2004 Europe

Diana at the Cordorniu Winery.



May 3 – It’s raining today in Barcelona and it doesn’t look like it’s going be any better in Montserrat. An early start for the tour at 7:45 AM. It’s windy, rainy and very cool (most would call it cold). The first stop was at the Cordorniu Winery, the largest maker of ‘Champaign’ style wine in Spain. Since the French got even more snooty than usual several years ago and said that only their sparkling wine could be called Champaign, the Spanish now call theirs Cava, after the caves in which it’s fermented. The winery opened in 1551 but it wasn’t until 1851 that Senior Raventos married into the family and introduced sparkling wine to Spain. He learned how to make it by working in France. They have 4 levels of caves in which they ferment the cava. We toured parts of all the levels, but since they have almost 18 miles of caves we decided not to see them all. After the tour of the bottling area we had a taste of their ‘Codorniu Cuvee Raventos’ their most traditional cava named in honor of both families. That’s Diana above with the large bottle.



Afterwards we continued to the Montserrat Monastery (below). Founded in 1025, it’s high on the mountain more or less clinging to the side of the hills. It has a beautiful church the highlight of which is the black Madonna and Child. It’s about 60’ off the ground behind the altar. There are stairs that go up behind the altar and about 2 hours worth of people were standing in line for the chance to go up and touch it. The story behind the Madonna is that when the Moors overran Spain the local people hid the Madonna in a cave on Montserrat. After the Muslims were driven from Spain they recovered it and built a shrine to the black Madonna at the site where it was hidden. Eventually the monastery was established and a basilica was built to honor one of the only pre-Moorish Christian artifacts to survive. The black Madonna is in the alcove about half way up the front wall in the bright area with the arch (below). Sorry the picture is a bit blurry. It was fairly dark in the basilica and that shot was handheld with a ½ second shutter speed. Not easy to hold steady for that long a time. The wind was really blowing up on the mountain.



At 1PM the Escola, a boy’s choir, sang two songs with the pipe organ. They only perform five times a year outside the monastery so this was a treat. They are very talented. After the concert we had lunch the monastery. Enchiladas made of ground meat with a very creamy cheese sauce; they were very good (unusual because I’m not usually a fan of enchiladas) for the first course; followed by chicken and French fries with ice cream for desert. Of course there was red wine and bottled water to drink. They served us at tables European style, a large platter of food carried by the waiter, served with a fork and spoon used like tongs.



After lunch we drove through the mountains on the way back to Barcelona. At times the bus was above the clouds. The road was very winding and narrow and that seemed to scare some of the passengers. When we got back to the ship we found out that, due to bad weather, we would not be able to get into Sete, France. It’s a small port with inadequate tugs to handle our ship in the high winds. We are stopping at Marseilles, France instead. Bigger port with better tugs apparently. The water is fairly rough tonight. We’re heading into the rollers this time and occasionally we hit one pretty hard. It’s not really rough by North Atlantic or North Pacific standards, but the ship is moving enough to make you walk carefully.



Well, early start again tomorrow so I’d better get some sleep.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger