Same place, different time

Last October we explored here and seven months later I am
more confident in my ability to say the name of the stop.

It is a short walk from the station to

the information center and this old house.

There was plenty of green and 

pink,

dark magenta, and

white. Plenty more not shown, including two colors of lilacs!

Imagine that this is a great picture of a Red-billed Leiothrix. I was sorry not see any wild boars. 

I did not see a single tourist so I was surprised to see two signs telling them to go home. Don't all tourists go home? It seems too late to tell them at this point. I suppose logic is not the best weapon.

Another day, another festival

Sant Medir was a farmer living near Sant Cugat in the 4th century CE.  The story is that he was planting beans when the Romans approached him. They asked him about a passing bishop they wanted to catch, he told them truthfully that he had seem him, and then the beans shot up, fully grown.  The Romans took him, captured the bishop, and killed them both.  A longer version of the story is here.

It is traditional to hike to the Sant Medir church, which is where he used to live.

Spring is just starting with lots of trees in bloom and others with their new green leaves.

We did not get to the event in time for the religious ceremony,

and I don't know what this is, but

we did get there in time for the ceremony for people receiving this year's ribbon.

Next up were the dancing giants.

The giant even had his medallion, 

just like this one. 

They were selling quite a variety, each with a bean.

We also got to see the big heads,

the bastoners,

and the castellers.

The final event was the traditional sardana dance.
The orchestra is in the background wearing orange hats.

There are more festivities in Barcelona tonight, but we will pass.

We made the hike back down, enjoying the sights.

Exploring near Swansea - guest post

Sunday I decided to travel out about 10 miles and back by bicycle to a new place and go walking. 

The map shows my cycling route

 This is the region where I went hiking.

This place was one of three suggested to me by my host.  She had encouraged me to take the bus there, but on Sunday busses are not running much, so by doing it on bike I was free to come and go when I wanted.  I checked that there was a small coffee shop/general store there that would be open, so that I could get some warm lunch there if I wanted, and also some advice on where to walk.  The shop was good and I purchased a Sunday Observer (Guardian) for J. there.  They also had a wide selection of other papers and someone who could give me commentary of the political leanings of each.

The ride there was okay, not great, but reasonably direct.  I decided to sit for a light brunch before taking my hike.  The strange thing about the hike was that in this gorgeous place there were not many people, and I was a bit confused if I was supposed to be on a specific path or trail, but the locals I met said you can go all over as long as you don’t cross fences into private property (which I really did not notice at all). 

I enjoyed walking on the green undulated surfaces at the tops of the cliffs, but it was so un-American that there were no guard rails or fences to protect you from walking over the cliff edges!  

My mild fear of heights did kick in as I tried to capture photos of the cliffs.  The terrain was really different as well, just not flat at all, but filled with small craters and hillocks all over.  It was beautiful even if it was not as sunny as the previous two days.  I got some sun, and no rain or bitter cold, so that was fine.  I went down to one of the small cove beaches near where the earth view map has the “Google” label.  There I took off one shoe and dipped a foot in the ocean.  There were caves cut into the cliff and I looked in some of those too.  Then I went up over the cliffs and down to the edge of “Three Cliff Bay” but did not go down to the beach there.  

Then I went up inland to the Castle, and over the Pennard Golf Course.  The castle was more in ruins than I had expected, but still very interesting.  Amazingly, there is no signage with either warnings about climbing, or historical facts at the castle at all, very very different from the US. This is my third castle visit here, and you can read about the castle here,

The other two I have visited which at least had some signage are:

http://www.castlewales.com/swansea.html (this is next to my apartment!)

This one I went to on Saturday on my walk to Mumbles lighthouse and pier along the coast.

The golf course was built up around the castle, so one had to cross it at points.  I learned to play golf in my teens and enjoyed it a little, but this golf course is a completely different experience from the ones I have played on.  I found it much more interesting topographically, and playing here would require significantly different skills than just hitting long straight shots like you try to do on courses I have played on.  You can see this a bit on this website.

All in all a very nice outing for me today, and while I was on my own, I made small conversations with several different folks while I was out and about.

Heading home on a converted railroad track.

Montserrat

 People have written books about Montserrat so it might be hard to put it into a blog post.

Montserrat is part of a mountain range not far from here, named for the rocks
that look serrated, or jagged.  Or even a bit like the Boulder Flatirons.

To get to and from the monastery from the train we could have hiked, taken a rack-rail train, or gone on the cable car, which is what we chose.

This picture was taken from the station while we were waiting to go up.

This was taken inside the cable car on the way down.

Most people think of the monastery of Montserrat, which we were also happy to visit.  

Part of the attraction there is the Virgin of Montserrat, which was carved almost 2000 years ago, hidden away, and later found by shepherds who saw a light coming from the hills, or the cave in which she had been hidden.  It is called a Black Madonna, but scientists think it was lighter when it was carved.  We saw her from afar but chose not to stand in line to get closer or touch her hand.

We did wait in the sanctuary for the end of the service to we could hear a short concert performed by the boys' choir.  A. was amazed that they looked to be his age or younger.

We did not have to wait in line to ride the funicular to the top,

maybe because the views were not so great.

We were still glad to have done the hike, but we might go back when it is clearer.

Another highlight of the day was actually making it there.  The station close to our house did not have a traditional card reader and we didn't know about the secondary one, which meant when we arrived at the station, where we had less than ten minutes to change trains, we couldn't get through because our cards not been authorized.  We got lucky and an employee was found and someone else explained the problem.  Even though we were changing at stations of the same name, it was a bit of a haul to the other platform/station, plus we had to buy tickets, which weren't available at the first station.  With trains running only once an hour we were very lucky to make it before the doors closed!!  A big bonus was finding a place to sit!  It was not so different on the way home (minus finding a place to sit), but it was only after a mad dash from one station to the other that we learned our second train was about fifteen minutes late (of course that is better than the first one being late and the second one on time!).

Great Outdoors, short trip edition

Because of a late night our original pan for the day was not going to work, so we

followed the suggestion of a local and headed to the hills of Parc de Collserola.

Don't ask me how to pronounce it.  We were trying and someone on the train said it for us.
I repeated it.  D. repeated it.  A. repeated.  Excelente, she told him.

The park had a nice metal relief map (with the park being in the center of the picture), but like so many of them they like to have the waterfront looking like it is to the south, but if you look in the upper righthand corner you can see that isn't true.

We didn't get to go into this 18th-century house that was used by the poet Jacint Verdaguer and is now a museum named after him (there are several other places in Barcelona named after him).

We also did not feed the wild boars.
Or see any.

The shape of the park is all over!

We found a quiet place to sit and contemplate.

If we face the right way it looked undisturbed, but there were plenty signs of human visitors, 

some more pleasant than others.

We mostly wandered around, but did make our way

to Font Joana (if you look carefully you an see the name at the top).

Not what we planned, but still a good day!