Spanish Sojurn - Sunday

Sunday is a religious day and we thought what better way to get our dose of spirituality then to climb 1,236 metres to where some monks thought it was a swell idea to build (in the 12th centuary) a Benedictine abbey which is identified by some as the location of the Holy Grail! (we didn’t see it though).

"Montserrat" literally means "jagged (serrated) mountain" in Catalan, Barcelona’s dialect of Spanish. And they weren’t wrong, these crazy rocks were like nothing we had seen before, very odd shapes that looked they had been plonked on top of a hill.
We had a wee bit of a mission to get there, Barcelona’s maps are very confusing as I said before and because we knew we had to get this train out to the base of the mountain we thought we could walk a few tube stops to save us the tube fare…not a good plan. We finally found the station a few mins before the trains departed, dripping in sweat. Nice.

But we had about an hour to kill on the train, on the way inland from Barcelona. Then we had to jump on a train type thing which took us the top. AMAZING views, the weather wasn’t being too kind that day, and there was definitely a temperature drop from the city but it was still incredible to think that these crazy monks decided to pitch their tent here.

We started exploring the chapel itself, which was out of this world, lots of dark wood and gold everywhere. The service was just about to start when we got there so we decided to join the queue to see this famous Black Virgin, the story goes that the Benedictine monks could not move the statue to construct their monastery, choosing to instead build around it – sounds about right. 

We didn’t really know what to expect but we saw from the people in front that the you needed to touch the glass case, then kiss it and say a prayer and then wipe the glass again (I guess germs and stuff)….the room itself was incredible, so many jewels and gorgeous mosaics. Really like a good Catholic church.

After the church we decided to head even further up the mountains on a cable car thing (just like the Peak Tram!). We were up SO high, it was almost eerie. It was so quiet, and the clouds were actually blowing around us so visibility wasn’t that great. We took off exploring, and found some random paths up the rocks, and that’s when we noticed the rock climbers around us….yep me and Hamish is shorts and T shirts and jandals and the rock climbers at the same level with all the gears. Any hoo we kept on trekking up, thighs burning until we reached the top.

 

That picnic lunch we had at over 4,000 feet was pretty special.


We then found our way to these ruins of an old abandoned hovel in the cliff faces that were previously the abodes of reclusive monks, so wicked to see stuff like that.
We were pretty tired by this stage we headed back down to the main bit, and found that this is where a lot of Catalans would come for Sunday lunch with their families, there were quite a few restaurants and food stalls set up doing good business. We meandered round a bit more before we got on our series of trains back to Barcelona.




Sunday night was our eating out night, so we put our glad rags on and headed down Las Ramblas to the waterfront for a starting course of cheap Spanish wine, olives and cheese, it was a beautiful night, everyone was outdoors enjoying the sun, definitely a highlight.
Lou had found a recommended restaurant in the Gothic Quarter so we set off into the maze to try and find it and as we were leaving the waterfront we were stopped by a big group of people protesting…so we stopped and had a look, everyone loves a good protest.

 

We found the restaurant but they were booked up so we moved further down and found a really sweet looking tapas bar. Now, we are not huge fans of tapas…you never know how many things to order, you never know what order they will come in and all that but we had to do as the Spanish do. We ordered dishes like tomato bread, squid in garlic, potato omelette, this amazing “mountain sausage” thing which was like blood pudding with mushrooms, a goats cheese salad and we were pretty contented. The only negative is that they pretty much come out all at once so you have to eat pretty quickly to get it while it’s hot!

Lou has spotted something yummy at another table

And to top it all off the best dulce de leche gelato in the world (I know gelto is Italian, but the shops are everywhere in Barcelona!)
Such a stunning day and night.

Highlight #1: The sights up the mountain, something we never expected
Highlight #2: It was a really good food day
Lowlight: I guess figuring out how to get there in the morning was the biggest stress
Interesting fact: The word "tapas" is derived from the Spanish verb tapar, "to cover".
According to legend, the tapas tradition began when king Alfonso X of Castile recovered from an illness by drinking wine with small dishes between meals. After regaining his health, the king ordered that taverns would not be allowed to serve wine to customers unless it was accompanied by a small snack or "tapa".