Spain, Day Five: Montserrat

I woke Ben up to look at the sunrise, but he wasn't mad.

Unreal.

It was Thanksgiving Day. We ate breakfast in the hotel then headed for the funicular to go to the top of the mountain. You can walk, but it's steep and a long way, and we were planning to hike around even higher above the station anyway.

This is the little village area from the funicular station across the way.

We decided to do the middle-difficulty hike. Do you wonder why I always end up hiking around on steep mountain paths when I am very specifically afraid of hiking around on steep mountain paths? I wonder. I guess I'm a good wife. Also, though, I am always glad I did it, once I'm safely off the steep path.

There are lots of additional small chapels and shrines all over this mountain.

Up up up. We could see the Pyrenees in the distance even better this second day.

Here I am with the tiny monastery far below.

We kept running across the same couple of Japanese women on this trail. They spoke no English. We sat with them and watched this goat (and his friends, not pictured) scrabble around on the rocky hillside for a while. I thought they were deer until long afterward, but Ben set me straight (and then made fun of me).

Uggghg any time there are ropes set into the wall you know it's not something I'm going to be super excited about. There were parts of this trail that were pretty intense climbs, to the point where we weren't even sure we were going the right way. But I kept thinking if those Japanese ladies (pictured below) could handle it, I surely could.

This is a pretty incredible place.

We hiked all the way back down to the monastery and picked up our bags, then headed back down the cable car.

We made it back to Barcelona in time for lunch, which we ate near our hotel at an outdoor cafe. A Russian family sat next to us at this restaurant for a time, but left after their child pounded on the table and demanded Greek chicken. The waiter explained they don't have Greek chicken so everyone got up and left. It was pretty weird.

Right next to the restaurant is this cultural center that has a bunch of old ruins with explanatory information. Wandering through there made me realize I know absolutely nothing about the history of northern Spain.

The entrance to the El Born neighborhood was right next to this building, a block or so behind our hotel. We couldn't have asked for a better location.

For dinner, we went to Cal Pep, recommended by my boss. It was a small place with a tapas bar in the front and a tiny, packed room in the back. My boss says it is "quite famous." I can tell you that it was good! We let the waiter pick what we should have. Among the things he chose were these fried artichoke hearts:

And beef tartare which was just very, very good. Sometimes my brain can't handle beef tartare, but this one made it all right.

Also fried sardines & calamari, of course.

Spain, Day Four: Montserrat

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.

Spain, Day Three: Barcelona

On our second day in the city we went to see some of the major tourist attractions. Barcelona is known for being the city of modernism and of Gaudi specifically, with lots of crazy buildings of a sort you don't see anywhere else.

You can't go there and not see Sagrada Familia. This church, begun in 1882, is almost complete: only eight years to go!

The main entrance is crazily ornate.

And the interior is completely unique.

Ben didn't like it. I liked it!

I especially like the stained glass. The colors are different around the perimeter, depending on when that side of the church gets the most direct sunlight.

Gaudi may not be to everyone's taste, but you have to respect someone who developed a completely original vision of the world, and somehow convinced other people to go along with it and give him money to build his creations.

This creepy Jesus (?) is above what will be the main entrance to the church once it's finished.

Above the altar.

You can take an elevator to the top of the towers for a nice view of the city, and also to get glimpses of the construction still in progress.

It's hard to tell but there were people in those scaffolding things putting together new fruit sculptures.

Then we had to descend an endless spiral staircase to get back to the bottom. At least you don't have to climb up, too.

The other side of the church is much different, sparse and stylized. It mainly reminded me of the bad guys in Lord of the Rings.

Here we are with a Japanese tour group.

After the church, we walked back through town, passing many ham shops.

We decided on the spur of the moment to go inside Casa Battlo, another Gaudi building. It's a giant apartment building but was built to be the home of a single family.

Every detail, inside an out, was quite thoroughly designed in a unified way.

The tile in the interior courtyard got darker toward the upper floors, since they get more light.

Even the roof was fancy.

Ben found an extra area to one side that nobody else had discovered. Here he is with his audio guide. After Sagrada Familia and Casa Battlo we decided getting the audio guides was stupid. This one did have an iPhone app you could hold up in the rooms to see them as originally furnished - it was pretty cool.

I did learn via the audio guide that the reason these buildings are decorated with broken mosaic pieces is because the irregular shapes and surfaces make it impossible to use regularly shaped tile.

We had 2pm tickets to Park Guell. The guidebooks act like it's not within walking distance but PSH! Everything is always within walking distance. We passed this neat building on the way, and I later discovered it's also a famous Gaudi place you can tour, Casa Mila.

The further north we walked, the less touristy it felt. We also discovered the last third was increasingly uphill. Maybe this is why they tell you not to walk.

At the end it started to rain and we had to walk up giant steep hills and at the end of the hills were these freaking STEPS. I hated my life looking at this, but we were in too deep to stop.

Finally we made it to Park Guell. Frankly, we were kind of puzzlingly underwhelmed at this park. There was some cool stuff, for sure, but the Gaudi-designed monuments area is small and was packed with people taking instagram selfies. Part of it was also closed off for construction.

Some fun little buildings.

Overall, I would not recommend paying to get into the park, unless you're super into Gaudi or want to support civic development or something like that.

After this we decided to walk for a little while and then get a taxi, but somehow we ended up walking the entire way back to the hotel, stopping for a late lunch (mostly ham) on the way. We also picked up some desserts at a bakery, and then ended up being too full to go out for dinner.