With Barcelona just south of us, and home to the Sagrada Familia (one of the major sites that we want to visit) we had to decide where to base ourselves to visit from as there was no way we were driving into a city of 2 million people. An article in Lonely Planet inspired us to head to a place called Monserrat. This was the best decision ever. We are now at one of the most amazing places in the world – a monastery town high in the hills 40 km away from Barcelona. It is in a beautiful national park with lots of walks that traverse the hills (mountains). We wound our way up the hill and despite the large number of tourist buses that greeted us when we arrived we fell in love with the scenery and decided to put down roots here for three days to start with. An hour long train ride will take us to Barcelona and meanwhile we can experience this absolutely unique place.
Firstly you must realise that there is a fully active monastery here and although we can’t visit this part of the village we can go to the Basilica and experience vespers with the monks and an authentic boy’s choir from the choir school based here. The bells ring at 6.30pm to alert us to come to the chapel in 15 minutes and again five minutes before the vespers start. They echo through the rocks that this village is built directly under. The monks and boys combine to give an eerie sound through the beautiful acoustics of the chapel and the high tones of the young boys is amazing to hear. There are other masses that we can join in with so we plan to go again at 7.30 in the morning.
Firstly you must realise that there is a fully active monastery here and although we can’t visit this part of the village we can go to the Basilica and experience vespers with the monks and an authentic boy’s choir from the choir school based here. The bells ring at 6.30pm to alert us to come to the chapel in 15 minutes and again five minutes before the vespers start. They echo through the rocks that this village is built directly under. The monks and boys combine to give an eerie sound through the beautiful acoustics of the chapel and the high tones of the young boys is amazing to hear. There are other masses that we can join in with so we plan to go again at 7.30 in the morning.
The air is crisp up here at 1135m above the valley below, a climb that was quite incredible on the switch back roads in a car. Not being able to see the village until you finally reach it means that at each turn you we were expectantly looking around to see if you were there. With about 80 monks cloistered here, the church is the major feature. It again, like other churches in Spain we have seen, is extremely ornate inside and with high ceilings and statues of Jesus, Mary etc at every turn. Unlike other churches this is not called Sancta Maria but the attached monastery was built here because a statute of the Black Madonna (the Virgin Mary) was found close by in a rock grotto back in the 1025.
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Although Napoleon tried to destroy the monastery in the 1800’s it has been refurbished to its former glory. People come from all over to kiss the Black Madonna. This village sits in what is now a National park surrounding it with walks to further heights and 2 funiculars, a rack and pinion rail way plus a gondola provides other opportunities for views and exploration.
The weather was cold and wet so we decided to go to Barcelona for the first day of our stay. This meant getting on the rack and pinion rail way down the hill and getting the connecting train to Barcelona for an hour long ride. Firstly, on the way into Barcelona we were blown away by the large amount of large industry that we encountered on our way and this ranged from light to heavy engineering and chemical factories. There was little agriculture to be seen in this part of the country which was a rocky and barren in many places.
Arriving in Barcelona was via an underground rail system so it was hard to get an impression at first. Then we stayed underground and used the well developed metro system to get us to the Sagrada Familia. This is a church that has already been under construction for 125 years and is not due to be finished till 2025. When the original and utter genius of an architect was asked when it would be finished he replied “my client isn’t in a hurry”. He died many years ago but others have carried on his dream and this is despite all his plans and drawings being destroyed in the 1930 uprising in Spain. He designed this amazing structure in honour of Joseph and the holy family and you will see their images in sculptures all over the building; he was a very religious man who believed that the holy family was at the centre love and harmony in society. Much of his inspiration in the design came from nature around him, hence the treed effect as the roof in one part of the church and the fruit on top of some spires representing the bountifulness of nature.
The effect of his architectural design permeates the city and can be seen at various other spots in the city in buildings that he was commissioned to do. Many of the buildings in Barcelona are works of art as well as architectural masterpieces. This city was a beautiful, clean and orderly masterpiece (made Marseille look like a shabby city). It stretched down to the waterfront that was developed tastefully to blend in with the cityscape. Although we only saw a small part of the city, it kept us enthralled at each stage but didn’t have the time to do more exploring, needing to return to Monserrat. It is certainly a place you could spend more time at.
The walks and views around Monserrat are cold and wet as the weather is still not cooperating. The views are fabulous when the cloud allows you to see them. The rock formations on what would be a moonscape without the plants are amazing. That paths are chiselled out of them is even more amazing. A climb up the track to the highest viewpoint (where a funicular can take you if you want) shows Monserrat nestled in the rocks. Disappointingly however, unlike Rotorua and Queenstown, they do check for your tickets at the top of the ride so there are no free trips down.
Parts of the walks close to the monastery itself are adorned with huge numbers of religious statutes and sculptures. Once you got away from the monastery there were very few people on the tracks-pretty typical for most tourist places I would think. As the skies opened up at lunchtime we had a leisurely lunch in the local cafeteria where the bus loads of tourist eat. And we used our upstairs balcony position to assess the lunches that passed through the counter below. Well it seems that pizza, sausage, or calamari rings accompanied by chips and more chips would be the most popular choice and were often washed down with coke and followed by chocolate cake. I guess things aren’t much different here to NZ. People had the option of getting veges (and nice veges at that) and salad but passed them by. We certainly enjoyed our two meals, pork with a variety of veges and spicy sausage with herbed haricot beans. We finished our meal off with cholesterol lowering red wine; wine here is very good value for the quality and I can see that we will continue to try wine from the different regions. Spain has more land in grapes than France (we just haven’t seen them yet). The Roija region certainly makes a nice red wine particularly Tempranillo which was our first tasting bottle bought at a supermarket for $6 per bottle.
Food and fuel appear to be slightly cheaper here than in France. And interestingly petrol would be 5 – 7 cents cheaper than diesel and 15 cents cheaper than France. Once again, here in Spain, Sunday is a family day with shops being closed. We still both feel that would be a great thing for NZ to return to but realise that won’t happen. There is a huge amount of road construction going on here as the number of cars owned by individuals in Spain has increased by 25% over the past 5 years. The motorways around Barcelona were incredible with Trucks dominating and bumper to bumper traffic in places on the ring motorways even though we were 20km out and it was late morning. Trucks on the roads have made travelling quite slow in places. Now about the TV; we watch the local programmes to get a feel for what is happening and if you think we have too many ads between programmes well we are not a patch on ads in Spain.
The weather is very inclement for this time of year and people having come to Spain’s coast for early summer holidays are being disappointed. But the rain is being welcomed in the Catalan area as drought conditions have meant that Barcelona has a severe water shortage. Although this rain is not enough water to make a difference, the officials aren’t mucking around, they have ship loads (and that is ship loads with a p) of water coming into Barcelona to fill the gaps until the new desalination plant is up and running next year.
The weather was cold and wet so we decided to go to Barcelona for the first day of our stay. This meant getting on the rack and pinion rail way down the hill and getting the connecting train to Barcelona for an hour long ride. Firstly, on the way into Barcelona we were blown away by the large amount of large industry that we encountered on our way and this ranged from light to heavy engineering and chemical factories. There was little agriculture to be seen in this part of the country which was a rocky and barren in many places.
Arriving in Barcelona was via an underground rail system so it was hard to get an impression at first. Then we stayed underground and used the well developed metro system to get us to the Sagrada Familia. This is a church that has already been under construction for 125 years and is not due to be finished till 2025. When the original and utter genius of an architect was asked when it would be finished he replied “my client isn’t in a hurry”. He died many years ago but others have carried on his dream and this is despite all his plans and drawings being destroyed in the 1930 uprising in Spain. He designed this amazing structure in honour of Joseph and the holy family and you will see their images in sculptures all over the building; he was a very religious man who believed that the holy family was at the centre love and harmony in society. Much of his inspiration in the design came from nature around him, hence the treed effect as the roof in one part of the church and the fruit on top of some spires representing the bountifulness of nature.
The effect of his architectural design permeates the city and can be seen at various other spots in the city in buildings that he was commissioned to do. Many of the buildings in Barcelona are works of art as well as architectural masterpieces. This city was a beautiful, clean and orderly masterpiece (made Marseille look like a shabby city). It stretched down to the waterfront that was developed tastefully to blend in with the cityscape. Although we only saw a small part of the city, it kept us enthralled at each stage but didn’t have the time to do more exploring, needing to return to Monserrat. It is certainly a place you could spend more time at.
The walks and views around Monserrat are cold and wet as the weather is still not cooperating. The views are fabulous when the cloud allows you to see them. The rock formations on what would be a moonscape without the plants are amazing. That paths are chiselled out of them is even more amazing. A climb up the track to the highest viewpoint (where a funicular can take you if you want) shows Monserrat nestled in the rocks. Disappointingly however, unlike Rotorua and Queenstown, they do check for your tickets at the top of the ride so there are no free trips down.
Parts of the walks close to the monastery itself are adorned with huge numbers of religious statutes and sculptures. Once you got away from the monastery there were very few people on the tracks-pretty typical for most tourist places I would think. As the skies opened up at lunchtime we had a leisurely lunch in the local cafeteria where the bus loads of tourist eat. And we used our upstairs balcony position to assess the lunches that passed through the counter below. Well it seems that pizza, sausage, or calamari rings accompanied by chips and more chips would be the most popular choice and were often washed down with coke and followed by chocolate cake. I guess things aren’t much different here to NZ. People had the option of getting veges (and nice veges at that) and salad but passed them by. We certainly enjoyed our two meals, pork with a variety of veges and spicy sausage with herbed haricot beans. We finished our meal off with cholesterol lowering red wine; wine here is very good value for the quality and I can see that we will continue to try wine from the different regions. Spain has more land in grapes than France (we just haven’t seen them yet). The Roija region certainly makes a nice red wine particularly Tempranillo which was our first tasting bottle bought at a supermarket for $6 per bottle.
Food and fuel appear to be slightly cheaper here than in France. And interestingly petrol would be 5 – 7 cents cheaper than diesel and 15 cents cheaper than France. Once again, here in Spain, Sunday is a family day with shops being closed. We still both feel that would be a great thing for NZ to return to but realise that won’t happen. There is a huge amount of road construction going on here as the number of cars owned by individuals in Spain has increased by 25% over the past 5 years. The motorways around Barcelona were incredible with Trucks dominating and bumper to bumper traffic in places on the ring motorways even though we were 20km out and it was late morning. Trucks on the roads have made travelling quite slow in places. Now about the TV; we watch the local programmes to get a feel for what is happening and if you think we have too many ads between programmes well we are not a patch on ads in Spain.
The weather is very inclement for this time of year and people having come to Spain’s coast for early summer holidays are being disappointed. But the rain is being welcomed in the Catalan area as drought conditions have meant that Barcelona has a severe water shortage. Although this rain is not enough water to make a difference, the officials aren’t mucking around, they have ship loads (and that is ship loads with a p) of water coming into Barcelona to fill the gaps until the new desalination plant is up and running next year.
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