Montserrat Mistakes

Montserrat, a monastery high atop this delightful mountain chain, houses the Black Virgin which was found hidden away in a cave nearby. Our first mistake was buying the Catalan railway package which was 50 Euros per person so that you could see everything. But our second mistake--not giving the kids Benadryl and giving them acidic orange juice-- pretty much negated the whole everything part. So remember when I said in a previous post that we motion sickness sufferers love trains? Well, there's a certain class of train we don't love and it wasn't clear from the literature that the train to the foot of Montserrat would be a lurching, swaying train that stopped at every single suburb outside of Barcelona. To make matters worse, we didn't get seats and there were so many people that any sense of looking to the horizon was pretty much lost I felt sick after about 15 minutes and there were still 20 stops to go; Ben was a little sick but not too bad, and Nate seemed fine. After about 30 minutes, though, while I was distracted by my own nausea, Nate suddenly felt awful. So awful that about 45 minutes into the train ride, we had to get off the train...urgently. And Nate threw up in a trash can in some remote mountain suburb of Barcelona. Repeatedly, poor kid. We waited another hour for the next train to the base, which was a better option than taking the 15-odd stops to just go back home. When we finally got to the base we had to take a tiny little train up the steep, steep mountain... Nate (with an empty stomach) made it up the mountain and everyone really enjoyed the view.

When we finally got to the monastery at the top, we got in line to see the Black Virgin right behind at least an hour's worth of very slow, devout pilgrims. Unfortunately, there wasn't any way to get out of line. By the time we saw this relic we didn't care as much as we should have, and we kind of rushed through our moment to view her. Our 3rd mistake.

After lunch we decided we all felt well enough to try one of the funiculars, a super-steep, incredibly-hot tram (kind of a diagonal elevator), this one up to the top of Sant Joan. The peaks offer good hiking trails and even higher panoramas. Note Nate's hands on the window of the bottom funicular cab, just above the vertical drop. Then see how small Montserrat looks in the 4th picture... And yet the Stackler*Williams family thought they should go even higher. Kind of the 4th mistake (though Ed swears the funicular is the 4th for its unbelievably sweaty closeness). We chose the easiest hike but the trail was treacherous with sharp drop-offs to oblivion and slippery stone pathways with no walls/edges. I spent the entire hike with my eyes and hands glued on Ben and Nate so I have no idea how I managed to take the 5th picture here. I do know that Ben lost his DS for a week for running down the edge of the trail afer we gave him numerous warnings. I have a lot of photos in which I'm trying to capture exactly how high up we are on this teeny tiny little trail though none suffice. Montserrat is an inspiring site and one of great respect for pilgrims. But I've never been so glad to get back down off the mountain, including a funicular down, a small train, a big train, and then the Metro home to our apartment.