Montserrat today!!!

I was way too tired when we had to get up this morning. I really wanted to continue sleeping but at the same time I wanted to go to Montserrat. Stacy and I took the bus to her class, from which I took the metro/train to Montserrat.

Once you get off the train at Montserrat you take a cable car up to the little town where the museum, monastery and beginning of the trails are. It was very similar to a gondola and offered fabulous views of Montserrat and all the surrounding hills and mountains (Spain has so many, I love it).

I made my way to the beginning of the steps and started my climb. It is gorgeous but very treacherous. There are cement steps embedded in the mountain, which are crumbling and when there are railing they are very short, they don't even go up to my waist, and therefore do little for you if you were falling and they are awkward to hold onto because you have to stoop to reach it. It was also really windy so you needed the railings. I thought I was following a specific route but the trail markings (spray paint strips on rocks) kept changing and the signs at junctions were not helpful. So I wondered around and explored some of the different trails then eventually turned back. I was on a loop but I didn't know which way to continue and there were no maps so I didn't want to get lost. In total I hiked for about 2 hours.

I made it back to the base/town a little after 1. I explored the monastery (pretty simple in comparison to Notre Dame on monday). Then I went to a bunch of different viewing points, had some food and made my way back to the cable car to get back down the mountain for a train back to Barcelona. The train made me very sleep but of course I couldn't actually get any real rest.

Then I met Stacy at her school for her psychology class. This was very bad. Her teacher didn't even notice I was there (and there are only about 20 people in the class). Her english is not that great either and she doesn't know how to teach.

After class we briefly met Stacy's parents at their hotel before heading back to the apartment to get ready for the fútbol game.

We were seeing FC Barcelona vs. AD Ceuta at Camp Nou stadium. Even though our seats were pretty high up it was still great and we had a nice view of the whole pitch. FC Barcelona won 5-1. Since AD Ceuta was not that good Barca had their second string in but they put Messi in at the end of the second half to make the crowd happy. The game just made me miss soccer and I really want to go to Olympic/World Cup games (although it will be many years before I can afford those tickets, let alone airfare to get to them).

After the game we squeezed ourselves into the metro with everyone else leaving the game. We didn't make it back to the apartment until 1 so of course we didn't get to bed nearly early enough.