Montserrat

Okay, so the cruise was fabulous and all, but one thing that really annoyed us was that Royal Caribbean told us not to book our flights home before a certain time in the afternoon on the day the cruise returned to Barcelona. We thought that was because we wouldn't be back in time, but really we got in before 7am and they just wanted everyone to sign up for one last tour. We didn't know this ahead of time so our flight wasn't until 8pm so we were suckered into a tour on the last day. I'm sure we would've enjoyed it much more if it hadn't meant that our journey home would be something in the neighborhood of 38 hours.

I'll try to stop whining now and just tell you about our visit to Montserrat. We left the ship and drove through the center of Barcelona and then north through villages and beautiful countryside on our way to the Montserrat Mountain Range. Our guide took us through the Monastery and the 16th century Renaissance Basilica. After waiting in a super duper long line we saw La Moreneta, also known as the Black Madonna. We waited forever (did I already mention that?) and then when we got to the viewing room we weren't even allowed to stop, we just had to walk on through.

Some people believe the statue was carved in Jerusalem in the early days of the church. It's made from wood and dates to about the 12th century. The statue was discovered and apparently the Benedictine monks who tried to move it were unsuccessful, so the monastery was built around it. I was looking online a little bit to try to find out why this Black Madonna is so important and discovered that there are black Madonnas in 13 European countries. I thought there was just one. I guess I'm not up to date on my Catholic studies.

It was nice to enjoy the countryside of Catalunya before returning to the airport for our journey home. The view from atop the mountain was beautiful and offered a different perspective of Spain than we'd had in the cities.