28-29 January 2010 were excellent days. Although no pictures were taken to document Thursday the 28th, I figure I need to mention that studio was excellent. We set up our work spaces, went shopping for a t-square (which Barcelona appears to be fresh out of), and sketched. The studio space is a nice and peaceful place to work during the late afternoon. The day went by quickly and was over in no time but the late night was the most hectic night of the year so far.
In the course of a few hours we went from ideas to travel plans, backups, research and more… The 29th was a Friday which we have been very excited for because we had no class. As the 3 day weekend allows for more travel time, I ended up taking 2 trips, the first of which will be described here: the mountain monastery of Montserrat.
The trip to Montserrat is the ideal day trip from Barcelona. It was very easy to get tickets and to get there, all with public transpotration (FGC railroads) which take you from Barcelona’s Placa Espanya hub to the base of the mountain. Our day began in a hectic manner, quickly getting to the train and meeting up with our friend who would get our bus tickets for Cadaques (the next post in the blog) before making it intime for the hourly train that would take us up. We disembarked the R5 line and transferred onto the cog railroad which took us up the mountain to Montserrat. Since it was winter and the weather was not ideal, many of the attractions were not open (funicular railroad lines to surrounding places at the monastery and the closure of the cable car, aeri). We still had a marvelous time.
It was a bit chilly and the area was submersed in fog but the sun did manage to peek through later in the day. We wondered around the place, finding our way into the basilica, which was fantastic.
We were the typical tourists – taking pictures, eating lunch in the cafeteria, walking on the paths, and looking at the schedule which set out the day’s highlights including the boys choir. The performance was exceptional except for it was short, maybe 10-15 minutes. We headed out of the basilica to see the sun on the basilica and the rocks surrounding.
The basilica was the highlight of the visit, the detail of the entire place exceeds any photograph or what a book can describe. Each part of the church also had it’s own highlight – from the numerous alters lining the edges of the isles to the hidden chapel and detail of the apse at the front of the basilica, the place was truly astonishing.
After I squeezed every last bit of power from my camera’s battery, we walked around while waiting for the train down the mountain, we came across a cat. This feline became quite fond of Judy, following us along where ever we went. We later found out that the cat spoke Polish. After pulling the “puppy dog eyes” routine, Judy broke down and gave it a snack which it ate with lightning speeds and continued to follow us. It was very funny.
We caught the R5 down to Barcelona where we had just under 2 hours to prepare for our next adventure…
» Photos from Montserrat
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