Today, we are in Barcelona, Spain.
Stephanie had set our wake up time for 5:30 AM, but I was awake at 5:15 AM, thinking that was the time we had set to wake up this morning and that something had gone wrong with the automated call. Stephanie quickly reminded me that it was set for 5:30 AM, but since I was up, I went ahead and showered, and let Stephanie sleep a little longer. Once we were both ready, we headed up to the buffet for some breakfast. We always try and eat a little more substantial breakfast when we know we will be on the go all day, the lighter breakfast does not go far when we are walking a lot.
It was still dark outside this morning as we entered the large harbor in Barcelona, and proceeded to our berth at the cruise terminal. There was another ship arriving after us, and two ships were already tied up along the pier. We were scheduled to arrive at 7:00 AM, but we were still easing up to the dock at that time, so we knew we would be getting off the ship a little later than anticipated.
We are going to Montserrat today, about an hour’s train ride from the city center. We were all set to take the public T3 Porto Bus, but found out that it did not start operation until 8:00 AM, which was very convenient for both Princess and one of the tour operators here. Princess had set up a paid shuttle service using the tour operator and their buses. We had heard announcements yesterday about advance purchase of the shuttle bus tickets, but had thought the Porto Bus would be in operation early in the morning. It was difficult to get accurate information on the Porto Bus schedule, it was only running “when ships are in Barcelona”, but there was not much more detail than that online.
Of course, Princess was charging double the price of the Porto Bus tickets using their shuttle service, but it was supposed to start running at 7:30 AM, still early enough for us to try and make the train connections we wanted to Montserrat. We purchased our two tickets and got on the bus. There were only a few other people on the bus, and for a while, we thought they were going to wait until it was full to depart. However, at 7:45 AM, ot left and we headed out of the port toward the city center.
We were dropped off in a similar location as the Porto Bus, so that made our plan still valid for getting to the nearest Metro station to ride to the Placa Espanya Train Station, and catch the R5 train to Montserrat. We purchased two metro tickets from the automated machines and rode three stops to the train station. It was a little difficult to find the R5 train platform, but eventually, we saw some signs for Montserrat, and then found the automated machines to purchase our round trip combo train and cable car tickets. There is both a cable car and cog rail line to access Montserrat, and you had to choose which method you were using for the combo ticket. There was also a separate train stop for each of those two options on the R5 train route.
We were able to make the 8:16 AM train by about four minutes. The train was only five cars long, and was fairly full. The distance to Montserrat is not that far, about 35 kilometers, but the train makes twenty stops, so it was an hour long ride. The train was fairly crowded, so initially, we had to use some fold down seats near the door. However, after a few stops, more people were getting off than on, so we were able to get more comfortable seats.
We got off at the Aeri Montserrat Station, which is the station to access the cable car for the ride to Montserrat, which is built high on a rock formation mountain.
Unfortunately, we did not know that the posted hours had changed and the cable car did not start operating until 9:40 AM, so we had to wait about 25 minutes before it opened. Looking back, we certainly could have taken the Porto Bus instead of the shuttle from Princess, and then taken the 8:36 AM train and arrived just in time for the cable car to open. I am not sure why I did not have accurate information on the opening time for the cable car, but we were here, and did not have to wait that long.
We were in the first group to ride up to the top, which takes about six minutes. The car held 30 persons. Once we got to the top, we saw how crowded it already was on the grounds. It was also very foggy and cloudy, and it did not appear that the sun was coming out anytime soon, which was a disappointment for photos. There is also access by a cog rail, which leaves from the other Montserrat station after the cable car stop, and it is also accessible by road, which we did not know about. A lot of the persons already here were in tour groups from all of the ships in Barcelona today. We did make it there faster than the Princess tours, they got here about 25 minutes after we arrived.
There is a large cathedral there, and it is famous for a Madonna and Child statue (Mary and Jesus) and their faces have turned black over time do to the aging of the wood from candle smoke and other environmental elements. There was a special line to access the area where this statue is kept high above and behind the main altar, but also visible from inside the church.
We waited for one Princess tour group to pass through, and then we had our turn. It was a small passage to access the statue, only one person at a time could walk by. The statue is behind glass for protection, except for one small metal portion that appeared to be a globe of some sorts held by the Madonna’s hand.
On the way out, we passed through a large area of votive candle stands where people could purchase and light prayer candles for special intentions. There were all different sizes and colors of glass for each size candle, it was quite colorful. Next we went inside the cathedral itself and looked around.
We saw a museum entrance, which was also the gift store, so we went inside. The museum was not free so we opted not to go in. We did make one small purchase at the gift store, a replica of the Madonna that we can convert to a Christmas Ornament. There were also some free and very clean restrooms. It was nice to see that there were sufficient restrooms there for all of the people spending the day on tours.
There are several hotels and restaurants there, and one of the favorite things to do here is hiking on some of the trials that are on top of the mountains. We also saw a person climbing the face of the rock cliffs. Some of the trails were quite long, around 7 km, so we did not have time for those. We did walk on one trail out to a lookout on the side of the mountain that is the location of a crucifix. It took us about 25 minutes to walk there, and there were only a few sections of the trail that were steep. It was a great photo spot, so we set up our gear and took some self portraits with the tripod. They would have been nicer with more sunshine, but that was not in the cards for today.
It was quite cool up on the mountain, but we were still pretty sweaty after the climb to the overlook. I have been fighting a head cold for the past couple of days, so I am sure the cool air and sweat were not the best for that.
We headed back down the trail and walked around the area a little more, but decided to go ahead and take the cable car back down to the train station and catch the 12:45 PM train back to Barcelona.
This time, the train was both newer and much longer, probably four times as long, so we had no issues getting seats. We arrived back at the station about an hour later, and caught the Metro back to where we had started this morning.
It is on the famous Las Ramblas street, a large open area that runs between the actual roads, and there are vendors set up there selling just about anything, and there were also quite a few restaurants with outside seating. We walked up to the top end of the long street, looking for the large grocery that we had visited many times on our stay here in 2013. I was looking for some Ricola cough drops, and thought the grocery store might have them. However, it was something that they only sell in the Farmacia, or Pharmacy. It is sometimes hard to figure out which store has what, some items are at the grocery, but some are only available at the Pharmacy. It must be that anything that is classified as medicine, or that is used when sick, like Tylenol for example, is not available at the grocery.
I went to a pharmacy and they only had small cigarette sized boxes of cough drops, nothing like the sizes we can normally purchase at a Walmart, that come in a bag and are individually wrapped. These are just unwrapped inside the small box, sold by weight (50 grams), not a quantity, and they came in about six flavors, all for the small sum of Euro 2.50.
We then walked in a market area off of Las Ramblas, where they were selling all kinds of fresh fruits, hams and fresh seafood. It was crowded but very colorful. The entire Las Ramblas area was really crowded, probably due to the number of ships here today. We got tired of fighting the crowds, so we walked back to the shuttle bus stop, and once the bus was full, we returned to the ship.
After going through security, we headed back to the cabin, dropped off our gear, and headed out for a small lunch. We then went to the Vines bar for some white wine and worked on typing up the blog for yesterday’s adventure in Toulon.
Close to the time for the ship to depart, the Captain came on the PA system and announced we were going to be late leaving, we were still waiting on two buses of tour groups from the ship’s excursions that were running late.
After Vines, we went up to Bellini’s to see Nemo, our favorite bartender. We ran into a couple that we had met last night and sat with them for a while at Bellini’s. Neither of us had eaten dinner yet, so we all went to the Buffet and ate together. Afterward, we went back to Bellini’s for a nightcap, and then retired for the evening. We have completed all of the stops for this cruise, except for the last stop four days from now in the Azores. We are looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow, and just taking it easy after being on the go and getting up early for the past seven days.
We hope to start adding photos to the posts that we have written, and also to the photo albums. We will have a lot more time for this on the ship during our days at sea. Plus, we have not been doing a lot of proofreading, just trying to get caught up. I know there are a lot of typos that we need to correct.