Montserrat

Joe and Sabrina had to leave pretty early on Monday and Jake and I decided to go on a day trip to Montserrat.  Montserrat is an isolated mountain with a huge old monastery on top. We took the metro to the Espanya station and just missed the hourly train to Montserrat.  We caught the 9:30 train and arrived at the base of the aerie at 10:30.  The aerie is the cable car up to the monastery, the next train stop has a rack railway that goes up.  We caught the second cable car available and got a good view going up the mountain.  The monastery perches on a shelf among the rounded sedimentary teeth of the mountain.  There is a large church and a couple hotels that I presume used to be part of the monastery (at least one of them anyway).  We went into the basilica as a service was going on, so we stood as reverently as possible near the back as a group of priests chanted and blessed the communion wine and wafers in Catalan.

Cable car lines up to Montserrat

Unknown animals way below

The church

We then got tickets on the Sant Joan funicular that takes you up close to the highest peak of the mountain, St. Jerome peak.  From there you can walk back down to the monastery on a very wide, mostly cement-paved path.  There are beautiful views in both directions from the trail.  There were groups of schoolkids learning about the flora and fauna of the area (again in Catalan) along the trail too.  It is Mediterranean vegetation with wild rosemary, heather, a couple types of oak, and some viburnums in wetter areas.  Also ivy, a type of Smilax, and a honeysuckle vine.    They’ve had a couple bad fires and floods over the years and have been trying to do some restoration projects. 

The view from the top

Back down at the monastery you have crowds of tourists, some museums, a large cafeteria where we got a light lunch, and a huge gift shop.  We had to get back to Barcelona by 4pm, so we took the cable car back down, again missed the train by 2 minutes, but got back to the apartment to pick up our luggage just at 4pm. 

Smilax berries

Heather

The path back down to the monastery

Tonight and tomorrow we are in Girona, a half hour train ride north of Barcelona.  It was dark when we arrived, so I look forward to describing it tomorrow.