A year or so ago when I mentioned to my sister-in-law Diane that I was planning a trip to Barcelona, she suggested I make a detour a few hours north of Barcelona to Salvador Dalí’s home. Diane and my niece had been before, and both raved about his home as well as his museum. It did mean having to rent a car and a taking a drive, which I wasn’t looking forward to, but I felt that with such high praise for the place we needed to make the effort.

In my research I discovered that there are three Dalí sites: His museum in Figures, home in Portlligat and castle in Púbol. All three are in different locations so our plan to maximize our time and reduce travel was this:

1. Friday – Arrive in Barcelona, drive to Pubol and visit Dalí’s Castle, then drive to Figueres to spend the first night in our hotel
2. Saturday – Drive out to Cadaqués, visit Dalí’s home, spend the day at the beach town, back to Figueres for the night
3. Sunday – wake early, get to the theater museum and drive back to Barcelona….that was the plan. The plan changed:)

We really hadn’t thought about traffic, but there was a bit of it as Easter is a 4 day weekend in Spain. By the time we arrived in Púbol we were good and hungry. I will admit that my kids still like McDonalds and the like, but they have come to understand that part of traveling is experiencing new food flavors, so they did well holding out for a restaurant in town. We found a restaurant right before the turn off for Púbol. It reminded me a bit of a place that we had dined at with our friends the Powells in Tuscany. It was more the memory of them, then the memory of that meal that made me stop.

As we parked, we noticed a gentleman wrapping bundles of scallions. I figured that it was a road side vegetable stand.

But as we entered the restaurant we saw the people next to us eating e bundle of grilled scallions. Authenticity in food is always a bonus when you travel. We knew we were in for a treat, Little did we know it wasn’t the only one.

To begin with, we ordered the house wine (for the adults:) and what a wine it was. YUM! We also were pleasantly surprised with a little tapas tray for Stephen and myself. Even Sophia was interested and ended up eating the spicy pasta. Brat!

While everyone ate the starters I popped outside to take some photos of the preparation of the calçots.

It was messy and slimy, but yummy.

And one last note about Restaurant La Trobada. Should you order a ‘bowl’ of soup, this is what you get…

And our table neighbors must have ordered the meat lovers platter, because this was just mad. Note, they had already had a serving each.

 

But back to business. Our job was to get to the castle. Dalí’s Castle in Púbon was Dalí’s residence after his lover, wife and muse Gala died. I warned my children that this would be the least exciting of the Dali spots that we would visit. It was a warm up, so to speak.