Figures -

Here is the itinerary as we had planned it for this weekend -

a three person trip to Figures by train Saturday morning - (2 hours)
tour of Gaudi Museum (1 1/2 hours)
walk to castle and tour castle (2 hours)
catch train to Girona (20 min)
check into hotel and grab food ( 1 hour)
tour Roman Ruins (3 hours)
grab dinner (1 hour)
catch a nap or shop (2 hours)
go clubbing until wee hours of morning (?)
catch train back to Barcelona (1 1/2 hours)
arrive in Barcelona by noon, spend day doing homework


Here´s how the weekend went -

Friday, I mention to one of my students who grew up in Figures that we will be heading to her home town. She says she´ll be in town, maybe we can meet for coffee, I say great!.

Lunch time, word gets out about our trip, and people begin to get interested, by dinner that night we have doubled in size, making us a group of 6, which is no big deal, we have one room with two beds, and should have floor space in our hotel. That means splitting the cost of the hotel (90 €) 6 ways!!! Sweet!

Then Emma, my student, sends us a text message. She had planned to go camping with her boyfriend, but plans have changed, she´d like to give us a tour of the town, the surrounding area, and then take us to the coast for a picnic. No biggy . Except taht she thinks we´re 3, and now we´re 6. Then, she texts us again, and says that she has room for the 3 of us if we want to stay at her place. So I call her. "Emma? Great! Yes, we´re still planning on heading into Figures, yep, still going to the museum. But .. . what? Oh, yes, we´d love to stay at your place, but see . . . Hmm? Picnic sounds great! (she´s very excited about us coming) - but Emma, we´re not 3 anymore. no. how many? 6. Yes, 6. Uh huh. 6 . Okay - well, think about it and call me back"

See, they only have 1 car, so getting us around the city and to the coast for a picnic now requires her to recruit some friends. But she´s already told us she´d like to do this, so she´s nto going to back out. I even told her we had a hotel, but she wouldn´t take no for an answer. She calls back, has gotten her sister to agree to be a driver, and thinks that she can fit us all on the floor of her place. So we´re all set! Except for the hotel. Which we booked, and they say if we cancel they´ll charge us the whole thing anyway - but we´ll worry about that later, because she may not want to house all of us once she meets the group and realizes how many 6 can really be.

So, Saturday morning at 9 we´re all supposed to meet at the train station. And I get there, and it´s crazy, because ti´s the first weekend of holiday for most Barcelona people, and there´s tourists everywhere, and there´s lines everywhere, but I can´t jump in one until everyone else gets there. Our train leaves at 9:20. 9:05 someone else gets there, and she jumps in a line, gets to the front, and is told she was in the wrong line. 9:10 she´s in the last section of a really long line, and we have 10 minutes until our train leaves. Not to mention that only half of the group is there. so we split up - one waits, the other jumps in a separate line, the other three show up and we´re scattered all over the place- but the lines aren´t moving. 9:15 - we start to worry. If we miss this train, then we have to wait another HOUR until the next train, in a crowded station, and we set off not only our entire day, but Emmas as well. 9:17 Annette gets up to the front of the line and buys us all tickets! Yay - 9:18 we´re running - RUNNING - like hell thru this train station, breezing past lines, jumping steps - 9:19 we get to the bottom of the stairs, run up the steps tot he train, and sit down - 9:20 it leaves. WHEW!!!! we made it. AND, we´re going in the right direction. YAY!

The train ride was nice, smooth and we got to see some of the country side. It was so nice to get out of the city. If we had only taken the train ride it would have been enough for me. We passed the mountains that looked like California, farms that looked like Michigan, wetlands that looked like Florida. Into the side of the hills were villages made of stone, that you could tell were at least 300 years old. I got a chance to talk to Josephine, who is just an awesome person. She´s from the Phillipines - and spent six months living with a tribe there, studying their rituals for the National Museum of Archeology. She´s got some neat stories. We arrived in Figures, hopped off the train and were just taken back at how quiet the place was. There were no sirens, no car horns honking, you could actually see AND hear the birds. And the air was so clean! The town was just so quaint! We walked thru it on our way to the museum, stopping at a market in a square to pick up some fruit for breakfast. It was neat to walk thru and see the butchers cutting the bacon off the slab of meat, and see people bartering over the prices of the peaches. I grabbed one, paid for it, and on we walked thru this darling village.

It was the perfect day - sunny, breezy, and not too hot. We found our way the museum, grabbed a spot in line in this square and waited. While we stood there in the cue, a street musician played his guitar, and the church in the square chimed the hour. it was surreal. I felt as if I had entered a whole different world. And I had - the hustle and bustle of Barcelona was far behind me. Time no longer mattered. We paid our entrance fee (i got a discount thanks to my ISIC card!) and walked into the most interesting museum I´ve ever been in.

The first thing you see is a big open courtyard with tall walls and statues everywhere. It´s well landscaped, with benches to sit on, and mosaics on the wall. In the middle is an antique car, which, if you drop the coin in the slot, rains inside. I have photos of this, so I guess you´ll see. The museum was crowded, but traffic flowed very nicely as we moved from the courtyard to the inside where Dalis works were diplayed. I had always thought of Dali as a contemporary artist, working only with the obscure and making eveyrting into eggs or spoons or something abstract. But the man was a genius. He worked with so many different mediums, from stitches in tapestries, to masonry tools, to gold and silver - all in addition to his paintings. The museum had endless amounts of windows, so, rather than the stale white walls and harsh blue based lights of a normal museum, everything was viewed under natural light. It took us about an hour to meander thru, and then we met up at the cafe in the courtyard as people finished. Emma met us there, swept us up and began our tour of the surrounding areas of Figures.

Unfortunatley this is where I need to stop. I have to head off to class to meet my new students. We´re switching to intermediate learners from advanced. I´ll miss the students I had, but it will be nice to challenge myself with a different level. Stop back again - I´ll find the time during the day (or next few days) to tell you all about Figures, and the coast, and swimming in the mediterreanian and the castle and such. I finished my film, so those should get developed soon and sent off to Alexis to put up. I´m excited about not only telling you about these things, but showing you as well. :)