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Paul and I took a train out to Montserrat to see the Benedictine monks and
the surrounding mountains.
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The view from the cable car. |
Monasteries are supposed to be quiet, but
all you could hear was the rumble of the heavy machinery used to build a new
high-capacity rail line to the monastery. Yeah, like the place needed more
tourists. |
| We managed to get into a service to hear the Benedictine
monks do their chants. Their voices were enhanced by the gorgeous
surroundings of the cathedral. We wanted to do a tour, but there was a long
line of tourists. We opted instead for a long hike to the highest peak in
the area - Sant Jerónim (1235m). |
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Had a great postcard view of the monastery and the
surrounding mountains from this vantage point. |
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At the top, we were rewarded by a excellent view (I'm
starting to exhaust the thesaurus for synonyms of beautiful). |
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Paul and I at the summit. As usual, we removed our oxygen
masks and survival suits just long enough to take this picture. |
Instead of taking the wussy cable car, we opted for the
little-used trail to the bottom. Our destination was the tiny train station
in the middle of the picture. |
The tourist office told us it would take us 2.5 hours at minimum to hike to
the bottom of the mountain. We managed to do it in just over an hour. We were
still a fair ways up when we realized that we might be able to make it to the
nearby train station to catch an earlier train than we initially thought. We
didn't think we could make it, so we didn't hurry. However, we got to the bottom
just as we saw the train round the bend before the train station. We quickly
decided to sprint the 1000 or more meters to the train station. Our legs were
fried from the descent but we managed to make the train just as the doors were
closing. A very close call!
We returned to Barcelona
for my final day.
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