Oft gang awry

The plan Thursday morning was to wake up at 5:45, head to the center of Granada and catch the 6:30 bus to the airport for our flight to Barcelona.

My first thought on waking was "Huh, it's pretty light outside for not being 5:45 yet." It turns out that's because it was 6:30, and we'd slept through my alarm. We managed to dress, pack, strip our beds, leave a note in Spanish explaining where we left our key, and head out the door by 6:45, all without waking our dormmates. Go us! We speed-walked down the hill to the main road, hailed a cab, and made it to the airport at the same time as the bus. Yay!

That main road is called Gran Via de Colon, by the way. I don't think I've mentioned how very much they like Columbus around here. We visited his rather epic grave in Seville, and the graves of Ferdinand and Isabella in Granada. I never understood why they're called the Catholic Monarchs (los Reyes Catolicos) since being Catholic doesn't seem remarkable in the Spanish context, but that's obviously because I didn't understand how long the reconquista took. They were the monarchs who conquered the emirate of Granada and expelled all Jews from Spain. Oh, and started the Inquisition, of course. Catholic, huh?

Montserrat

Every city we've been to in Spain feels like a new country, but the difference between Andalucia and Catalunia is vast. The crowd is very different, too. In Andalucia the other tourists were mostly Spanish, some French, some East Asian, and overwhelmingly young. Here in Montserrat there are tons of Americans, particularly older Americans on bus tours. It's funny how that happens. Once Justin and I passed a resort town in Turkey that was ALL Russian tourists.

Montserrat is a monastery set among a range of weird, Dali-looking rock pillars near Barcelona. (Though of course it's Dali that resembles Montserrat.) Montserrat is known for its black madonna, La Moreneta, who is the patron of Catalunia. We are gradually learning a little Catalan, which seems closer to French than Castillian Spanish; for example, "please" is "si us plau." Today we finally figured out (meaning that Ryan corralled our amused funicular driver into teaching us some Catalan) that x is sh (thus "coche" in Catalan is written "cotxe") but we still haven't totally worked out the dot between l's, as in our hotel, Cel.les Abat Marcel. I think it's to show it's not a double l pronounced y, but then why not write it Celes?

Oh, Montserrat is also known for its choir; it has, apparently, the oldest boys choir school in Europe. Last night we went to vespers, where the boys' choir sang Salwe Regina (the one I remember from Justin and Amanda's music history class, no less). Oh, and there's also a rather stunning museum.

We intended to do some hiking up here -- it was our consolation for not making it to the Picos de Europa as planned -- but since my ankles were alarmingly swollen we've just been taking it easy. Turns out that's also a good choice. We're all rested and ready to hit Barcelona tomorrow! Modernisme, here we come!