Life in the Old World: Barcelona Day 2

We decided after getting up so early the previous morning we would sleep in a bit this day. Best decision. I felt like we were in the dorms again because the showers and bathrooms weren't in the rooms. It was close to the beach though so it was worth having to walk out of our room to shower.

For breakfast we headed to the Mercat La Boqueria. (Mercat is the Catalan word for mercado.) Mercat La Boqueria is similar to the one we shop at in Madrid except much bigger and much more touristy. After getting some food for lunch and breakfast we headed to find where to buy our transportation tickets to Montserrat. Montserrat is a very old monastery on the top of a mountain. During the Franco era some monks fled here in order to preserve the Catalunya culture and history. It was impossible for Franco and his men to get to them.

We finally found where to get our tickets. We were in a bit of a rush to get to the metro because we had to take the metro and then a train to get to the cable car ride. The next train was leaving soon so when we got to the metro and saw it was about to leave we ran down the stairs. Ben made it on but barely. His bag almost got clipped off. I was left standing on the other side of the door looking at him asking him "What the heck?!" A lady standing next to him was laughing pretty hard. I waited for the next metro and met up with him at the stop. We had one minute to catch the train. Again we were running through the station but we made it! It was about an hour ride and we met some ladies from Georgia who were on vacation in Barcelona and then off to Madrid.

You could either take a cable car or some sort of little train up the mountain to get to the monastery. We opted for the cable cars. Once we got up there we walked around for a bit and did some hiking up to where an old convent used to be. How those little old nuns got up there in their little nun shoes is beyond me! They must have been some tough old ladies!

Once we got back down we headed down to see the Black Madonna. She was originally carved out of wood and therefore had white skin but the smoke from the candles turned her black over the years. There was a line we had to wait in and as we slowly inched forward there were some kids behind Ben that kept crowding him. He said at one point he was resting his hand on a railing and the boy behind him rested his chin on Ben's forearm! I laughed so hard. At one point I told him I could switch with him but he informed me he was "playing games" with them. I looked at him and he said sometimes he would lift his foot up like he was going to step forward and within half a second one of the kids would have their foot in the empty space left behind and then he would put his foot back down right in the exact same spot. He was cracking me up!

After the Black Madonna we headed back to Barcelona to visit the cathedral and then rest up before meeting a friend for tapas. One of my friends, Nicole, met a boy named Adria through a program that WWU does. They have kept in contact over the years and he and I have spent time together when he has been in the States. So when we decided to go to Barcelona I emailed him to see if we could get together. He took us to a yummy tapas place on the water.

Mercat La Boqueria