John and Lisa Europe: More Monistaries and Towers!

After Corsica, we spent one last night in France in a town called Carcasonne. We had heard it was a nice city and it was on the way to Barcelona so we thought we would check it out. The city itself was not memorable but there was a section of walled old city that was basically a giant castle. We have seen a lot of castles on this trip, so at this point it took a lot to impress us, but we were impressed.

The next day we made an exhausting journey to Barcelona. We had made a rookie mistake of forgetting it was sunday (we had not done this in months) and had not gotten any food the previous day for the journey. The only thing open was McDonalds and a Bakery. I was able to just grab somthing at the bakery, but of course they did not have anything gluten free so Lisa was forced to Micky Ds. On the menu the salad actually looked kind of good, but the real thing consisted of wilted lettus and soggy cheese. Yum. I think it will be another five years before we go back (except to use the free bathrooms.)

We spent two night in Barcelona and saw some tourist attractions like Gaudi`s Segrada Familia, which has been under construction since the 1920s, and a huge fort on a hill overlooking the city. We then made the one hour metro ride to Montserrat, a monistary that is built on a mountain with hundreds of conglomerte pillars. Of course we went for the latter. We were so excited to get there that we didn´t even stop at the hotel, instead we just lugged all our shit to the top (really not that bad as a handy cable car cuts it down to a 10 minute stroll) and locked it to a handrail while we climbed.

Our first day of climbing we did a free standing tower that is supposed to be the "safe" version of montserrat. Even as such, the bolts were generously spaced, up to 40ft apart, so we were glad we started with this tame tower. A solid week of climbing in Corsica had paid off and we were supprised to cruise the route without so much as a hesitation. (this is rare!)

The next day we climbed a five pitch face that was not in this "safe" area, but is was no worse than the climb the previous day. At the end of the day we decicded to climb one more small single pitch tower. This time it did not feel safe. The bolt spacing was similar to the other climbs, but the holds seemed as though they could pull off at any time! Luckily none did, and it was a mental victory getting to the top. Our last day we just did some sport climbing before heading back to Barcelona.

We spent another 2 nights in Barcelona and saw most of what we missed before: Las Ramblas (just a shopping district) and Parc Guell, a park full of Gaudi sculptures and pickpockets. Our favorite part was the bustleing food market in Las Ramblas where we bought a bunch of fruit and some fish for lunch. Our last day we went to the beach where Lisa got a 15 minute massage from one of the many asian women wandering the beach offering "Massagy?" We had sent at least 20 away until we saw somone near us get one and the lady actually knew what she was doing, and it turned out to be only 5 euros!