Up early from our roadside refuge, taking our now-usual breakfast of bocadillos con tomate, aceite y ajo with handfuls of dry müsli before heading up over the hills in the direction of Figueres - we had searched for the Dalí museum in Barcelona, only to have our deep ignorance exposed upon discovering that it was in fact 150 km away in the small town of Figueres, out in the shadow of los Pireneos...but this is our trip, a trip without set paths, a trip with a very short and easily explained itinerary: get to Istanbul, preferably along as much of the Mediterranean coast as possible, by November 23. (Yes, we have an exact date now - our flights back home are booked, just in time for American Thanksgiving with Valkyrie's family!) So we looked at the map and forwent our original tentative plans to cross by Cap Cerbère on the coast, modifying the intended route to head up through Figueres...
...and we bike at record speed through the relatively flat (maybe slightly uphill; the difference is not so great out on the plains) highway stretches, aided by a fierce tailwind that makes the ride seem easy. We roll into Figueres around 1230 and join the long queue that winds down from the Museo Teatro Dalí around the square and past the tourist cafés into town. Given our cyclist appetites, it becomes necessary to send one of us off to get food as we wait lest we turn to cannibalism or brute-force pillage in our mortal hunger...but we finally get in, and are greeted by the full bizarrity of surrealism: pencil-sketch monsters, objects in non-sequiturous juxtaposition, the famed melting clocks, portraits with grilled bacon. It is a carnival madhouse somehow tamed enough to pass itself off as a tourist attraction - and quite the attraction it is, for guided tours and families and photo-snapping shutterbugs fill every imaginable corner. There are ceiling murals and found objects, strangeness in every form and medium - and the central court is presided over by a triangle-tessellated dome, rings of gold faceless androgyne statues, and some fantastical tire-boat-umbrella contraption. Definitely worth the detour...
...our surrealist pilgrimage completed, we hole up in the library to charge devices and peruse our many Internets. This brings us into early evening, whereupon we realize that a) we are ravenously hungry and b) we had better get going somewhere - anywhere except for the library, which is fast becoming tedious and anyways is not conducive to pitching a tent. We head off towards los Pireneos, their slowly-approaching peaks a reminder that these are our last hours in Spain after nearly two months of grueling climbs and vicious heat...
...the highway mercifully takes a low pass through the mountains; it is not flat - that would be too much to ask for! - but is nevertheless much easier than our entrance into Spain...but it is getting dark and we have neither food to cook nor a place to sleep. We keep going up past sketchy roadside motels and their seedy sex clubs, through small towns, and - finally, once we near the border - a zone dedicated to supermarkets which unlike their French counterparts remain open past 2000. It is a truism of travel that borders are populated with those guilty pleasures denied the poor sods on the other side by some capricious peculiarity of local law. In some areas, that extends to alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or fireworks; here it is sensible opening hours at supermarkets, a pleasure absent throughout much of France.
The border is a non-event, an unstaffed series of gates off to the side of the main autopista; we cross it without slowing down, climb the final hill through the border town, and quickly locate a dusty but serviceable plot of land between the road shoulder and a cliffside wall. We are now in France, thus bringing our travels through yet another country to a close...fantastic!