Advertisement
Published: September 20th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Aeri de Montserrat cable car.
Not for the faint hearted. We are headng up to the circled area. SITGES 15th May 2007 (Tuesday - Sunshine 24º)
Today we are heading to Montserrat (translated to mean Jagged Mountain).
Into the FFF and out onto the Auto Route we head NNE but encounter very heavy traffic heading towards Barcelona. Deb conjures up an alternative route through a place called Gava and other small towns and villages.
After an hour or so moving through picturesque hills we emerge on the other side of the range onto the road that we want. As we drive along this road we are stunned to see two girls in Gold Hot Pants and stilettos smoking by the roadside. We are thinking…. promotional shoot? TV adverts? Gimmick? It was rather surreal to see pretty girls all dressed up on a dusty road in the middle of nowhere.
It soon dawns on us. These are the first of many “working girls” that we see in Spain that use the highway to ply their trade. Their clientele are the truck drivers and motorists that decide to take advantage of ‘driveway service’.
We arrive at Montserrat and take the cable car ride to the top. Not for the faint hearted let me tell you.
At the top of this dizzy climb the Benedictine Monks built an Abbey and other monuments progressively over a period of hundreds of years. Given the altitude and the fact that there was no cable car around when they built this joint I have renamed it to Monks-are-rats…whilst not as romantic as Montserrat it is much more descriptive and is a nice hip name for the crazy dudes who built this place.
Montserrat is also home to one of the oldest boys' choir (Escolania) in Europe. The choir performs in the basilica on weekdays at one o'clock in the afternoon. We just missed them but we could hear where they’d been. We visit the Abbey and touch the statue of the Madonna and gain her blessings.
It is good to see a large number of School excursions here today. The children are apparently keen to learn of the feats of their forefathers and whilst they are full of youthful enthusiam even they seem subdued by the ernormity of what the Monks have achieved here.
We visit the very worthwhile Montserrat Art Gallery/Museum and are rewarded with some great paintings and objects d’art, including a couple of Picasso’s,
a Salvador Dali or two and a wonderfully preserved Egyptian Mummy.
The cable car ride down is even more breathtaking than the forward journey and some of the passengers cannot stand near the windows such is their fear of heights.
My savvy navvy directs us home in half the time it took to get to Monks-are-rats because the traffic is much lighter and the working girls have moved off the roadside.
This evening we dine at Restaurant La Oca in Sitges. The cuisine is French & Italian and the waiters are a tad too confident. Their overly brisk and self-important flitting around results in an accident whereby a waiter (let’s call him Useless) manages to knock over both our olive oil and balsamic bottles and send them cascading over Deb’s pashmina.
This disaster brings on a fresh bout of brisk flitting around and patting, sponging and wringing of hands. ‘Useless’ emerges from a back room carrying a spray can of unidentifiable contents - before we can protest he sprays a toxic mist onto the pashmina - we expect to see holes appear as if sulphuric acid has been applied but lo and behold…………the stains disappear.
Monks-are-rats
Part of the mini city the Monks have built on Montserrat. All is forgiven. ‘Useless’ reverts back to being Francois, management tend to us like celebrities so much so that Deb and I hatch a plan to get oil split on her pashmina at every meal form here on in.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.114s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 9; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0645s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb