DAY TOUR, BARCELONA: DAY TRIP: FIGUERES & GIRONA

Pioneering surrealist painter Salvador Dalí believed that other worlds exist inside ours, and this cross-Catalonian day trip with a private guide and driver takes you to at least two of them. 

First, to Girona, an ancient-medieval city where three rivers converge on a point so strategic that the armies of the past were forever laying siege. There you’ll walk lanes, bridges, walls, and watchtowers so well-preserved that they recently formed the backdrops for the fantasy world of TV’s Game of Thrones. Explore the richly atmospheric labyrinth of the Jewish Quarter, the Gothic Cathedral with its gold and silver-flecked interior, and the spiralled, sepulchral basilica of Sant Feliu. And the Museu d’Art will give you a primer on Catalan painting before your private guide and driver bring you onward to Figueres, birthplace of the great Dalí. There you’ll find the dreamlike Theatre-Museum that he designed himself, with its iconic, geodesic, Disney-like dome, which draws kids and adults alike into his “hallucinatory world of surrealism”. Dalí was laid to rest in the crypt below, amid chambers filled with his paintings, sculptures, collages, and curios. His work will continue to swirl in your mind on the drive back to reality.