though, and tried anchovies along with a traditional Catalan wine. To drink the wine you put the small glass spout close to your mouth and then pull it away quickly as you pour, making a stream of wine that is supposed to go down your throat. This was fun even though a lot of us got wine on our shirts.

That evening we drove to Roses to spend the night. Monjira and I walked along the beach, all bundled up in as many layers as we could. We found a really nice restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean and sat on the beach with a heater plugged in next to our table to keep us warm. Here we ordered paella and a salad to share and watched the sun set. All of the food was delicious! The best part of the meal, however, were our conversations with the waiters. When we arrived we spoke in Spanish to get seated, etc. The waiter immediately asked us if we were from France. We said, no, we're from America. To our surprise he told us that they don't see many Americans in Roses- its more common for British, French and German tourists. We carried on a conversation with him and found out he was from Bolivia. His name was Saul. Saul had many questions for us about what we were studying, what it was like in America, and what we were doing in Spain. I think he was fascinated to meet American girls. We asked him a lot about Spain and Boliva, too. After dinner he and another waiter with whom we'd been chatting asked to take a picture with us! We took a few and then they found another waiter to come out from the back to take a picture of all 4 of us! It was so funny and all the other tourists in the restaurant were staring! Saul and his friend invited Monj and I to come to the discoteca (a Spanish club) in Roses later that night. He said that he and his friends like to go when they get off work at 12.

Since we had been invited (BY LOCALS!!) to a discoteca we decided we just couldn't let the opportunity pass us by. We were so proud of our Spanish skills and the fact that they didn't immediately assume that we were American. Later on we went to the discoteca and danced for awhile. The crowd there was mostly middle aged locals but we were also pretty early for the evening scene... Here in Spain most clubs etc. don't get started until after 1 am. We couldn't stay that long, though. We waited for our new friends and when they didn't show up and we got too tired, we left. We stopped by the restaurant on our way home and saw them still there. They hadn't gone to the disco yet. We waved goodbye to each other and that night Monj and I went to bed glowing, proud of our little adventure.