Day 22: Montserrat

We awoke to sunny skies, though the temperature was still only in the low teens. We headed off to Monserrat (while the weather was good. Montserrat is a spectacularly beautiful Benedictine monk mountain retreat about 60kms North West from Barcelona.

This was a spectacular day – as we got closer to Montserrat the landscape became prettier and prettier and the mountains rose up in front of us; sheer gray cliffs that were domed in shape. We wound our way up the narrow and very steep road being very wary of the multitude of tour buses coming and going in both directions. When we had to pass one it was a scary experience especially when we were on the cliff side of the road.

Once at Montserrat the views of the Catalonian countryside was breathtaking and basilica, monastery and museum were very interesting. We took the almost vertical funicular to the top of the mountain where it had been snowing and walked to a tiny church and the remains of where some monks used to live – boy that must have been tough!