Monday, October 5, 2015 Montserrat

I must stop writing of yesterday’s adventures (dictating actually, I long ago lost the ability to write or type) and eat my breakfast. After breakfast, we head out the door, destination Montserrat. We take the Metro red line from Navas over to Espanya station, without drama. We’ve become sophisticated subway users and diligent ascensor finders.

Montserrat, or serrated mountain, lies an hour northwest of Barcelona by train. After buying tickets, we catch the FGC train for the hour's ride out to the base of the mountain. From there, we catch the rack train taking us up the mountain to the monastery of Montserrat. We shouldn’t take too much credit for finding the correct train from Espanya since the station has posted 5’ x 8’ signs in English pointing the way to the correct train.

Montserrat, a Benedictine abbey up on a serrated mountain, holds the soul of the Catalan people. Long ago some shepherd children (Catholic mythology always features shepherds or shepherd children) saw lights and heard songs emanating from a cave. Drawn to explore the cave, the children found a wooden statue of Mary buried there. Years in the soil had turned her black. The Church gave the black virgin (La Moreneta) refuge in the abbey.

Exiting the rack train at the busy monastery, we learn that we’ve arrived just in time to hear the fabled boys’ choir sing. We enter the back of the sanctuary, not expecting to see anything over the throng of tourists before us. One of the people in charge decides that as a wheelchair-bound tourist, I need to go to the very front of the church. He moves all the other tourists to the side, allowing Bear, Bird and I to proceed. Our path disappears as soon as we pass, like the ocean filling a temporary void. In the very front of all the people, I have an unobstructed view of the altar, the priests and the choir.

Shortly the boys file out. The boys walk two by two, matched in height. Finding their places, they begin to sing in voices truly angelic. After their song, the priest speaks briefly in Catalan, English and Spanish. Very inclusively, he asks for world peace and invites everyone to pray the Lord’s Prayer together, each in their own tongue. He begins but no one in the audience says anything. I start, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” but Keith shushes me saying that the priest intended silent prayer. I look at the sea of Asian faces surrounding us and wonder how many know the prayer. After all, millions of Asians are Christians.

I notice again and again that the Catholics show special kindness to cripples and go out of their way to help me each and every time. Do they consider me touched by God? I remain awed and grateful. Alternatively, the Roma consider me cursed and take great pains to avoid me, not necessarily a bad thing.

We roll as close as we can to La Moreneta. Housed behind glass up a steep flight of stairs, she’s completely inaccessible to me. I offer my prayers from the bottom of the steps. The church really moves me. If Catholicism were focused solely the veneration of Mary, the best Christianity offers, I could be Catholic. I extend my hand to the Virgin and open my heart.

Leaving her sanctuary, we walk down a Mary way. I light a candle and say a prayer for Irma, my Spanish teacher who enjoys hanging out with nuns, and a blessing for the world. Even now, as I write a month later, I remember the peace that flooded my senses from the holiness of La Moreneta.

Hungry, we begin our restaurant search. We first encounter a massive cafeteria or tourist feeding trough, which does blessedly have an accessible bathroom. A cafeteria employee kindly unlocks the bathroom door for us. I can proudly say that we don’t cave in and eat crap. We exit the trough and continue our search for decent food.

Walking along the road, we find a Hotel Abat Cisneros. The hotel has a most excellent restaurant with an amazing view of the mountain and valley. We slowly enjoy our late lunch. Sated, we leave and walk out all along the cliff as far as we can. We drink in the stunning view as we watch birds fly about the cliff enjoying the uplifting thermals. Keith gives several birds pet names and cheers them on.

We return to the rack train to head down the mountain. Confronted with two trains and little English, we board the train that has people in it. Earlier than scheduled, the train leaves. Oh-oh, wrong train! This one only goes to the parking lot. Booted off, we wait for the correct train to take us about half a kilometer further down the mountain.

Upon reaching the base of the mountain we catch the correct (and only) train back to Barcelona. No one checks out tickets, which we dutifully keep. Aha! Back in Barcelona, at Espanya you can’t exit into the Metro without your tickets. Not wanting to spend the rest of our lives gazing longingly into Espanya, we surrender our prized tickets to the turnstile, which opens. A few acsensores later, we board the red line for Navas and home.

Sunday, October 4, 2015 - El Born

We enjoy breakfast, including some of the ham we bought last night. Today we plan to visit one of MUHBA’s fifteen locations, namely the Barcelona History Museum. Certain we walked right past this Museum when we went to the Picasso Museum Friday, we carefully plot our Metro course. We head over to that part of town, El Born, positive that we know our destination.

Enjoying the morning, we walk around El Born, only to discover that neither of us really knows the History Museum’s location. We end up at a chocolate museum. Whoops! I find chocolate nauseating in the morning. We skip this museum.

Strolling about, we find the old El Born market which has been closed for a long, long time. The city has taken the space and created a free open-air museum. The city dug up the floor in the old market exposing the underlying Roman ruins. Barcelona was originally Barcino, a Roman town settled by Augustus (as in Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus). Barco means boat in Latin. Underneath the market floor lie old Roman shops and residences. Glass pathways allow viewing the street layout from above.

Venturing further in the museum, we discover a remarkable display of Catalan history documenting the independence movement’s first defeat during the war of the Spanish succession. (Brief history moment: The obscenely inbred, multiply disabled Habsburg Charles II aka Charles the Bewitched died without issue, willing his country to the Bourbons, kings of France, sparking the war of Spanish Succession.) The Catalans supported the losing side during this war, namely the English and the Austrians, neither of whom ever did much for the Catalans, a tragic repeated historical theme. Their demands for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness echoed ours, only made a century earlier. Very sad, very moving. The Bourbons exacted horrible revenge as they conquered Barcelona. But why did we (the States), seventy years later, get our own country? What saved us? The French or long supply lines?

After a quick lunch, we roll down to the waterfront to the Maritime Museum, free on Sundays. I know Bear will love this one. We walk through the entire thing! We see lots of models of ships, thrilling the Bear. Using both models and full size replicas, the museum shows the development of different sorts of ships. We see a replica of a medieval rowing galley, and the impressive 60-meter-long royal galley Admirals of the Juan de Austria triumphant in the Battle of Lepanto defeating the Turkish Armada off of Malta. We also check out a surfing exhibit that shows all the places people surf. My mind combines medieval knights and surfers, wondering how quickly the armor clad dudes would sink.

Leaving the Museum, we pass a huge statue of Columbus. I must admit some confusion, as Columbus faces east, into the Mediterranean, but he sailed west. Perhaps he sailed facing backwards, so as not to scare his crew with open waters. Nevertheless, he guards the harbor. We decide to at long last walk up the Ramblas from Chris’ statue to Placa de Cataluyna or Catalan square, a pedestrian walk highly praised by Rick Steves. The Ramblas has wavy brick pavement, its best feature. Bird even likes it; the cobbles elsewhere just shake her to the core.

Despite Rick’s recommendation, the Ramblas forms by far the tackiest, stupidest thing we’ve seen in Barcelona, perhaps in all of Europe. Stalls line the walkway stuffed full of identical cheap crap from China. I can’t report even one thing worth seeing. The Ramblas provides only comic relief and the opportunity to dodge pickpockets.

I wonder if I’m outgrowing Rick Steves, once my hero. Things that he endorses as mega-cool I just find stupid. And I don’t agree with him about his choices in art either. (More about this later.) We stopped staying at his recommended hotels long ago after finding ourselves repeatedly surrounded by Americans, not what we came to Europe to see. With Airbnb we rent flats (kitchens and washing machines) right in the middle of everything, for less money.

We take the Metro home and eat tapas again. We fear that we will soon transform, Kafkaesquely, into two giant tapas.