Montserrat

[Yes, this is another one that would be greatly enhanced by pictures.]

The serrated mountain has a distinctive look, pointy yet rounded, like termite mounds, a grey mass rising up unexpectedly from its red-green-brown surroundings.  So I was pretty sure that's what I saw out the airplane window.  I was able to confirm that suspicion with a closer peek.  Boarding the train at Estació Plaça Espanya, I was surprised to see my train wouldn't be the refined European rail experience I was hoping for, but the Ferrocarrils commuter service.  Packed tight with no seats available, like a Big Red on the T (though the train car itself was much nicer, of course).  So: an hour of standing.  But my excitement built as we rode over the Barcelona basin hills and into the country.  Around a bend the mountain arose, and a substantial fraction of us disembarked at the Aeri (cable car) base station.

With a chill in the air, the cable car took us up into and through the clouds, by way of a cleft in the mountain to the monastery.  Impressive that it was built at these great heights, and then the access road, train, and cable car.  The complex contains a basilica, residences, (I think) a hotel, a cafe, a bar, a museum, and various viewing points.  Funiculars too - one up to the summit ridge and one down to a cave, and a network of trails to connect their endpoints to religious sites and other views.  I bet you can guess my primary motivation for this trip!  Up the funicular and a beeline for the highest peak.  I figured I had just about enough time to get there and down to be at the Sagrada Familia at my reserved time - which I had timed to take a decent look at it before it closed.

What a gorgeous hike this was!  Some in light forest, but much in the open on a ridge of the weird rock Montserrat is made of.  Close up, it was revealed to be a conglomerate (yes, geologists?) of small rocks cemented together, kind of a natural concrete.  It wasn't always obvious whether a trail feature was man-made concrete or if I was just walking on a piece of the mountain that was already present.  There were helpful "time to X" signs" every 10 minutes or so, but after a few of these I could tell I was falling behind.  At the final junction, I knew I wouldn't be able to make my destination, and I was even concerned about getting down in time via the cut-out trail.  That brings us to the moral of our story: oh no, it's not that I shouldn't pack in so many things on my itinerary that I drive myself crazy trying to do it all.  I'll never learn that lesson.  It's that the point of a hike is not the destination.  The hike was already pretty great as it was, and I was seeing most of what the highest peak would give me on the ridge.  Views all around, up to the peaks of my mountain, across to others, and down to the countryside.

The hike down was interesting too, with views back across the other side of the valley made by the "Torrent de Santa Maria" - dry btw - which I followed all the way down.  I bet the cable car cleft was also formed by the Torrent.  The trail occasionally took me back into forest to reach the valley floor, and sometimes the trail was the Torrent.  The rocky parts were scary at times!  Steps cut into the mountain quite close to a dropoff.  Also challenging, which I guess makes sense as I was dropping the altitude I had achieved by funicular in addition to my hike up.

Spoiler: I did make it down on time!  Even had a chance to make a quick sweaty tour of the basilica, though I didn't wait in line to get close to the featured attraction, the Black Madonna.  Leave that to those who can really appreciate it.  Cable and train back to Barcelona - standing only again, but at least this time there was floor space to collapse my butt down onto.  A good thing, because I needed to rest up for my tour of the Sagrada Familia!