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.

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!

News

I look at the headlines of US newspapers and sometimes listen to headlines, but I was curious about following the local news.  I had found Spain's news in English which felt more like ex-pat news and not so local.

I looked for a Barcelona newspaper and found ara.cat, which is in Catalan (and also elperiodico.com, which is in Spanish).

That's how I learned about the fire burning in the hills between our town and Barcelona.  I went to our balcony and there it was.

I felt the sense of impending doom as I do in L.A., but I never smelled the smoke and when I came back from errands I could no longer see any signs of fire.  I hope everyone is safe!