The last of Catalunya

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My last day in Catalunya ended my trip in the same fashion as it has been for the last 5 weeks. I spent my last day before Madrid in Montserrat walking and walking and walking. I went on a trip to Monserrat which is located about 45 minutes from Barcelona. It´s a monastery on top of a beautiful mountain (I think it´s about 4 thousand feet high). It has been considered a sacred mountain for thousands of years and especially after a religious statue was found up there centuries after it was hidden from the Moors. It´s a small black statue, La Moreneta (dark maiden) and is the soul of Montserrat. It´s a beautiful mountain with strangely shaped rocks. I thought I would just go up there, look around and leave, but I ended up walking for 4 hours nonstop around the mountain. There are two main trails to which you get to by funicular. There are sculptures along the trail and at the end of the trail is a chapel which is built right into the mountain. Advice: sneakers are a good idea. There are many other trails and it´s great for walking around. Of course I wasn´t wearing sneakers, which I definetely regreted because the roads go up and down and they are not paved so you end up walking on dirt roads with lots of rocks. My jeans were so dusty and my shoes all covered in dust, I looked as if I was working at a construction site all day. The view from up there is spectacular and very tranquille. All around are mountains and below are green fields. The rock formations are definetely something that sets this mountain aside from others that I have seen, it´s very bizzare. This unique mountain is seen from a far and it´s very recognizable. The peaks have the weirdest gray forms rising from the plain surrounding it. I recommend seeing it, however as much as I enjoyed hiking around this mysterious and sacred mountain I couldn´t stop thinking of Meteora, Greece. Meteora is an area full of beautiful extraordinary mountains with monasteries build on top of them. Montserrat does not come close to the beauty of Meteora.

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