Barcelona Days 4/5: Lame then AWESOME

New Years Day was kind of a dud. The weather was rough, nothing was open, and we were tired. So we walked a ton, sat on the harbor during the non-rainy part of the day, people-watched, bought our tickets for the next day’s adventure, watched some Doctor Who and Modern Family, and went to bed early. After lots of busy busy days we needed a day to just explore and rest.

The NEXT day, though, our last day in Barcelona, was absolutely fantastic. We took a train out of the city to Montserrat, a mountain with multiple peaks close to Barcelona. We took a cable car to the top of the mountain, through a very very thick cloud cover, emerging ontop of the clouds into a sunny wonderland. Although we were worried about the weather because of the fog and clouds we saw from the train, we were so high up on the mountain that we had abundant sunshine and a really cool of the cloud layer itself. The way the clouds moved with the wind and the way the sun hit the clouds and mountains at different angles made for an incredibly stunning sight.

Montserrat is home to the Santa Maria de Montserrat, a Benedictine abbey that remains to this day a functioning monastery. This monastery is home to the Black Virgin, a statue of Mary with Jesus on her lap. Legend has it this figure was discovered in some caves by shepherds in the 9^th century. They tried to move it to a church but at some point it became extremely heavy so they couldn’t move it anymore. They then decided to build the monastery around it! We began our day by hiking down to Santa Cova, a chapel built around the caves in which the black virgin was supposedly found. The coolest part of this hike (other than the views of the clouds) was a series of sculptures in varying styles that lined the path and told the story of Jesus’s life, from the visitation of Elizabeth and Mary to Jesus’s ascension into Heaven. It was cool how each sculpture had its own materials, its own design, and likely its own artist. I thought that was a cool addition to this hike, making it feel almost pilgrimmagy. 

Next we visited the Basilica itself. There was a nice museum about the history of Montserrat, the monastery, and the black virgin. They also had a section on the monastery today and exactly what the monks who live there do on a daily basis. It showed an example of the schedule in a typical day as well as some videos of the monks working, eating, walking, etc. The monastery is also home to a very famous and renowned music school. The boys choir, made of only about 30-40 boys ages 9-14, is quite prestigious, and the end of the exhibit featured a pretty elaborate music video of the boys singing with a Catalonian opera singer and pop star. Michal and I enjoyed it a lot. I also enjoyed the basilica itself. I found it to be really beautiful, both inside and out. We decided to wait in line to go into the room where we could see the black virgin, and I was glad we did, because the hallways and stairways leading up to it were very ornately decorated and again quite beautiful.

Black Virgin in her little alcove, overlooking the nave

Hallway leading to the are with the Black Virgin

Our final adventure of the day involved yet another funicular up to the highest peak of the mountain, St. Joan. There are a series of hermitages up there, as well as little chapels and more viewing points. The funicular dropped us off at the foot of a path going up to peaks, so we decided to climb to the very top. It was one of those experiences where paths kept branching off the main path, so anytime we saw something going up, we took it, and ended up hiking up some very precarious steps and slopes with loose gravel, but we eventually made it up to the very very top of the mountain and the reward was well well worth the questionable nature of the climb. We could see for miles and miles and miles, all the way out to the ocean on one side and across several mountain ranges to the other. I honestly feel like we could see all of Catalonia from up there. The sky was the most perfect blue, there was a light breeze, the sun was huge—everything was so perfect.

We had a picnic up on top of the mountain so we could soak in as much sunshine as possible, before slowly making our way back down to head back to the city so we could pack our things and get ready to leave the next day.