Logistics to visit Dali Home & Museum

Under regular circumstances, the best way is to rent a car and drive. You can arrive at the museum when it opens and spend a nice amount of time there (at last an hour or two). It is a full hour's drive then to Cadaques but you should have enough time to explore the town and have lunch. Have a tour appointment (a requirement) for the mid or late afternoon. Then a few hour drive home.

I know people here have done a combo of train and bus, but the schedule is so tight that I wouldn't recommend trying it.

You would need a rental car and reservations. We spent the night in cadeques. If driving in one day, start with a late morning reservation at the Dali House. There’s a lot of driving to do in a day. It will take several hours for the house and garden. These 2 sites can’t be done by public transportation in a day. We really enjoyed the house and the crowded museum was only soso. It was a jumbled collection of his art.

Yes, though it will take the entire day, Dali's home is actually in Port Lligat, a little ways north of Cadaqués, and best and frankly only way to do both sights in a day is with a car, I'd opt for an organised day tour from Barcelona, who takes care of all the logistics for you. Here's one among many - https://www.viator.com/tours/Barcelona/Salvador-Dali-Museum-Figueres-and-Cadaques-Small-Group-Day-Trip-from-Barcelona/d562-3142DALI

If it's at all possible, try to spend a night or two in Cadaques - it's one of the most beautiful towns we've ever visited.

I haven't been to the house in Port Lligat but have been to Cadaques. The bus ride from Figueres to Cadaques is very scenic, then the town itself is very nice (white cubic architecture dripping with bouganvillea). I can't comment at all about how much time you'd want to spend at the P.L. house. I saw a sign along the waterfront in Cadaques that indicate one could walk to the house in 20 or 25 minutes.

The Dali Museum was larger than I thought it would be. I spent more time there than I had expected, given that I'm not a big Dali fan. There are three floors, I believe. Bus tours stop there, which caused (pre-COVID-19) some crowding that slowed me down. It was a French tour that flooded the museum while I was there; I believe it left after no more than an hour. That's the thing about tours like that: They don't allow as much time as some people would like, and you have zero flexibility to adjust the rest of your plans for the day in order to stay longer.

Then there's the gorgeous jewelry collection located in a nearby building and covered by the museum ticket. I spent at least 30 minutes there, which I'm sure is more than average. The folks at the jewelry museum told me you could go there before your museum entry time, but of course procedures may be different next year.

It would be easier to hit the house and the museum on the same day if you were staying in Girona rather than Barcelona. Girona is a very worthwhile destination itself, if you happen to have extra time.

I would spend the night at Hotel Port Iligat Cadaques located right next to Dali's house.

The time you spend at each place could affect being able to get there and back, and we needed all day just to fit in both locations, plus a fair amount of driving. We actually came from the west, leaving our hotel in San Sebastián in the morning, driving the rental car we’d picked up a few days earlier, and spending a fair amount of time at the museum in Figueres. There was a parking garage, so we didn’t have to spend time searching for a parking spot.

Afterwards, we made it to the house at Port Lligat, and had enough time for a quick visit, but we arrived there shortly before closing time, so we closed the place down. This was October, with few other visitors, and it was getting dark surprisingly early; we got back to our car with just a little daylight left. We parked quite close to the house, but while getting to that small lot, we passed a lot of big parking lots on a long road. I imagine that in High Season, the place must get busloads of tour groups, and a lot of other visitors in lots of cars, with a lot of parking space needed to accommodate everyone.

As it was getting dark, we found a place for the night just outside Cadaqués. If we didn’t have that place to ourselves, there was maybe just one other occupied room that night. We had dinner in Cadaqués, and left the next morning for Girona, with Barcelona a destination the day after that.

So we spent enough time at the two Dalí places, having headed from San Sebastián, not Barcelona, that an all-in-one-day trip wasn’t doable. If you have the means to stay a night in Cadaqués, that would make the trip more feasible. Could you do this either before or after your Barcelona stay? And we dropped off our rental car one train stop north of Barcelona, and took the train into town - it might be easier to pick up a car just outside of the city, too, and avoid driving in the city itself.

And if you wanted to score the Dalí Trifecta, there’s also the Castell Gala Salvador Dalí de Púbol, in Púbol, just outside Girona. He lived there, too, and his wife Gala is buried there. If you were able to see just the 2 places you mentioned, and go from and to Barcelona in a single day, that would be surreal! 👨🏻‍🎨

I suggest you do an organized group trip that includes transportation.

The reason for my suggestion is because a few years ago, we rented a car in Barcelona, drove to Figueres to see the museum, then to Portlligat to see Dali's house. We enjoyed both a great deal, but we had difficulty with transportation. We rented a car in Barcelona - not a big deal, but driving in Barcelona is challenging. We also rented a GPS which got us safely to Figueres, but gave us some problems in Cadaques - we ended up in someone's driveway stuck in some rocks. We got out and got to the house in time for our tickets, though. When we got to the house, there was a parking lot, but no attendant. We were about to be late, so we parked there without paying. Thankfully, when we got back, an attendant was there and we explained what happened and paid him. Driving back to Barcelona was uneventful.

Another problem was scheduling. Not knowing exactly how long it would take to get to each place and how much time we wanted to spend, we had to book specific entry times. As I said above, we were almost late to the house. We got to the museum fine - Figueres is a large-ish town/small city - so there's parking available. But we scheduled a morning entry to the Museum, then an afternoon entry to the house. We had some down time and it was a hot day - too hot to walk around. So we had a looooooooong lunch.

Anyway, if we had to do it again, we'd take a tour and really enjoy the trip. Buen Viaje.