Montserrat

We went to Montserrat, which is a monastery up on a mountain. Driving up was a bit scary we were on a huge tour bus and the road that were two-way streets are tiny which is already scary then there was the fog that was so thick you could not see anything.  I do not know how the driver was able to drive, but once we got to the top where the monastery was it was beautiful because we were above the fog and it looked like the ocean. There was this nice older couple that were celebrating their 56^th anniversary and they were talking to us for most of the time. It was nice to see how great they got along and how in love they still seemed after so many years.  We also tried the Liquors that the monks make and personally since I do not like to drink they were quite strong it felt like pure alcohol and after I could still feel the burn of the alcohol it was like burning my stomach. But there were some people that did like it so it might just be me. They have four different liquors and they all taste differently some were very strong and others tasted a lot more like hazelnut. After tasting the liquors we went to the church. The church was beautiful and there wasn’t a big line to see the Black Virgin of Montserrat. There was a fire many years ago so the only original piece of the Virgin is her hand which one can go and kiss and pray, I recommend that everyone go and see her it is such a lovely experience. When we finished seeing the church we had free time so my boyfriend and I went to explore the surrounding area, there isn’t much to see around this time because there is only one shop open and one restaurant so we decided to go up the hiking paths. The hiking path we chose said that there was an amazing view at the top so we started to climb the stairs and we kept climbing and climbing until it felt like my legs were numb. Of course my boyfriend said that he was fine so I pushed on a bit more until we saw a sign that said the path was still one more hour to get to the end, that is where we decided to call it a day because we had been climbing for an hour and we wanted to eat at the restaurant and go to the gift shop before we headed back to Barcelona.  We did sit on the rocks before we headed down and were amazed of how beautiful the mountain was it was as if we were in a different world the trees were beautiful and the birds are not afraid to stand next to you like the bird in the picture did with me. We carved our initials onto a rock as other tourists did and we started to head down. As we went down my boyfriend had the idea of counting how many steps we went up, at the end we went up 675 steps. Once we got down it was nice to not have to go down stairs anymore and we walked towards the gift shop and spent some time there. We spent so much time climbing and going back down the mountain that we didn’t have time to eat at the resultant and the food looked delicious. But now that I look back at it I wouldn’t change a thing, it was so much fun to climb up the mountain and see the monastery from so high up it just made the trip so much better. If your ever in Barcelona and have time to go to Montserrat you should definitely go and see it. 

If one stands in the center of the circle like the tour guide is doing they say that you are closer to god and if you pray he will hear your prayer better and it will be answered.