Our most exciting pre-booked adventure was a horseback ride in Montserrat through AirBnB experiences, with a guided tour of the abbey, lunch, and a gondola ride. It was pricey, but worth it. We were to meet Juan and the rest of the party downtown Barcelona by 8:30am. We drove into Barcelona, there was rush hour traffic, no problem, accounted for. We’d just drop off the rental car and walk to the meeting point five minutes away. Easy. In an hour of driving we didn’t see even one gas station. But that was okay, Budget rental gal said there was one just around the corner from the drop off…
“Maybe she meant this corner?”
“No”.
“Okay, just google map the nearest gas station.”
I needn’t get into what exactly transpired in the next half an hour with frantic calls from Juan telling us he couldn’t wait any longer, but let me say it didn’t involve finding a gas station and it did not involve hooking up with our horse people. We missed it all. Desperate to get the adventure in, we quickly renewed our car rental for another day and called up Juan again to say we’d meet them at the mountain – but no. He wasn’t willing to give us a time, an address, nothing. I’m sure he had good reasons, insurance or whatever…but we were pretty discouraged. There goes five hundred dollars.
I look back on this now and the kids were so good. They didn’t make a big deal out of it, though I’m sure they were disappointed. We did have the car for another day so we decided to drive to the mountain anyway and make our own adventure, and I’m so glad we did. What a beautiful day trip from Barcelona, totally worth it. It only took about 45 minutes. We stopped at a tiny little village outside of Montserrat for a pizza and were amused watching a cat above us sitting on the skylight over our heads. Little fluffy bum and tail flicking. Small amusements make the day as much as the world wonders.
The ancient lady behind the counter spoke no English but she was rather amused by Scott’s hand gestures and big wide efforts to speak her language. She chuckled through her little crooked teeth, pulled up the sleeves on her well worn rose coloured sweater and passed him another cappuccino.
Montserrat was a windy switch back climb to the top of course, but not nearly as disorienting as Figueres. Its name basically means “saw” because of its toothy hoodoo shapes made from a pinky rock called conglomerate. It was easy to park up there and the whole operation, though flooded with tourists, was well organized, clean and even serene. We didn’t get up to the ruins at the top of the mountain but it looked like a fabulous hike for those who were up for it.
We did wander around the Benedictine abbey, Santa Maria. It was founded in the eleventh century but largely reconstructed in the mid 1800s. I particularly loved a cubist sort of looking sculpture of St George that we later discovered was echoed in the Sagrada Familia. It’s pretty recent, 1986, by Josep Maria Subirachs.
The church inside was ornate, as to be expected, and the church bells rang loud and glorious, calling us all in to worship. People flooded the sanctuary and we politely ended up at the outer rim of the human funnel, standing at the back near the narthex, craning our necks, squished and pushed. I climbed up the narrow marble ledge of the iron gate that separated the nave from the side chapels and wrapped one arm around the gate for balance.
Oh my goodness, it wasn’t a mass, it was a boys choir! I knew there was one here but I didn’t expect them to be performing in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday. They all marched in with their little white choir gowns and sang like angels for about half an hour. It was so pure and moving.
I tried not to let the asshole tourists spoil the moment for me. Many of them shoved and pushed and watched the first song through their phone the entire time, holding it up like they were worshiping the god of Apple. Some even held up their entire freaking Ipad, blocking the view for others. Then before the first song was even finished, once they got their photo to prove they were there, they all shoved themselves out the door again like a herd of swine. By the end of the boy’s set, which was only four songs long or so, the church was mostly empty. We stayed for the whole thing of course, rapt.
It made me think of someone dear to me who used to be a soloist boy soprano in his church choir back in the old country. When he was little he wanted to be a priest. But then something happened that turned him against the church, priests, and God, for the rest of his life. I’m not entirely sure what it was because something about his explanation didn’t ring quite true… I have this horrible feeling it wasn’t just puberty cracking his voice.
I hope this is a sacred and safe experience for these beautiful little prepubescent boys, singing so earnestly, their little wings tucked in beside them like wrens.
Afterwards we did the tour of the apse to see the venerated and ornately jewelled and silvered palace room that houses the Madonna of Montserrat, one of Spain’s famous black Madonnas. The literature there says she was built in Jerusalem in the early days of the church and she wasn’t originally black but turned that colour over time due to age and candle smoke, etc. But others say the black madonnas are a sign of interculturation and more likely she was created in the twelfth century. She’s holding a black baby Jesus who gives an Eastern sign of blessing. In her other hand she holds the round planet earth with a calm assured expression. Underneath her, the statue reads a line from Song of Solomon, something akin to: I’m dark, but I am beautiful. Who was this artist? What is the real story? Who had the vision of the black Madonna at a time when the Moors had been reigning the south of Spain for seven hundred years? Fascinating.
Both kids loved the idea of seeing a face related to our religion that wasn’t white, so they each bought a little lady. I had a good chuckle when Nora’s Madonna popped her stern little face out of her paper bag to stare at us as we headed out of the gift shop.
After poking around a bit and enjoying the incredible view, the kids and Scott took the Aeri (the gondola) down and I drove the car and hoped I’d discover along the way where the gondola dropped them off. It was super easy.
Once we got home, it had been such a crazy day, we decided to fill up with gas (the first one we saw) and then we dropped off the car early. We walked to the same tapas restaurant in the gothic quarter that I had raved about earlier. We sought comfort after our crazy day. Amazingly, there was no line up. They let us in and we had another terrific meal by flickering candlelight. The second amazing thing was: Juan gave us half our money back when it wasn’t legally required for him to do so.
Madonna, was this you?
