Catalonia, Spain - a brief stop in Figueres

 We left the coastal community of Roses, Spain and were heading to the town of Olot, Spain - closer to the foothills of the Pyrenees. We happened to be leaving on Monday, May 1... which we didn't realize was Labour Day in this region. A bank holiday - different bus schedules, different opening hours of shops, and many business shut down.

The bus schedule and our check out / check in time didn't line up that well, so we made the best of it and it ended up being pretty awesome. We caught one bus from Roses to Figueres. Then we stored our luggage at the bus station and explored for a while before we caught our second bus later in the day from Figueres to Olot. 

What was really cool was that we stumbled on to a HUGE market festival in the town of Figueres. We walked 1 block from the bus station and bam: tents galore! Music, food, art, home made goods, and street after street filled with festivities and pedestrians and stalls trying to sell things. It was terrific. We had pre-purchased tickets to go to the popular museum of Salvador Dali, and wandering the market was the perfect thing to do while we waited for our alloted entrance time. 

We have only been to a few art galleries on this whole trip. We definitely are not art people, but are trying to provide our kids with different perspectives / ideas / cultures / foods / languages / people as we go. So watching them learn about surrealism by enjoying the Dali museum was entertaining. They kept asking questions like "what's going on here?" and "what does this mean?" and "why is this here?" and we just kept smiling and telling them to just look and enjoy. Rachel liked the 'reflective bottle thingies' the best (the artwork only works when you view it through the reflection of a shiny glass bottle).

At the market, we found gelato (yum!), some delicious empanadas, and dried fruit so we bought some dried apple rings. Jason and Rachel both did really well communicating in Spanish here overall. But note to future buyers of dried fruit - remember that dried apple rings are really light so we now have a LOT of them. Yum!

yup - giant egg statues are on the roof

empanadas

The bus station ... ready to roll out of Figueres and on to the town of Olot, Spain