July 14th Spain: Mont Serrat

On the morning of the 14th we got up to say good bye to Barcelona and headed off to see the Mont Serrat. Here are a last few shots of some Barcelona architecture on the way out of town. 

 

From there we hit the winding mountain roads up to the once secluded monastery and hermitages of the monks.

The old Abbey and Basilica are located in the very beautiful natural park surrounding the mountain giving a beautiful feast for the eyes everywhere one looks. It was really unfortunate we had such a short amount of time here as it would have been wonderful to have spent more time seeing the small town and the surrounding natural park.

If you look closely at the picture of the mountain on the right above it almost looks as if there are faces in the rocks. These portrait-like mountain sides were everywhere.

Here above you can see the front side of the Basilica and below the front side.

Here are more of those faces in the rocks if you look closely enough.

Along the monk path were many statues created in the 1800s during the revival of Catholicism in Spain.

This cave is supposedly were the black Mary appeared to the monks, now an alter and church it is a common pilgrimiage for many Christians. I always knew religion was a huge aspect of European life particularly in the region I am in, but you really don't begin to understand just how much a part of life it really was until your actually here and almost every historical site is connected to religion in one way or another.

Here is my awesome beetle friend he was huge!

Here was our first glimpse of the Hermitage high up on the mountain. Advertised as being one of the finest in Europe.  

Here is the dark silhouette of my dad up at the hermitage with just about all of Spain behind him. Sorry its so dark I'll have to edit it later and re post on Facebook for him!

Ok, your probably wondering why all the pictures of the lamps. Great question well there was a sign showing that they were all different and all symbolised something, of course it was in Spanish so I can't really tell you what but maybe someday I'll look it up. Or you can look it up and tell me about it:)

After spending the greater part of the day at Mont Serrat and eating some deliciously sweet Monk made dark chocolate (my parents didn't like it) we hit the road again for our final stop in Spain, Can Franc. Off the beaten tourist track we headed there on my artist mothers desire to discover old abandoned things. I'll explain more about that in my next post however. Following are some pictures I took out the window on our way to Can Franc (which by the way is in the Pyrenees right up against the French border). Sorry for the poor glare-in-the-window quality of the pictures.