IHOP

No, unfortunately, I have not had pancakes recently, but I thought the title appropriate for what day it is. (hint: I hop, you hop, we all hop, it's leap day!) It's dumb, I know, but I think I'm stuck conjugating verbs for a while and I also have the "I scream, ice cream" song stuck in my head.

Now, back to touristy business, today was a trip about an hour by train outside Barcelona to Montserrat, a monestary up in pink (yes, pink) mountains. It was very cool and nice to get away from the city even if we were being very touristy.

Once again, the day started off with us going to the fruit stand across the street from our hostel and the supermarket around the corner. Then, we took the metro to Place Espanya (with a 'y' because it's Catalan), got tickets, and hopped on the R7 (I think) to Montserrat. When we arrived, it was with lots of Dutch tourists and a few German couples and we all bonded going up the mountain in the tiny cable car; which, by the way, was only supposed to have 42 people in it and we had 54.... We did make it up though and went straight to the cathedral where the boy's choir was going to perform at noon. We were there at 11:30, so we had excellent seats and the acoustics were amazing. I adore acappella music.

Then, from the cathedral, we left the main buildings of the monestary, took a 'furnicular' up the mountain (kind of like a small, sideways train that runs up instead of straight) and went off hiking down many paths and even found a veritable treasure trove of deer pellets - yay. I felt quite french picnicing on top of the mountain with my bread, cheese, and fruit. Around 4, we started heading back down and got back to the train station in time to catch the next train. (We thought we had missed it along with our whole cable car, who were quite angry, and then turns out we didn't.) Unfortunately, the train was so crowded, we had to stand up the entire way back - the. whole. hour. By the time we got back to the hostel, we basically collapsed. waited for dinner time (not until after 9pm unless you're deathly ill or an infant) and ordered pizza. It was quite good and is enabling me to be full enough to go straight to bed anticipating returning to Nantes tomorrow morning.