Honeymoon -- Day 2: Day Trip

(From Brian)
When planning our Honeymoon we had very limited and simple goals - specific travel dates, a wine tasting trip, some spa/massage treatments, beaches, wine and a relaxing time. When our travel agent suggested a specific wine tour I didn't feel the need to check in to her suggestion since it was a recommended option. Long story short - it was a beautiful day trip to areas outside of Barcelona that we were very happy to have experienced, but there was never a drop of wine in sight. We asked for wine tasting and got sight-seeing bus trip to a monastery and a little beach town.

Long story long...we went to Monserrat Monastery which is an active Catholic Monastery with the goal of preserving the Catalonian culture. Monserrat means "razor mountains” in Catalan and there are incredible views. We got a little hiking up to some of the viewpoints (if you go you must go up the Finicular de Joan and take a short hike). Lindsay made in into mass and took communion and we watched the world renowned boys choir. Monserrat is also home to a very exclusive school for boys. While there we also purchased some incredible goat cheese from a street vendor.

One of the many interesting things about Monserrat is that the focus of the 60 monks is to preserve the culture of Catalonia. Catalonia considers itself separate from the rest of Spain and wants to be its own country to keep the Spanish influences out. They have their own language, traditions, dances, etc and actually seem to despise Spain. With the world cup going on I would expect to see a lot of people in Espana jerseys but I have only seen two people wearing them and have not seen any for sale. Meanwhile FC Barcelona gear is everywhere – FC Barcelona is the club soccer team here. Even our tour guide never talked about Spain, only Catalonia. So the monks are charged with the task of making sure that the culture continues to pass down and is not overrun by the much larger non-Catalonian Spain population.

The next stop was the beach city of Sitges which had its own collection of great sights to see (and that is before we even got to the topless beaches). Our tour took us through some of the history of people immigrating to Cuba, setting up very successful businesses and then returning to build modern style mansions. We sat at a restaurant over-looking the beach and sampled sangria and tapas for the first time.