Photo diary of day trips around Catalonia — Exploiting my free rail ticket
Oct 3rd, 2022 | 10:12 AM
#21
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 8,662
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There's an interesting article in the Washington Post today about the event.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...etition-spain/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...etition-spain/
Oct 19th, 2022 | 08:15 AM
#22
Original Poster
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 113
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Thanks @Maribel for the interesting article! I didn't know so many people were injured. All that action must've happened on Sunday, when the major finalists were doing their castles and did a lot harder structures than what we saw on Saturday. I hope nobody was seriously injured. The Catalan news haven't mentioned any updates about it.
Oct 19th, 2022 | 09:07 AM
#23
Original Poster
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 113
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As promised to rialtogrl, here are my photos for Santa Tecla! I apologise for the long wait. I went to Tarragona on the 23rd of September, almost a month ago, but my house flooded and I wasn't in the mood to be sorting through photos and writing about it.
My visit started a bit earlier in the morning than the main events. I arrived at the station and first headed to Serrallo, the maritime neighbourhood, to see the Museum of Archeology. They've moved it here temporarily while they do construction of some sort in their usual main building.
Old warehouses at Serrallo.
They've put the museum in one of the warehouses at the port. Honestly, it wasn't really worth the visit, and I saw it all in half an hour. It was free for Santa Tecla day though. I assume they have a much larger collection and these small displays here were only temporary, so I might visit again once the main building is open again.
I did, however, see the famous Tarragona ivory doll, found in the Paleochristian cemetery. I'd seen it already in the museum of said cemetery, but didn't know it was so well-known at the time and didn't pay much attention to it. I'm glad I got to see it again from closer (and with better lighting). I wonder which one is the original, if they have her in two museums...
Anyway, I met up with some friends, already hearing fireworks from Serrallo throughout the morning, and we made it to the Town Hall / Roman Circus street shortly after 11am.
View of Tarragona
We got there just in time to see some little fireworks display from "el griu" (the griffin). In Catalan festivals, it's common for each town to have their own fireworks creature. What followed was a procession of beasts...
... what we thought was a giant golden pigeon but, upon seeing the fake dead pigeon in its mouth, we realised it was an eagle...
Some people shooting guns, very noisy!
La cucafera
... a horse, a lion and, finally, the Cucafera, a sharp-toothed monster that opened and closed its mouth with a snap and charged at people. She was actually quite frightening, all things considered. I wouldn't want to meet her in real life!
The gegants arrive!
After the beasts, the giants strolled into the square. There were two shorter ones in front (not pictured here) called Els Negritos ("the black ones"), the blue and green ones are Els gegants Vells (the old giants), and the two in the back are Els gegants Moros (the Moorish giants).
Close-up of one of them
They did a little dance once they reached the front, which mostly means hopping and turning in circles. They've very heavy to pick up.
The stage set up in front of the Town Hall
From then on, the events moved to the stage in front of the Town Hall. They did many dances for the next hour. At first we saw them from the corner, but later I managed to find a spot right in front of the stage. The speakers were very loud though, so despite the better views, I did end up with a headache and decided to move back to my original spot towards the end.
This one was the dance of "els Turcs i Cavallets", the Turcs and the Horses. As is to be expected, there was a danced battle between the two and the Spanish (horses) come out victorious over the turcs. I assume this was about the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, in which Spain participated.
Very enthusiastic bastonets dancers
The bastonets were my favourite. I'm always saying bastonets dancers should put more effort into their performances
Usually it is only children or middle-aged / old people who do it, and they tend to stick to some basic dances without much difficulty. I'd like to see a bastonets revival one day, similar to the castells have gotten.
This group, while their performance was short, did work hard and included some very unique moves, even jumping high in the air at some points!
We did get some semi-castells on this day, too! This was the Valencian dance, the precursor of the Catalan human towers.
They were having fun! (Gypsy's dance)
And the last ones were the Cossis dance. A cossi is a basket, usually used for carrying clothes. It's called that because they have basket-hats.
To end the show, the demons invaded the stage with fire!
They began singing a song to the Mayor, who was standing on the balcony of the building behind them. It was a funny performance with many political jokes...
Unfortunately, it began to rain part-way through. We ran and took shelter inside a store selling empanadas (we ate a couple, while we were there), but it didn't seem to let up. The castellers event was cancelled so we decided to go home and miss out on the rest of the festival. It ended up being a lucky call because, when we were on the train, it started pouring down hard, it seemed like a deluge was upon us. Later that afternoon, we saw on the news that Tarragona wasn't fairing so well:
That was el Serrallo, which I had visited that same morning!
Perhaps I'll have to see Santa Tecla again another year...
My visit started a bit earlier in the morning than the main events. I arrived at the station and first headed to Serrallo, the maritime neighbourhood, to see the Museum of Archeology. They've moved it here temporarily while they do construction of some sort in their usual main building.
Old warehouses at Serrallo.
They've put the museum in one of the warehouses at the port. Honestly, it wasn't really worth the visit, and I saw it all in half an hour. It was free for Santa Tecla day though. I assume they have a much larger collection and these small displays here were only temporary, so I might visit again once the main building is open again.
I did, however, see the famous Tarragona ivory doll, found in the Paleochristian cemetery. I'd seen it already in the museum of said cemetery, but didn't know it was so well-known at the time and didn't pay much attention to it. I'm glad I got to see it again from closer (and with better lighting). I wonder which one is the original, if they have her in two museums...
Anyway, I met up with some friends, already hearing fireworks from Serrallo throughout the morning, and we made it to the Town Hall / Roman Circus street shortly after 11am.
View of Tarragona
We got there just in time to see some little fireworks display from "el griu" (the griffin). In Catalan festivals, it's common for each town to have their own fireworks creature. What followed was a procession of beasts...
... what we thought was a giant golden pigeon but, upon seeing the fake dead pigeon in its mouth, we realised it was an eagle...
Some people shooting guns, very noisy!
La cucafera
... a horse, a lion and, finally, the Cucafera, a sharp-toothed monster that opened and closed its mouth with a snap and charged at people. She was actually quite frightening, all things considered. I wouldn't want to meet her in real life!
The gegants arrive!
After the beasts, the giants strolled into the square. There were two shorter ones in front (not pictured here) called Els Negritos ("the black ones"), the blue and green ones are Els gegants Vells (the old giants), and the two in the back are Els gegants Moros (the Moorish giants).
Close-up of one of them
They did a little dance once they reached the front, which mostly means hopping and turning in circles. They've very heavy to pick up.
The stage set up in front of the Town Hall
From then on, the events moved to the stage in front of the Town Hall. They did many dances for the next hour. At first we saw them from the corner, but later I managed to find a spot right in front of the stage. The speakers were very loud though, so despite the better views, I did end up with a headache and decided to move back to my original spot towards the end.
This one was the dance of "els Turcs i Cavallets", the Turcs and the Horses. As is to be expected, there was a danced battle between the two and the Spanish (horses) come out victorious over the turcs. I assume this was about the Ottoman–Habsburg wars, in which Spain participated.
Very enthusiastic bastonets dancers
The bastonets were my favourite. I'm always saying bastonets dancers should put more effort into their performances
Usually it is only children or middle-aged / old people who do it, and they tend to stick to some basic dances without much difficulty. I'd like to see a bastonets revival one day, similar to the castells have gotten.This group, while their performance was short, did work hard and included some very unique moves, even jumping high in the air at some points!
We did get some semi-castells on this day, too! This was the Valencian dance, the precursor of the Catalan human towers.
They were having fun! (Gypsy's dance)
And the last ones were the Cossis dance. A cossi is a basket, usually used for carrying clothes. It's called that because they have basket-hats.
To end the show, the demons invaded the stage with fire!
They began singing a song to the Mayor, who was standing on the balcony of the building behind them. It was a funny performance with many political jokes...
Unfortunately, it began to rain part-way through. We ran and took shelter inside a store selling empanadas (we ate a couple, while we were there), but it didn't seem to let up. The castellers event was cancelled so we decided to go home and miss out on the rest of the festival. It ended up being a lucky call because, when we were on the train, it started pouring down hard, it seemed like a deluge was upon us. Later that afternoon, we saw on the news that Tarragona wasn't fairing so well:
That was el Serrallo, which I had visited that same morning!
Perhaps I'll have to see Santa Tecla again another year...
Last edited by Peter_T; Oct 19th, 2022 at 09:17 AM.
Oct 23rd, 2022 | 03:03 AM
#28
Original Poster
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 113
Likes: 0
Neither my mum nor I had been to Montserrat in years, we greatly missed the mountain, so we decided to take a day trip and do a bit of hiking.
The only time I'd taken the aeri ropeway had been my first ever visit, when I was a kid, so we wanted to take it again. It is usually quiet and empty, but there will be a queue if you manage to coincide with the train arrival and the new wave of visitors. That's what happened to us, so we had to wait for the next wagon to come down.
I have some bad fear of heights (though it's gotten better as I get older): the way up was a lot scarier than the way down, however. I spent the journey desperately holding onto the window casing, as if that would save me if the wire broke and we fell to our deaths in the abyss below.
Thankfully, that did not happen, and we reached the monastery in one piece. We didn't stop here though, we wanted to do the walks first, so we took the funicular further up the mountain.
Spot the mountain climber!
We were left at the so-called "pla de les Taràntules", which invoked my other greatest fear: spiders. There were no tarantulas to be seen though, and we started our walk up to Ermita de Sant Joan (a chapel). It was a short walk, no more than 15min or so, along an easy gravel road, with increasingly open views of the lands below as we left behind the trees.
Like most mountain chapels, it was closed, but we got a sneak-peak inside through a hole in the door:
Continuing up a little further, we made it to the top of the world, where there used to be some sleeping quarters for monks. We made our own rock structure to add to the others that were there.
The monks' quarters have since disappeared, but there are some holes in the wall (miniature altars) for putting statues, and what my mum guessed was the cold storage chamber. You can still see some horizontal lines of surviving tiles from where the roof had been.
That was the shortcut up to Santa Magdalena, if you wanted to skip the Ermita de Sant Joan... shorter, perhaps, but not easier!
We continued our walk up, leaving behind the sweeping vistas (for now) and heading into a forested area and then zig-zagging up the mountain. Santa Magdalena is the next chapel to be found, but there are only ruins of a wall left to see, so we went up further, onto the rocks, to see what was up there.
That view was up there, and we sat on the ground to have a picnic lunch. This was the most transited area, apparently, since another group arrived and had their lunch close to us, and then some German tourists walked by, a group of mountain climbers could be seen in front of us and some Eastern European men were on a run up and down the mountain--but terribly lost--.
Spot the mountain climber!
After lunch, we started our walk back down. We reached the "Pla de les Taràntules" again via the circular trail but, since we felt we had hardly done much hiking, we decided to just continuing the walk down rather than taking the funicular.
The monastery in the distance: our destination!
On the way down we could hear a very loud group of teenagers, on the other side of the valley, yelling and laughing. My mum thought they were unusually loud and rude, but I think it's just been a long time since she finished high school...
We stopped to let them get further away and leave us behind without the noise, and meanwhile my mum sang the rampataplam Catalan song, then told me the story of the Timbaler del Bruc. The legend says that, in the war against the French (1808), a boy played the battle drums at Montserrat. The reverberation of the sound was so strong that the French believed the number of Catalan soldiers was much higher than what was true, and fled.
The whole walk took a little over 2h in total. When we reached the bottom, my mum sat down to rest and sent me to look at the gift shop for anything nice to eat. I returned, informing her there was "rock chocolate" with a nice packaging, but she wasn't interested. We filled our bottle up at the fountain there and made our way to the church.
Entry to the church was free. We wanted to go through the back to touch the idol statue and see the architecture from that perspective, but there was such a long line that we quickly abandoned that idea.
Many towns and cities around Catalonia have donated chandelier lamps to Montserrat and can be seen all around the church. I think the originals were lost during the Civil War (don't quote me on that).
We tried to find the one from our city, but it was a bit difficult to appreciate the writing and details of each with the limited lighting.
Anyway, after a walk around the interior, we also stopped by the "candle lane", where people can buy a candle and light it. This is the only thing I remember from my visit to Montserrat as a kid!
We still had time before it got dark, so we also stopped by the underground museum next to the church.
I thought it would be mostly religious relics and the like, but there were many paintings by local Catalan artists. Some paintings featured Montserrat, others were just random Catalan towns or even Paris and other places. The last room had some more modern / abstract art, including some sketches and a painting from Dalí. This one was my mum's favourite, el pati blau by Santiago Rusiñol:
They also had some ancient Egyptian, Cyprian and Mesopotamian artefacts. It seems I didn't need to go to Madrid after all
I really love old Greek lamps. I get excited every time I see them, which is probably a good thing since they seem to be in every museum I visit. There were even some at the small archeology museum I saw during Santa Tecla in Tarragona.
Lots of Mesopotamian writing to be seen. They had these little circular stone-like beads with engravings that were then rolled over a clay surface and left the motif imprinted. There were some very interesting designs.
More Egyptian relics. There wasn't much information in the museum, just some plaques with the name of each item, so I was happy to explain what I'd learnt about the Egyptian things recently in the Archeology Museum in Madrid to my mum.
Another mummy?! They're everywhere!
And with that, hiking, church and museum visit complete, we took the aeri back down the mountain and bid farewell to Montserrat. Who knows when we'll be back! Sometimes the places closest to us remain the least-visited and overlooked, when there's the possibility to go abroad for tourism...
The only time I'd taken the aeri ropeway had been my first ever visit, when I was a kid, so we wanted to take it again. It is usually quiet and empty, but there will be a queue if you manage to coincide with the train arrival and the new wave of visitors. That's what happened to us, so we had to wait for the next wagon to come down.
I have some bad fear of heights (though it's gotten better as I get older): the way up was a lot scarier than the way down, however. I spent the journey desperately holding onto the window casing, as if that would save me if the wire broke and we fell to our deaths in the abyss below.
Thankfully, that did not happen, and we reached the monastery in one piece. We didn't stop here though, we wanted to do the walks first, so we took the funicular further up the mountain.
Spot the mountain climber!
We were left at the so-called "pla de les Taràntules", which invoked my other greatest fear: spiders. There were no tarantulas to be seen though, and we started our walk up to Ermita de Sant Joan (a chapel). It was a short walk, no more than 15min or so, along an easy gravel road, with increasingly open views of the lands below as we left behind the trees.
Like most mountain chapels, it was closed, but we got a sneak-peak inside through a hole in the door:
Continuing up a little further, we made it to the top of the world, where there used to be some sleeping quarters for monks. We made our own rock structure to add to the others that were there.
The monks' quarters have since disappeared, but there are some holes in the wall (miniature altars) for putting statues, and what my mum guessed was the cold storage chamber. You can still see some horizontal lines of surviving tiles from where the roof had been.
That was the shortcut up to Santa Magdalena, if you wanted to skip the Ermita de Sant Joan... shorter, perhaps, but not easier!
We continued our walk up, leaving behind the sweeping vistas (for now) and heading into a forested area and then zig-zagging up the mountain. Santa Magdalena is the next chapel to be found, but there are only ruins of a wall left to see, so we went up further, onto the rocks, to see what was up there.
That view was up there, and we sat on the ground to have a picnic lunch. This was the most transited area, apparently, since another group arrived and had their lunch close to us, and then some German tourists walked by, a group of mountain climbers could be seen in front of us and some Eastern European men were on a run up and down the mountain--but terribly lost--.
Spot the mountain climber!
After lunch, we started our walk back down. We reached the "Pla de les Taràntules" again via the circular trail but, since we felt we had hardly done much hiking, we decided to just continuing the walk down rather than taking the funicular.
The monastery in the distance: our destination!
On the way down we could hear a very loud group of teenagers, on the other side of the valley, yelling and laughing. My mum thought they were unusually loud and rude, but I think it's just been a long time since she finished high school...
We stopped to let them get further away and leave us behind without the noise, and meanwhile my mum sang the rampataplam Catalan song, then told me the story of the Timbaler del Bruc. The legend says that, in the war against the French (1808), a boy played the battle drums at Montserrat. The reverberation of the sound was so strong that the French believed the number of Catalan soldiers was much higher than what was true, and fled.
The whole walk took a little over 2h in total. When we reached the bottom, my mum sat down to rest and sent me to look at the gift shop for anything nice to eat. I returned, informing her there was "rock chocolate" with a nice packaging, but she wasn't interested. We filled our bottle up at the fountain there and made our way to the church.
Entry to the church was free. We wanted to go through the back to touch the idol statue and see the architecture from that perspective, but there was such a long line that we quickly abandoned that idea.
Many towns and cities around Catalonia have donated chandelier lamps to Montserrat and can be seen all around the church. I think the originals were lost during the Civil War (don't quote me on that).
We tried to find the one from our city, but it was a bit difficult to appreciate the writing and details of each with the limited lighting.
Anyway, after a walk around the interior, we also stopped by the "candle lane", where people can buy a candle and light it. This is the only thing I remember from my visit to Montserrat as a kid!
We still had time before it got dark, so we also stopped by the underground museum next to the church.
I thought it would be mostly religious relics and the like, but there were many paintings by local Catalan artists. Some paintings featured Montserrat, others were just random Catalan towns or even Paris and other places. The last room had some more modern / abstract art, including some sketches and a painting from Dalí. This one was my mum's favourite, el pati blau by Santiago Rusiñol:
They also had some ancient Egyptian, Cyprian and Mesopotamian artefacts. It seems I didn't need to go to Madrid after all
I really love old Greek lamps. I get excited every time I see them, which is probably a good thing since they seem to be in every museum I visit. There were even some at the small archeology museum I saw during Santa Tecla in Tarragona.
Lots of Mesopotamian writing to be seen. They had these little circular stone-like beads with engravings that were then rolled over a clay surface and left the motif imprinted. There were some very interesting designs.
More Egyptian relics. There wasn't much information in the museum, just some plaques with the name of each item, so I was happy to explain what I'd learnt about the Egyptian things recently in the Archeology Museum in Madrid to my mum.
Another mummy?! They're everywhere!
And with that, hiking, church and museum visit complete, we took the aeri back down the mountain and bid farewell to Montserrat. Who knows when we'll be back! Sometimes the places closest to us remain the least-visited and overlooked, when there's the possibility to go abroad for tourism...
Last edited by Peter_T; Oct 23rd, 2022 at 03:17 AM.
Oct 23rd, 2022 | 03:24 AM
#29
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Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 113
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Adelaidean and rialtogrl, thank you for continuing to read my report! As mentioned, I'll be in Berlin for a while, so I will park this post until I return in December. I will write about my Berlin travels, hopefully, but I don't know if that will be of interest to the same people.
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