Blogs from Monistrol de Montserrat, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, Europe - page 2

I have dreamt of going to Montserrat for years now. This was definitely quite high on my list of things to do in my lifetime. After the Cinque Terre debacle, I was a little scared that it would not live up to my expectations. It did and more! I took the R5 train to the Montserrat-Aeri station, which is about an hour away from Barcelona. About halfway in the journey, this big group of kids got on. The decibel level definitely went up a notch. This is a train that makes many many stops and it was funny because every time we would start up again the kids, in unison, would let out this "whoa". It is also always entertaining to see how excited they truly are for simple things like riding a train. I can ... read more

We are very lucky to have so many friends in so many different places. Michelle lives just outside Barcelona and she suggested we go up to the mountains of Montserrat for the day. What an excellent suggestion! We took the train out to Martorell where Michelle met us and drove the rest of the way. It's quite a breathtaking and windy road to the top where parking was at a premium because of the sheer quantity of tourists. It's a long time since we have seen so many tour buses! To escape the hoards, we took the funicular train to the top and had a good wander around. Leaving the crowds behind felt so good and the views were amazing. We clambered up and down steep steps before meandering back down to the central area where ... read more

Can't believe this is our last day in Spain, even two weeks is not enough...guess we'll have to get Lynn to write another book needing research of more areas of Spain. The parador ended up being more reasonable than I expected...the included breakfast was fantastic. That should hold us over for the whole day. Just simply driving is enjoyable. Villages on many hilltops. Almost got stopped by police again for crossing a solid white line. I quickly pulled out the camera and took pictures of them, so that they would see it was another tourist. I couldn't resist the pictures of the villages and castles on the mountain and hill tops. We drove up to what looked like a castle and found it was a parador in Cardona. I was feeling like I made a mistake ... read more

Saw Montserrat early morning, visited the Black Madonna, and climbed the mountain to the Monastary, amazing place, cant wait to load up some of my pictures!... read more

We had to get going about an hour earlier this morning to make sure that we were at the bus stop in time to purchase our tour to Montserrat. We arrived at the bus stop at about 9.10am and the bus selling the tickets for tours to Montserrat and Barcelona arrived at about 9.20am. After we bought our tickets there was a considerable amount of radioing and telephoning as the Plana staff worked out how many people they had going on tours today. Eventually there were three busses for Montserrat, but it was an absolute shemozzle getting everyone boarded. The staff were just calling out Montserrat, Montserrat and everyone was milling about between the three busses. It was only when we ended up almost boarding the Russian bus that it became obvious that there was a ... read more