hat a day. We had an early breakfast before heading to Montserrat in the morning, a monestary at the top of a large mountain. It was really nice to get away from the yucky Barcelona cigarette-laden air. We were able to breathe the fresh air before it floated down to the city and got sucked into cigarettes. I am more than ever, grateful for California smoking laws.

We then took the train back to Barcelona, and hopped on the metro to see La Sagrada Familia. I’ve seen it before in my art history textbooks, but it took my breath away when I saw it in person. I was awestruck by it’s sheer size – and it’s not even done yet! Being Spain, they’re taking their sweet time with it so it won’t be done until I’m old and grey. I would love to come back in a wheelchair just to see it again.

We wandered all over town for the rest of the day, had dinner, and then passed out. I’ll stop talking now since there’s so much more. I think this is my longest post!

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See: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Riding the Aeri de Montserrat

To get to Montserrat, we took a one hour train ride that went from Barcelona south down the coast of Spain, which dropped us off at the base of the mountain. From there, there are two ways to get to the top: there’s the more scenic route with the Aeri, which is a cable car suspended in the air, and the train, which runs practically vertically up the mountain. We took the cable car ride. It can look scary to some, but it was really nice.

The tiny yellow ball can hold a lot of people! The views were amazing. Skip the mountain train – this is definitely the way to go.

How the cables look from the station at the base of the mountain.

There’s the shadow of the little yellow ball.

Hellooooo gorgeous. I’ll take a house on this mountain any day.

The Aeri ran really close to the mountain when we got to the top.

Montserrat

Left: How they built this town at the top of the mountain is beyond me. Right: The outside of the cathedral. The cathedral was a mismatch of different parts – some looked ancient, other things like the façade of the cathedral, looks fairly new.

It was surprising to see such dramatic mountains in Spain; Barcelona and Madrid are both flat.

We planned on getting here in the morning so we could hear the boys choir at noon (supposedly one of the oldest in Europe), but it took much longer to get here since the transportation was so confusing. We were lucky though, we caught the right train, and the first cable car ride, to hear the boys choir right when we power walked from the train station to the cathedral. It was so cool! I’ve never heard a boys choir in person, and it was all the more magical in this cathedral.

The Santa Maria de Montserrat, taken from the back of. The style is very old and ornate, but it looked like much of it was built recently. Either way, this is a working monestary, which is probably why it’s in such pristine condition.

There was a line going from the back of the church on the right side, that led up to the center where that doorway is. There was a priest there to bless people with holy water.

Through camera magic, the cathedral looks very bright; it was actually very dim inside. The detail is extraordinary.

My favorite part was the ceiling, which was (freshly?) painted yellow and blue. The edges of the entire interior was gilded in gold.

Left: It seems like most of these monasteries have an in-house bakery. I didn’t buy any pastries here, but I bought some from other monestaries at a market in Barcelona for some friends and family back home, and the are soooo delicious. Right: One of the hallways at the cathedral. Again, the designs are done in the old style, but have a modern twist to it. Very unique.

Earlier that morning, we bought sandwiches at a local deli to bring with us to Montserrat. There’s a large cafeteria there for tourists, but I liked our idea way better, especially since the weather was gorgeous.

Mike, super hungry and excited to find sandwiches in his backpack.

We also bought these funky potato chips. They tasted terribly artificial, but at the same time, less greasy and salty than American chips. If you’ve ever had Asian fish chips before, it’s exactly that – the puffy white stuff you get at restaurants, minus any seafood taste.

Left: Here I am chomping down a sandwich and watching the school kids (photo below) run around, screaming and playing soccer. Right: Salami sandwich, and ham sandwich.

Here are the bajillion school kids, crawing all over what is supposed to be a quiet, serene square in front of the cathedral. I’m telling you, Spanish students get the best field trips. Lucky.

La Sagrada Familia

Left:: The facade depicts different parts of the Bible in incredible detail. The guys you see on there are larger than life-size. From far away, the entire church looks liquid-y; it looks like a giant candle that melted down. Right: I gave up trying to take a photo of the entire church. It’s so big, that I couldn’t get a shot of it, even when I was standing on the opposite side of the street with a wide lens.

They were building this while we were there, chunk by chunk. I bet Gaudi wasn’t expecting cranes to finish it off. I wonder what he would have thought.

This is a model of how it should look when it’s done in 2026. The red line is my best guess to how much we saw.

These house-ish things are on all the corners of the cathedral. You can clearly see the new vs. the old. It’s as if they need to clean the old while building the new to make it look like one uniform piece.

The scenes at the base show Jesus’s birth.

So here’s the other side of the church. We walked by this place twice – the first time we saw one side, thinking that the other side looks the same but it looks completely different. It’s not covered in pollution, and it doesn’t have that candle-melting look. It actually has the opposite feel – sharp edges, clean lines, idealized icons. It was very, very cool.

I’m very curious to know Spain’s reaction to this depiction of Jesus – naked, muscular, and heroic. What did they think of those sci-fi warriors on the bottom left? The woman on the bottom (Mary?) was a little cryptic – she didn’t have a face, and she’s holding a cloth with a picture of Jesus on it – the caved in kind where the eyes follow you wherever you go.

Chillin’ in Barcelona

We saw this can crusher walking back. It’s kind of neat. You stick a can in the hole and push down the lever to squish it. “Damm” is the label of their standard beer, which is delicious – much better than our Budwiser/Coors/etc.

Spain is obsessed with Pinocchio, but I’m not sure why. I thought the story was Italian.

Spain doesn’t have that much American food, but right around La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s treasure, is a KFC, McDonald’s, and Dominos. Really. And I didn’t see a lot of American tourists there, either.

Left: The McDonalds has a mosaic wall, done Gaudi style. Right: The universal hamburger – “El Mac”. Their quarter pounder is called “The Royal”, since they go by metric. Their food looks better. I’ve eaten at just as many American McDonald’s as ones overseas, the one ones overseas are always better (except Britain). Spanish and Greek McDonalds have curry sauce, and Japan has wasabi and green tea ice cream…mrmm.

They have a two story Kentucky Fried Chicken FACING La Sagrada Familia. Gaudi must be rolling in his grave. I caught Mike going in. I think he was tired of Spanish food by day one.

We wandered into this bakery nearby where we met an animated lady behind the counter, who was not concerened about her broken English, or my broken Spanish. I loved it.

They had a collection of marzipan pastries at the front; we bought a coconut, strawberry, pine nut, and chocolate flavor. Their marzipan isn’t the super sticky sweet stuff we have here, its milder and has only the slightest hint of sugar. I wish I bought a box of it.

Doughnuts are surprisingly popular there, they had these small donuts, as well as a MegaDonut.

They may have American fast food places there, but there’s hardly any Starbucks. The coffee there is soooo good. Oh and another thing – they don’t have any disposable cups or plates behind the counter. When you get something to eat in Spain, you have to sit down and eat it like normal people. The custom when you go into a cafe is you go up to the bar to order, seat yourself, and ask for the bill at the end. I think this is because the Spanish eat while they talk, and they finish eating when they…finish eating.

The Market

Lucky them! The Spanish have a farmer’s market everyday. They sell cut up vegetables, like cabbage, by the pound. I wish we did that here – I can’t finish certain things, like a whole head of cabbage.

Barcelona has lots of fresh seafood. Yum.

Oh my god, and the HAM. Jamón Ibérico is Spain’s blood and pride. Every single – and I really do mean, every single cheap cafe to high-end restaurant had ham prepared in every way imaginable. Their ham is not the homogenized pink stuff we have here, it’s more like Italian proscuitto, smoke and cured. The really expensive stuff is served at nice restaurants – we once saw a man order a plate of sliced ham, and eat it plain, with a fork. The ham is good, but only after two days of eating it. We didn’t want to see another slice of ham when we got back home.

Forget wall art – almost every Spanish restaurant, deli, and cafe had ham legs hanging up on the wall. For being sort-of-vegetarian, I wasn’t grossed out by any of this stuff.

We saw a lot of these metal contraptions in Spain. Restaurants will gladly display this at the front of the restaurant to show their meat is freshly carved. Mike didn’t want any more ham after he saw this. (I on the other hand – was more curious to try it).

Left: Salami and fish roe are also popular in Spain. You’d think with Barcelona being close to the ocean, they’d be eating fresh seafood everyday. But I don’t think they do . A lot of places serve canned or preserved fish. I think it could be a traditional thing (recipes pre-refrigeration). Right: You don’t see a lot of female butchers in America, but almost all the butchers at this market were women – although, not necessarily as uhm…hefty as she is.

Leg with little meat on it vs. leg with all the meat and fat still attached. I hope they cut off all that fat.

Right: We kept seeing these melons there. I’m not sure what they are but they looked good.

Dinner on the Passeig de Gràcia

We had dinner at a nice restaurant on Passeig de Gràcia. It was good, but not great. And crazy expensive (a glass of water was $5, but then again water costs more than anything else in Spain).

They gave us bread and olives to start with. The olives I had in Spain were the best olives I’ve ever had.

Deep fried artichokes for appetizer. It wasn’t as good as it sounds. It tasted like fried “stuff”, and had little to no artichoke flavor.

This place had a whole wall with shelves that held bottles of this apple cider so we decided to try some. It was gross. It didn’t taste like apple, or cider, or beer. I’m not sure what it was.

Mike is the smarter one so he always order something he’s familiar with. He ordered a Pizza Margarita. I on the other hand, always order the most obscure thing on the menu. I wasn’t sure what I ordered other than there was octopus involved. It turned out to be an octopus salad. It was yummy, but not that different from something I would have in San Francisco.

The table next to us ordered some kind of dish that required a demonstration by two of the waiters. It looked like a medium done steak was cut up and then put in a bed of flaky white stuff (rice? salt? bread crumbs?). Then the other waiter made a vinaigrette and drizzled it on top. The entire restaurant was watching.

Evening

We were SO tired at the end of the day. I mean, look at this post. This was ONE DAY. The last thing we did was go see Gaudi’s La Pedrera. We just goofed around on the street for the rest of the night.

“Don’t move!”. Mike taking a long-exposure photo of me.

Me, ready to crash.

My feet hated me at the end of the day.

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See: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3