My Eurotop Tour 2009

Catalonia: Land of Giants!

 

 
The first town crossing into Spain at the eastern corner is Figueres. Salvador Dali was born there and there is a large museum about him. A smaller and less frequented museum is the Toy Museum. It has two giant tops outside: above the entrance and above the building.
   

 

 

 

Deviating to the west of the highway from Figueres to Barcelona, driving on a twisting road that went through several mountain tunnels, I got to the small town of Sant Hilari Sacalm. My only purpose was to find the giant baldufa of lore and I finally did. I got to throw tops at its shade!

It seems that in this mountainous region of Spain logging and wood working are a traditional industry. That explains why wood craftsmen got together to build this statue of a giant baldufa (spintop in the Catalan language).
I decided to make a run to the coast and visited the resort of Loret del Mar. I took this picture of a nice castle by the sea
 When I finally got in my room I was ready to fall asleep. But the pandemonium started in the street. The Barcelona soccer team had just won the Eurocup and the fans were parading in front of the hotel! No rest for wearied traveler.

 

Barcelona - Amics de la Baldufa

 

The second day in Barcelona I met the spintop collectors club "Amics de la Baldufa" = "Friends of the Spintop" (I now know that the reason we did not meet the previous day was the Eurocup final ;-) If you have not yet seen their excellent site, check it out. They started in the spring of 1996, have organized lots of events and have published more than 24 issues of their very informative magazine.


 

More big tops! These ones are working copies of a throw top, a finger top and a whip top. Catalonia is truly the land of the giant tops!

I gave them a little demo of spintop tricks.

 

 

The architecture of Barcelona is full of impressive buildings, like the Torre Agbar that I could see form the hotel.

 
It was very lucky during the whole trip with the weather, it was fabulous. I threw a few tops at Barceloneta beach but even better was plunging into the Mediterranean sea!
 

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