Today I met up with my cousins Sidney and Sonya in Barcelona. We’ve been planning this trip for a long time.

I started the day in Gava Mar, near Barcelona, and before we met up, went for a walk there, and saw walkers, joggers, bikers, surfers and kids playing at the interesting playground (zip line and rope climbing teepee.

We decided to drive to Montserrat Monastery (we had no preplanned itinerary) which celebrated its 1000th anniversary. Over a century ago. Monks still live at the monastery. It’s set into the Montserrat (saw-toothed mountain) range which is part of the Catalan Pre-Coastal range of mountains, about an hour by car outside of Barcelona. We parked and took a cable car up to the Monastery. We looked at the beautiful church, then took a funicular (a small railway) straight up the mountain, where we hiked for a couple of hours.

There were beautiful views from the top of the mountain in all directions. We walked along a wide pathway for a while, till it narrowed, then up a series of eroded steps that had a rope handle next to them…then the handle ended and we kept going up and saw progressively nicer views. Then we went down which was tricky since the ground was uneven and steep….only to go up again because we were trying to find the top. We eventually figured out that the top was not reachable by us (we did not have rock climbing gear nor ability!)

After returning to the monastery level via funicular and to the parking lot via cable car, we drove to Girona, Spain. We eventually found the hotel where we were to check in, via small narrow nearly all pedestrian streets. We’ll explore it tomorrow, it was dark already upon arrival.