Montserrat

We just got back from a wonderful long weekend in Barcelona - likely our last stint in Barcelona before heading back to the states. We started the trip on Thursday by going to Montserrat. The mountain of Montserrat is an amazing place - it rises up out of the river valley Llobregat and it's summit, called Sant Jeroni, is 1.236 meters above sea level. It's name name, "Monte" "Serrat" means serrated mountain and that is indeed what it looks like. From our perch in the castle in Solsona, Montserrat is sometimes visible in the distance and looks like line graph - up close it is stunning and almost surreal in its formation. There is a monastery dating from the 11th century that sits about 725m up the mountain. It is is a very spiritual place, even if you are not religious. For the Catalan people it is also a very important cultural symbol since during the Spanish civil war and the years of Franco, when their language was banned, the monastery preserved and carried on the language with its own printing press. We visited the art museum next to the monastery, which was surprisingly good, and entered the monastery to light a candle as is the custom. Next we boarded a tram that took us up to a summit of sorts, though not the highest point on the mountain. We explored the peaks and then hiked back down to the monastery where we again got into the aerial that carried us all the way back to the bottom. If you want to know more about Montserrat you should check out their website.

From Montserrat the train into Barcelona takes an hour and we made it into the city around 7pm and by 8pm we were checked into our hotel. Too tired from the day to think about venturing out for dinner, we just popped downstairs and over to a little bakery on the corner for a delicious baguette. We snacked on that along we some leftovers from the lunch we had packed and settled in for a good nights sleep, but not before catching a few minutes minutes of some Russell Crowe action movie from the 90's - dubbed of course. Sweet! The rest of the weekend posting is to be continued...