A country of many moustaches

What to pack for a Spanish holiday? Bucket and spade? Suncream? Trashy novel? Well I’m off to Spain this week and I’m packing a moustache. Yes, I know, it’s more common to defoliate before than take extra facial hair with you, but I’m off to visit Costa Brava the home of Salvador Dali…

The home of Dali?

As you probably know, Dali was a surrealist painter. He took things that were seemingly one thing, and painted them with photographic precision to mean something else. Clocks were a distortion of time. Insects could be death. Eggs meant hope. He is one the world’s most celebrated modern artists.  But he is also, officially (according to the Daily Telegraph; – and it doesn’t get much more official than that does it?) history’s most famous moustache wearer. Yes, Adolph Hitler, your ‘tache wasn’t up to the accolade.

More than body hair

Dali didn’t just grow a moustache, he sculpted it. From the famous figure of 8 to the handlebars, to the wild garden look, this was statement hair. Every month was Movember for Salvador Dali. His top lip became one of his canvases, to be painted and repainted afresh. A quick study of Dali leads me to believe he never delivered the moustache you were expecting. And the thing is it’s catchy.

Off to the home of the moustache

This week Matthew and I are off to Costa Brava in Spain, former home of Salvador Dali. I know very little about the Costa Brava because I’ve never been. But I know already that it won’t be what I’ve assumed it was in the past; i.e. one long beach resort packed with cheap hotels and lobster coloured Brits.

Our itinerary, organised by the good people at Costa Brava Pirineu de Girona (the tourist board), is wild and varied; we’ll be visiting islands, staying on the beach, walking in the mountains, enjoying pottery, cookery and new technology workshops, having a winery picnic, wind or kite surfing, and having another go at indoor flying.

There won’t be menus with pictures that you point to because you can’t speak Spanish, but one of the world’s greatest restaurants. There won’t be a culture of drinking (unlike Blackpool, our last travel destination) but a culture of culture; the Dali Triangle celebrates over a century of the great artist with thousands of his works in unique buildings, and we’ll be spending an afternoon in Dali’s museum.

The Costa Brava, like Dali, is many kinds of moustache

I suspect Girona and the Costa Brava will take my assumptions and turn them upside down. But I have something to give in return. I hope to bring you a creative take on what the city and countryside has to offer a family in search of a cultural action adventure.  I may even do some of it in a moustache.

Because I’ve been practising. Really. I celebrated Dali’s 109^th birthday on May 11^th giving a lecture at a bloggers conference in my chosen style of facial hair. I even picked up a tache loving friend who chose to be a Rembrandt lookie likey.

But which moustache will I wear this week? Ah, well, like Dali, I may just surprise you when I visit Costa Brava.