Two summers ago I met two girls while vacationing in Barcelona, Spain. One of them, Leidy, is from Holland and the other one, Mina, is from Igualada, Spain. When I returned to Barcelona last summer these two girls were still living around the Barcelona area. One weekend they offered to take me to Mina's home town, Igualada. This town is about 25 minutes outside Barcelona by car. It is located in the Catalunya region of Spain. While I was in Igualada for the weekend nobody spoke English. In fact, nobody in this small town even talked Spainish. Everybody in this town talked Catalan. It is a mix of Spanish and French. I could not understand anything anybody was saying the whole weekend, but I still had a great great time meeting all of Mina's friends and family.
One thing that we did while we were in Igualada was take a day trip to Monserrat. I had never even heard of Montserrat. So I was excited to to hear that Mina was going to take me to one of the most famous sites in Catalunya. It is located about 20 minutes away from Igualada (you can also take a day trip from Barcelona to Monserrat). We woke up at about 8 am on Saturday morning, and the first thing that we did was make lunch to eat on top of Montserrat. Mina, Leidy, and me then met up with 3 other of Mina's friends.
We drove two cars out to Monserrat. There is a parking lot located at the foot of the mountain. Right by the parking lot is where we caught the cable car to the top of Monserrat. It took about 5 minutes in the cable car to get to the top. The cable car made me a little nervous, because of how high we were! The mountain is huge and if the wire snapped we were goners! The mountain has all these ridges up and down it that makes it very unique and cool looking. I have never scene anything like it in my life. There is also a church that was built on top of the mountain called the Benedictine Abbey. Catholics from all over the region come to see the Virgin of Monserrat, which is a statue in the Abbey. I didn't see the statue, because there was a 40 minute line to walk by it, and I was not going to wait that long since I'm not Catholic.
In the back part of the Abbey they have all these candles that are lined up against the wall. You can buy a candle for a euro, and light it, and then you are supposed to say a prayer about anything. It was Mother's Day back in the States so I decided to buy one for my Mom and say a prayer for her!
After walking around the Abbey for awhile we decided to go and eat our lunch at a different section of the mountain. There are so many different paths around the moutain. We could have hiked all day if we wanted too. Since we had gone out the night before, and were pretty tired from staying out too late we only hiked about 30 minutes. We found this litte chapel on a hillside that had some incredible views. We decided it was as good of place as any to have the lunch that we made a Mina's. We ate a pretty typical Catalan lunch. It was some type of spicey sausage and cheese on a piece of bread that had olive oil on it. It was a pretty good sandwhich. 
By the time we hiked back to where we started we were all pretty worn out. We had spent about 4 hours at Monserrat. That is about all the time you need to see everything that is up there. I know that if I had not met Mina and Leidy the summer before I probably would have never had this experience at Monserrat and in Igualada. My favorite part of traveling is meeting new people and experiencing their culture. They were great tour guides, and hopefully I get a chance to go back to Barcelona to hang out with them again!
