This was the day we had decided to leave Barcelona and go on a day trip to Montserrat.\u00a0 Since we were planning on being in town for so long, I had come up with Montserrat as an ideal get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and a way to see other parts of Spain.\u00a0 We kicked off the expedition by getting up early and heading to our closest subway station.\u00a0 I was following some directions that I had downloaded from the internet, and there were some pretty vague descriptions.\u00a0 We made a few wrong turns, and it took a while to find the correct train station – they could have posted some better signs.\u00a0 We asked a few people and got pointed the right direction, and once we entered the correct station then we saw signs everywhere touting the railway as the easiest way to get to Montserrat.<\/p>\n
Our train ride was a pretty shaky one.\u00a0 This was the first time for us to ride the train on this trip.\u00a0 Usually on our trips to Europe we spend a lot of time on rail, but this trip we were using mostly airplanes.\u00a0 It felt good to be back on the rails, but the position of our train car and the terrain made the carriage shake and rock quite a bit, which upset Kuniko\u2019s stomach a little.\u00a0 We continued to travel northwest out of Barcelona for about 40 minutes until we reached the foot of Montserrat.\u00a0 We got off at a tiny station with a few other tourists and sat down to rest a bit and gather our courage.<\/p>\n
And we did need courage, because the next stage of the trip was a gondola ride from the base all the way up to the mountaintops.\u00a0 Montserrat is the name of the mountain range, and perched on top is a monastery, some lodging, a couple of restaurants and a church.\u00a0 There is also a wide network of hiking trails.\u00a0 Originally I had considered that it might be good to hike around and burn calories from our trip, but as it turned out we had been doing quite a lot of walking on our own already.<\/p>\n
We were early enough that there was no line to ride the gondola, and the ride was great.\u00a0 It was about a 1000 meter climb up to the top, so it is a pretty steep angle.\u00a0 The gondola operator looked bored but everyone else was oohing and aahing about the view as we went.\u00a0 Luckily the weather was beautiful – it would have been a different story on the gondola if the wind was blowing hard.<\/p>\n
The gondola let us off just a short walk below the terminal of a rack train line that also runs to the mountain.\u00a0 We chose the gondola because of the views and the speed, but a lot of other people had chosen the train for comfort.\u00a0 Once we passed the train station we decided to explore the immediate area.\u00a0\u00a0 The views from the top back down on the valley below were phenomenal, and I couldn\u2019t stop taking pictures.\u00a0 The grounds were more modern than I expected.\u00a0 Everything was clean and well cared for – I guess the monks have a lot of time on their hands up there.\u00a0 We managed to sneak into the church on a self-guided tour right before they closed the building for morning prayer.\u00a0 This saved us a lot of time later on, although we didn\u2019t realize it at the time.\u00a0 In contrast to the other mosques, churches and cathedrals that we\u2019d seen this trip the church on Montserrat was dark, with a gothic style that included lots of tile and metal work.\u00a0 We waited in a short line to see some religious artifacts that didn\u2019t really mean that much to us (the Black Madonna, for example), and finished with a short circuit around the church proper.\u00a0 It was beautiful, especially considering how it was built so high in the mountains in the 1700s.<\/p>\n
From the church and monastery we could choose two different funiculars to explore further.\u00a0 One went down some ways to another valley, where there was apparently a weeping statue and some hand rails designed by Gaudi.\u00a0 The other option was to go onward to the summit of the mountain and see some of the hiking trails and some abandoned churches.\u00a0 We opted for continuing upward, and took the funicular of St. Joan to the top.\u00a0 It was a very steep ride upwards – I\u2019m glad I was hiking it – and after reaching the top we walked around the summit taking in the views.\u00a0 For about 20 minutes we followed one hiking trail, trying to stay in shade when possible as the temperature was warming up quickly.\u00a0 Kuniko hates to be out in the sun for too long, and I didn\u2019t blame her in that heat, so we decided to walk only as far as the nearest church.<\/p>\n
We found the tiny church pretty quickly, and it was right on the edge of the hill with a spectacular view overlooking villages and green fields below.\u00a0 Nice spot!\u00a0 We found some rocks under the trees nearby and sat for a while in the shade eating our picnic lunch (leftovers from our hotel room party the previous night).\u00a0 Walking back Kuniko \u201cprayed\u201d to St. Joan that the sun would stay off us, and in a flash some clouds rolled in and blocked the sun.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never seen prayers answered quite so fast.<\/p>\n
We caught the funicular back down to the main Montserrat area, and then stopped at a strange caf\u00c3\u00a9\/cafeteria to have a glass of white wine and some snacks.\u00a0 It was a strange place to drink, but the monks surely appreciated the extra money they could bring in from visitors.<\/p>\n
On our way back to the gondola we passed some local farmers selling produce and goods, and I bought a pear on impulse to snack on.\u00a0 It was fresh but a little firm.\u00a0 I like my pears to leave juice on your chin.\u00a0 We caught the next gondola back down the mountain, but we missed the once-an-hour train by less than a minute.\u00a0 That meant that we had to sit at the station for about an hour reading and drinking juice.\u00a0 Finally, the train arrived, and we had an uneventful train ride back into town.\u00a0 One interesting thing about the train car we used on the way back was that they had outlets built into the seats so everyone could recharge their wireless devices.\u00a0 I wish I had thought to bring my charging cable.<\/p>\n
Back in town we decided to go out for one last round of tapas and cava.\u00a0 We found a nice place in a different neighborhood with excellent food and staff that kept our glasses full.\u00a0 After a couple rounds we decided to try another tapas place, and then we went out for pinxtos, and ended up bar hopping through the dinner hour.\u00a0 We really enjoyed the variation in all the tapas, the small sizes making it easy to keep on eating, and how cava purchased by the glass was so damn affordable.\u00a0 In Japan they charge more than 1000 yen a glass for sparkling wine, and the glass is only a little over half full.\u00a0 They fill to the brim in Spain.<\/p>\n
We finally ended up at the hotel, arranged for a very early checkout and a taxi the next day, and then we set our alarms for 2:45 am the following morning (just a few hours away) and went to sleep.\u00a0 It was an early departure from Barcelona airport the next day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was the day we had decided to leave Barcelona and go on a day trip to Montserrat.\u00a0 Since we were planning on being in town for so long, I had come up with Montserrat as an ideal get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and a way to see other parts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-HT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}