Excursions

On Friday we had a group excursion to Freixenet, this beautiful winery up in the mountains. Freixenet makes wine and Cava, the Catalunya version of Champagne. Of course it's called Cava because you know the French, nobody can use the word Champagne but them. Normally at this point in the post I would insert a nice phrase or two bashing the French, as to provide some comic relief. However, this one time I shall abstain from doing so, as my dear friend Sophie is from France and has informed me that she reads my blog. Thus, I'll abstain from bashing her countrymen just this one time. I can't wait to spend Christmas in Paris!

Anyway, back to discussing the photo. We had a tour of the winery and the guide took us a few stories underground where they age the wine and cava. It smelled glorious and I made a mental note that I wouldn't mind being buried there.

When we left Freixenet it was only about 11:30am and I was one of about 35 American students, tipsy from having one glass of Cava so early in the day. That's just what happens when your Blackberry wakes you up late from a dead man's sleep and you decide that descaling your new cafetera and straightening your hair is more important than eating breakfast. It doesn't matter because you'll be going to the winery later in the afternoon, you figure, and by then you'll have already eaten something anyway. Yes, you have it all figured out and then a cup of coffee and one glass of Cava later disequilibrium asserts its existence, declaring that you were indeed wrong. Nonetheless, we continued onward to Monserrat, a huge mountain in Barcelona that a lot of people hike. For lack of a better description, it was gorgeous.

Pilar suggested that we visit the church at Monserrat at 1pm to see the children's choir sing. So we did. I took a picture in the church because it was neat in all its Catholic gaudiness. I'm probably going to go to hell for taking that photo, and if not for that, for using gaudy and Catholic in the same sentence, but really that's a small price to pay for The Inferno. I'm not so sure that it's that easy to acquire invitations to the eternal night club anyway. I might have to be a Jew residing in Spain too...

We kept climbing. The sky was unbelievably blue and there was a nice breeze. Fresh air. No smoke. No noise. Just us and this old church.

I was on top of the world, or at least Barcelona.