Monserrat, a monastery complex atop a mountain north of the city, is universally described as a "popular day trip from Barcelona." I've learned through traveling the last few years that places described this way are always best to stay overnight if you can - the Aran Islands in Ireland, Ronda in Southern Spain, et cetera - it's always so peaceful and relaxing after the masses of tourists leave, and usually not expensive, either. So we headed out of the city for a night on the mountain.
Monserrat is not very far from Barcelona but we had to take two trains to get there and there was a lot of waiting around and asking questions of various people trying to figure it all out. At the end, you have the option of taking either a cable car or a funicular railway to the top. I am not a particularly big fan of either of those things, in theory, and I figured a cable car is a more memorable experience, right? So we went with that.
You can just make it out here, a tiny yellow dot.
Whyyyyy did I think this was the best idea?
It was pretty scary, but I guess the good thing is that if it does break and send you crashing onto the mountainside, you're going to be dead before you realize what happened.
The views at the top never stopped being incredible. You can see from the Pyrenees all the way to the ocean.
The reviews of the only hotel on the mountain are funny - typical TripAdvisor people, complaining about how their room was "two twins beds with a bible between them." Well, that's what we had too.
But I'd say the view from the window made this one of the absolute best places we've ever slept. And it was 86 Euros a night. Honestly, this doesn't even look real, even when you're there in person looking at it.
There is a whole complex of buildings built into a little notch in the hillside. It seemed like this was a school but this doesn't make much sense when you think about it. I don't know what they use this for.
We arrived in the afternoon and didn't want to get caught far away as it got dark, so we went on a little walk along the back side of the hill with many shrines to various saints.
Despite the main part of the complex being filled with tour groups, we only saw a couple of other people on this walk.
Just some casual lounging.
This is the back side of the church and monastery, coming back toward the main part of the village.
The hotel is the pinkish building on the left.
We went into the church itself, which has an intricate interior courtyard.
The church was very nice inside, and we could see people walking past above the altar in a little corridor. We went exploring to find the entrance, and discovered this is the famous black virgin of Monserrat, which the monks claim to have found somewhere in the wilderness in ancient times but which actual historians date to early medieval era, which makes sense as it looks just like every other Virgin Mary painting and sculpture from that time I've seen. It's darkened with age and exposure (or, if you believe the religious version, magic), hence the "black" part. The best part of going up to look at it, though, was the great view of the church interior from above.
By late afternoon, the tour groups were already clearing out. I was feeling pretty good about this plan to stay overnight.
There is another funicular you can take to the very top of the mountain. It stops running in the late afternoon so we planned to do that the next morning.
We found a friendly cat.
We did do a short hike up the hillside to an overlook point. This place is pretty amazing.
From here you can see the snow-covered Pyrenees to the north.
There is only one restaurant on the hill, so we ate there for dinner. It was thoroughly average, but was in a very old atmospheric room with a domed stone ceiling. Alas, no pictures.
After dinner we braved the cold to go out and see the view in the dark - it was dead silent and almost deserted. Then we went to sleep.
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