We had a private tour booked with Barcelona Day Tours to take us up to Montserrat and to a cava winery.

We were picked up bang on time by our driver, who firstly took us on a brief tour of the city to show us a few attractions that we hadn’t already seen, including more Gaudi architecture and Camp Nou.

After that we headed to Montserrat which was around an hour’s drive.  We had a couple of photo op stops along the way.

Once we reached the monastery we were a little disappointed to find that the cable car wasn’t running due to high winds.  We ended up spending time in the private Art Gallery which had an amazing collection of art from extremely well-known artists, so it was time well spent.

We spent some time in the Monastery itself and were lucky enough to hear the choir boys singing.  We saw the famous Black Madonna from a distance, but chose not to join the huge queues to see her up close.

Our driver then took us to a local inn for their menu del dia for lunch.  G tried grilled spring onions which were quite amazing whilst I had Catalan meatballs.  We both had crème Catalan for dessert.

The afternoon was spent touring and tasting at Art Cava winery.

After our return to Barcelona, we were still full of lunch so we had tapas for dinner at Txapela, around the corner from our hotel.  Had a fun time with Barcelona playing soccer on the TV.  We are not soccer fans particularly, but it was good to watch.  The funny part was that we asked the bartenders who Barcelona was playing.  They had no idea and the question got asked all around the bar, no one had a clue only that it was Barcelona playing (and beating) another team.  We also had a lovely chat with a French couple.  We had little French and they had little English, but we still managed an enjoyable conversation with the aid of Google Translate!