As much as we've traveled since we arrived at school, we really haven't done much in Spain at all. Well, we took advantage of some great weather to visit Montserrat in a Saturday. Montserrat is not far at all from Barcelona, about one hour max on the train. That is if you get it right! Our journey there was eventful, and it ended up taking closer to three hours to get there! First, we got to the train station in Barcelona and had to sprint down the stairs to get on the train before the doors closed. Well, just as I (Alastair) jumped through the doors, they closed with Lain and Emre on the outside. An awkward look out the window ensued, and the train left the station. No biggie, I thought, it'll put us back a bit but I'll sort this out. I grabbed my phone to call Lain to plan and no answer. Lain's phone was in my backpack! I sat on the train hoping that they would just sit and wait at the platform for me to get back. Well, after a frantic dash through the Catalunya station and train change, it turned out that they were there waiting. After reuniting and giving Lain her phone I realized I wasn't even on the right train!
Anyways, we took a train to a town about halfway, where we had about 45 minutes to kill before getting on the last train to Montserrat. We ran to the grocery store to get some snacks for our hike and on our way back to the station we grabbed a kebab. The store owner tried to upsell me to get fries and a drink. I asked how long it would take and he said 5 minutes max. Not bad because we had about 8 mins to get to the station. As the minutes wore on I realized this was a Spanish 5 minutes. I told the guy that the train wasn't going to wait for me. He ignored me. I got really annoyed, and of course, we missed our train, putting us back another hour!
Ah well, at least the weather was fantastic. We finally arrived in Montserrat about the time we expected to be half done! We decided to take a train up to the top instead of hiking, which turned out to be a great choice! The mountain was really impressive, really strange rock shapes, unlike anything we've ever seen. We walked around the monastery area which was quite pretty and then started hiking down. The main reason I was excited for Montserrat wasn't Montserrat itself but the hikes around, so we were really happy going down the mountain trails. Emre did really well too, only needing to be carried every now and then. The hike seemed quite long, but it was great to be out in what seemed like the countryside. We love Barcelona, and it has mountains and hiking and stuff, but it was great to know you are a little further away from shops and stuff and be surrounded by fields and mountains and stuff like that! Maybe next time I'll come back to run the trails!