Monday, January 20, 2014

Barcelona Day 7: Hiking and Parkour Barcelona


Today was mostly free time, which was a nice, relaxing thing after the big, busy day yesterday. After breakfast at the hotel we boarded the bus and went back to Manresa to see the famous Benedictine abbey, Monistrol de Montserrat, which was famous for its black-skinned Virgin Mary and its beautiful abbey built in a remote location at the top of a mountain. We took many lovely photographs of the views from up there, both on the way to and from the mountain by bus. After a relatively short tour of the abbey itself, we had a few hours to wander around, which we used to do a little bit of parkour, but mostly to hike around the mountain itself, which was both tiring and fun, and parts of it a little freaky when you could see how far down you'd fall if you slipped and fell off the cliff. I mean, there were rails at the highest parts, but not everywhere was overrun in precautionary installations, which I actually kind of liked because they seemed to trust people not to be idiots. It was a fun mountain to hike around, and we took a cable car to and from the start of the trails.

Back on the bus, we headed to Barcelona once more for lunch and free time in the city center again. Bobby and I used this time to do parkour. We never got a real response from parkour people in Barcelona, so we just wandered around on our own, and visited some spots we'd written down earlier from just driving around and noticing them, and also looking at hotspot maps online to figure out what there was around. We found quite a few nice spots for parkour and spent the afternoon jumping around and getting some decent footage, which Bobby plans on making into a video later. We had pizza and crepes for lunch at some point after training, and then met up with the group to have dinner at another seaside restaurant. We had the usual tuna/potatoe ball and bread with tomatoes on it for appetizers, and supper itself was chicken and something else I don't remember...I also don't remember dessert. We were in one of those outdoor tent things again, and there were people trying to get our attention through the clear walls to sell shit, like flowers and hats. They were relentless and rather annoying. There was also a guy singing and playing accordion, which some of the people at the other tables invited in to entertain them, but I'm not sure they realized that they had to give him money now. Our table largely ignored him, because we didn't ask for him to come by, and honestly didn't want to bother. After returning to the hotel, Bobby and I went out to do some parkour after dark in the areas surrounding the hotel and then went for a nice moonlit walk on the beach on our last day in Barcelona.

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