Montserrat Monastery

May 24 – June 21, 2017

This, by far, was my favorite thing to do while in Spain (Jo’s favorite too!)  The monastery, founded in the 9th century and still functioning today, is a bit out of the way (and over 4000 feet high!), but if you can spare a day, DO IT.

If memory serves me right (don’t take my word for it; I’m a dog after all), Montserrat is about an hour outside of Barcelona…give or take…and it was a bit difficult for us to figure out how to get there, which tickets to buy, etc.  But don’t you worry your lil noggin’.  We wrote it all down for ya’.

Behold!  Instructions:  Get your keester out of bed early and take the metro to Placa d’Espanya, where you’ll find the R5 train section.  Or get lost…like Jo did.  There, you’ll find a bunch of ticket machines for the R5 line to Manresa.  Let it be known they do not take credit cards.  It asked for a pin, and even though Jo had set up a pin for her credit card, still no dice. You have to use a debit card.

After Jo bitch slapped the machine, cursing technology and ranting about Skynet rising up against the humans, she realized it just didn’t take credit cards.  Valuable lesson #52 learned.

At the ticket machine, they have multiple packages for Montserrat.  We picked the package called “cremallera,” which includes the R5 ticket, ticket for the cremallera (aka rack railway aka funicular), the audiovisual segment, and the Santa Cova and Sant Joan funiculars on the mountain (all round trips).

You can pick the sky/cable car package, too, but Jo went with the rack railway so I would be more comfortable.  Our total was around 30 euros.  Dogs are allowed on the train, rack railway, and funiculars, although I was asked to don my muzzle on the rack railway (and Jo joked that I looked like Hannibal Lecter).  So feel free to bring your furry friend!

The R5 to Manresa leaves about every hour (we missed the first one thanks to Jo getting lost but caught the 8:30 a.m. one).  This train putters along for about an hour, with some pretty cool views of the city and countryside, including the lovely older gentleman we saw shuffling through his garden in a Speedo.

You’ll get off at the Monistrol de Montserrat stop and catch the rack railway on the same platform, which meanders up the mountain right to the monastery (about a 20-minute ride, I think).

Get out, inhale that fresh mountain air, and take in the views.  Feel free to let your mind and your paws wander.  We sure did.  I don’t know about Jo, but I found it difficult to process the vastness of what I was seeing.  We hiked for hours!  At the end of the day, when Jo was ready to leave, I think, perhaps, I could’ve stayed a while longer.

An. Amazing. Day.

*Relaxing on the funicular

*This puts the FUN in funicular!

Up Next:  Barcelona Hodgepodge!