Through the Clouds to Montserrat
Friday, November 24, 2011Barcelona, Spain
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Next on the itinerary: New Year's Jazz in Italy
The most popular day trip from Barcelona is the ascent of craggy Montserrat, topped with a vast monastery and dotted with hermit's caves. First a short train ride from Plaça Espanya, as we watch the serrated pinnacles piercing the clouds ahead,
then the Cremallera de Montserrat, a cog railway that zigzags up, up, up through the clouds to the holy mount.
Shrouded in mystery and rife with millenias- old legends (Saint Peter brought an image of the Virgin here?) the jagged mount is the site of a Benedi
ctine monastery tucked into the crags.The pure voices of the Escolania boys choir, Europe's oldest choral school, soar to the vaulted ceiling of the Renaissance- era basilica daily at 1 pm.
A pilgrimage site second only to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, Montserrat is laced with walking trains to caves, chapels, and photo-worthy vistas. Funiculars can take you even further up the pinnacles.
Our trip down, via the Aerie, goes much faster than the zig zag ascent, which took about twenty minutes.
We swoop down through the clouds
and in about five minutes we see our destination and gently swing into the station.
That's where we were!
Labels: Barcelona, Montserrat
posted by Anne and Kirk @ 9:41 AM
1 Comments:
I plan to visit Monserrat next November! My Mother and I were there back in 1996. We took the local bus and enjoyed our time there.
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