Jamiewrites: Montserrat day trip

The plan for today was pretty straightforward as we'd book a group tour day trip thing to go visit Montserrat to see the interesting mountain and the monastery that's built most of the way up it. We also went with the option to have lunch in the restaurant up there and then go to a local winery for some tasting.

After catching a metro to get to the bus station where the tour departed from, we waited around for a while - after some fun with trying to find the exact 'gate' our bus was at; we've learned that putting useful, informative signs to help people navigate is just not popular here for some reason - we met our tour guide (Luis) and jumped on board the bus.

Montserrat is about an hour's drive outside of Barcelona proper, and along the way the tour guides (there were several as it was technically tour different tours on the bus at this point) took turns providing useful information about where we were going, as well as some local history. Unsurprisingly, the general consensus is that Franco was a very bad man and everything got much better after he died.

We parked the bus at the train station at the bottom of the mountain so we could - duh - catch the train up. That provided some spectacular views as we (quite slowly) ascended. Once we got there, Luis took us on a bit of a walk around the grounds before letting us loose on the monastery itself.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it's home to Our Lady of Montserrat, though people seem to call it the Black Madonna more than anything else. We went inside the basilica (it'd been explain to us that a basilica is a technical term for a church that as a relic which was one of those where you were meant to be silent, and there was a very stern-looking man who would make very loud shooshing noises every few minutes. I wondered if being able to demonstrate the ability to be that loud a shoosher was one of the job requirements.

After wandering around inside there for a while, we went on a bit of a hike to a lookout we'd been told had spectacular views of the valley and surrounding countryside. That was an accurate description, and therefore worth the effort (it was mostly uphill) of getting there.

Once we'd made it back down to the monastery and surrounding buildings we did a quick liqueur tasting (monastery = monks = alcohol, of course) and joined up with the group to go to the restaurant for lunch. It wasn't anything overly fancy, but it was okay. And there was wine. We ended up chatting to the people across from us, who turned out to be from Wyoming in the US, which is not a place I know much about beyond having read a few books by Annie Proulx. But they were good to talk to, and we swapped travel stories.

Once lunch was done, it was onto another bus - which I'm still somewhat puzzled about; if they could bring buses up to the top, why did we catch the train? I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation (like, maybe the bus went somewhere else while we were doing what we were doing) but it's still a bit baffling.

We wound our way down the mountain road and to the winery - Oller del Mas - and were taken into the back room for the tasting. There were three local wines; the first, a white was very light and crisp - would be good on a hot day. The next, a red, was a bit heavier but still easy to drink. The third was much more fuller bodied, but still not what I'd call heavy. They gave us quite generous pours so it was lucky there were only three wines.

We had a bit of time left and spent that at the bar of the winery; we found out these were quite high-end wines we'd been drinking, particularly when you consider alcohol here is way cheaper than it is in Australia. There was an Australian couple - from Tasmania - on this tour as well, and a Quebecois mother and daughter who we spoke to. Well, we spoke to the daughter; the mother appeared to only speak French, which is presumably why she didn't say much.

Then it was (sadly) back on the bus and back to Barcelona. We didn't do much after getting back to the city, though we did go to the Arc de Triomf (yes, there's one here as well) to take photos. And that was about it.

Pictures!

We hadn't seen any shiba inu so far today - I think we'd managed at least one every day other than our very first day here - but we did see a painting of one, and a picture of one in a dog food ad.

Montserrat from the train station.

Criminologist: It was clear that this was to be...

Audience: Was it a picnic?

Criminologist: ...no picnic.

Outside the basilica.

Inside the basilica.

That tiny thing under the archway in the middle is the Madonna. You can get closer to it, but you have to pay extra and there's a big lineup. Neither of us were interested enough that we wanted to part with time or money. We left that to the people wanting her blessing.

Fun fact: Ignatius of Loyola is supposed to have started the Society of Jesus (or Jesuits) after visiting this particular Madonna. You learn things on tours!

A nice set of pipes.

This was a bit weird.

Ah, odd facial expressions in religious artwork. It's been too long.

Never mind windmills; if Cervantes wanted Don Quixote to imagine seeing giants in things, it should have been these rocks.

On the walk up to the lookout.

The view from the lookout.

I think this one has a cable car in it. It's too small for me to be sure, but it's yellow.

At the winery.

Barcelona's slightly smaller Arc de Triomf. As I explained to Rochelle, there are lots of them; it's just that the one in Paris is the biggest. At least I think it is...