Where You Going? Barcelona. Oh- Day 4

Luckily I didn’t oversleep yesterday, since it was our (much-anticipated by Roz) day-trip to Montserrat. We had booked a special trip that included transportation to the train station via subway, the train trip to the city of Montserrat, a train to get up the mountain to the monastery, funicular trips to a couple different places on the mountain and return trips back to Barcelona- oh and free lunch, too (well, we didn’t take advantage of that, but it was still nice of them to offer, LOL).

Did I already mention that my mom doesn’t like walking? Well, I think we actually doubled the distance from Park Guell’s trip the day before. First, we had to switch subway lines to get to the train station (lots of stairs), and then it was just the sheer amount of things to get to that required walking at Montserrat. Luckily, the parentals slept on both train trips (I think I even caught some winks there, too).

The monastery was pretty cool- all up on this mountaintop that the Virgin Mary appeared in a cave and was discovered by monks centuries ago. Like any old cathedral, the architecture was made of stone and v. detailed (sadly, no geese like the last one). There is also an art museum up there (that was also included in our package, natch) with some little seen pieces by Degas, Monet, Dali and lots more of Picasso, so that was a cool bonus.

The best part was taking the funicular (is there an English word for this?) up to Sant Joan (97,010 meters above sea-level). Click here for a video clip I took going up. Once up there, there are various places to hike and I, stupidly, took the longest hike that took me up to one of the summits and then (unknowingly) took me back down to the Monastery, leaving my parents waiting for me up on the mountaintop, so I took the funicular all the way back up to get them and then we took the other funicular down to the Holy Cave (where this Mary appeared/was discovered). By that point, my legs were kinda tired so I walked about halfway down to the cave and turned back. Afterwards, we did some shopping (and I got some chocolates made by the nuns and monks there), where my mom basically cleaned out the store, and then we went to get our free food (there was nothing much by the time we got there, so we didn’t get anything) and then trekked back down the mountain to meet up with the train (the final one of the day, I later found out, luckily).

Once back in Barcelona, we found a place for dinner and we took a taxi back to the hotel, where I crashed hard. And my dad’s lost suitcase was finally recovered, so he was v.v. happy (I’ll flash back to that later).