On Sunday we booked to go to Montserrat. We'd booked tickets the morning before on Get Your Guide which we used last year for our trip to the Temple of Poseidon. It cost £49.47 for the coach there and back, tour guide, cog-wheel, black Madonna and 4 tasting liquors.
We left the hotel at 7:30am to go to the bus station which was a 10 minute walk away.
We left at 8am for a 50 minute drive to Montserrat. At the start of the drive our guide Gloria gave us some information about the day, a bit about Barcelona then left us to it. When we go to Montserrat we got the cog-wheel train up the mountain which took 15 minutes.
Once we were up the mountain Gloria told us about Montserrat and the monastery, the formation of the mountain and all details about the place.
The mountains are cool and look a bit like Mount Rushmore in America but they're carved, where as this has been formed like this.
This is sculpted by the same architect that did the passion façade in the Sagrada Família.
Gloria our tour guide left us once we queued for the black Madonna. All the reviews say the queue takes ages but think it was only about 15 minutes. Don't remember having to queue for ages. But you walk down the side of the chapel and see all these along the way
The Black Madonna and child - virgin of Montserrat.
Legend has it they tried to move it but they couldn't so had to build the monastery around it. You can touch the orb but the rest of the statue is covered in glass protecting it. People take pilgrims to see it but as I'm not religious I didn't feel anything when I seen it. Found it quite creepy actually.
The chapel is so dark compared to the Sagrada Família which is so bright
The contrast of the two above photos taken on Holly's iPhone compared to my Samsung...
After seeing the black Madonna we had some free time before we had to go back to the coach
We asked this solo Japanese woman to take our photo who had a selfie stick and was talking so many selfies. I passed my phone to her landscape but then took all our photos in portrait. She had her own phone in the selfie stick landscape...
There's a funicular up to the top of the mountain or you can hike up but that takes a good hour and we didn't have the time for that so we got the funicular which cost €14 which turned out to be a waste of money because as soon as we got up there we had to get the next one down as we just didn't have enough time. We got up there took a few photos then had to wait for the next funicular to take us back down. The views were great and you could go on a hike as well.
When we got back down as part of our ticket there was a screening we could go to so we went that had the history of Montserrat but the audio guide they gave us didn't match to what was showing on the screen so we ended up walking out as it was crap. Then went to the shop where you could taste 4 local liquors or have a bag of cookies. Holly did the tasting and I got the cookies - they were biscotti cookies which I'm not a fan of as I find them really dry.
There was also a local market on the road back to the coach. Which had people selling local produce.
There was a lot of cheese and each stall was giving out samples
There was this cottage cheese that you have with honey that looked disgusting and was €5 but Holly said she had to try it cos it was a local thing...
It was disgusting and ended up in the bin so that was a waste of money.
We were the last to go back to the coach as we had a bit of a photoshoot here. The reviews of the guides all said you didn't get enough free time which you didn't as we didn't have time to look at the top when we got the funicular. I would have liked to have walked around the top of the mountain. You don't get the cog-wheel down the coach just drives down. Good job we did get the first early morning slot as there was so much traffic going to where we left on the way back. All coaches and cars queuing to go to the car park.
If we booked earlier we could have booked the cable car option rather than the cog-wheel which i would have loved but we left it too late as we couldn't decide which to book as we were looking at this other website that did it that was slightly different. The coach back to Barcelona which took 50 minutes.
It was a good trip and interesting, you just didn't get enough time to actually explore the place.
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