Wed Feb 21 Barcelona

 Today was a visit to the monastery/church Mont Serrat. “ serrat” means serrated, and it refers to the mountains where the monastery is. I think in France or Switzerland, they referred to this type as Les dents.  The legend is that the Virgin Mary appeared to someone who then later looked in a cave, and found a statue of the black Madonna. It was called the black Madonna because the statue had turned black, and there were different theories about why that happened. But anyway, they eventually decided they needed to build a church and a monastery, because this was a sacred place. It’s up in the mountains about an hour’s drive. (I know, I’m not giving the full Wikipedia explanation of this place; it’s just off the top of my head).😉 (pix are from there )

Anyway, it was a beautiful church and they had wonderful videos telling about the monastery. It is still a working monastery with about 70 monks living there. They also have a boys’ boarding school and a boys’ choir and we heard a recording of them. Quite impressive.

In the afternoon we went to a fantastic tapas restaurant where Merle had gone about 10 years before. Tellar tapas, in the old town. She had saved their business card and wanted to return. Well, it was excellent! There is a method of cooking eggplant, which is fried in bite-size pieces, and a bit of honey is drizzled over the top. We had had it previously and had it again today. Our other tapas were shrimp, hummus, &  tomato toast. Quite yummy.  

 we left our group and hotel, to go to the apartment that Merle had rented. Originally two French friends of hers were supposed to come down to meet us so she rented a three bedroom apartment. Unfortunately, several weeks ago they had to cancel due to health. So we were prepared to move to our apartment when she got a message from the rental fellow, that he needed to move us to a different apartment. The new one is in quite a posh part of town. That point  was reinforced when our cab turned down the street where Tiffany’s and Chanel were on the corners. He did not charge us extra for the upgrade /change. So we met with the rental guy ( Who remembered her from a previous rental 10 years )  who told us how to work everything. Before we entered the building, he told us the elevator was broken, and that we were on the third floor. Merle and I could not carry our heavy bags and then we discovered that it really is the fourth floor like in France. The ground floor is one and the first floor is one level up. Zut alors!  It was quite a challenge to get up with our bags. He carried the heavy ones, but when we leave, we have to take them down. Ugh

  ( PS— later Merle counted those steps, and there were 96!!!!)

The apt:

https://www.bizflats.com/dandi-eixample.html#quote

The first thing I wanted to do with some laundry. And of course, there was no laundry soap. So we had to go downstairs again. Fortunately and there’s a little mini market two doors away. But then the four flights were looming again.

It’s a gorgeous three bedroom two bath apartment.It’s owned by an Englishman who lives in London.  

Our group is having a farewell dinner at a restaurant near the hotel so we will have to take a taxi back there at 8 o’clock tonight. It is all part of the adventure, right?

I will stop and post this now so that I can get ready for going back out again. 

😄