pimp my basilica

None of this ascetic humility nonsense for the monks of Montserrat: they want Jesus to know how much they like him by saying it with glistening baublery. Unless, of course, the gold and silver thuribles are just investments to keep the Lord's cash safe until He returns and to keep it out of the hands of the monks to prevent Temptation, though there's nothing much in their gift shop anyone would want to buy. There was a fairly ostentatiously hideous altar heavily bejewellèd with garish shininess and topped by a fairly grim Madonna statuette which people were actually queueing up to kiss, potentially spreading cold-sores and other fun mouth-germs with their co-believers.

Away from the nasty gaudy bits, much of the main building was very pleasant if you stayed in the shadows and filtered out the tourist-noise including the clankings of the funicular and the cable-car. The massive stoniness of the monastery-bit was nicely offset by the slightly smaller-scale support buildings, both lavishly mocked by the dull modernity of the modern hotel-type thing and the gift shop and museum complex which we only went in to try and find a sandwich as we'd left too early to get any breakfast other than a couple of bottles of water from the only open shop I could find in fifteen minutes' running around the Plaça d'España before catching the train. There's a nice big walk along the side of the cliff, mostly consisting of nice greenery to shelter under, lizards and preying mantises to spot next to the path, rocks to scuttle over and so on but occasionally dotted with religious stuff like crosses, small locked-up churchy-things and other small buildings. Definitely worth a day's visit, though it must be horrendously busy during busier periods and also massively horribly warmer. In October on the exposed and windy side of the mountains it was just about tolerable, though in the late afternoon the sun buggered off behind some of the peaks making it nice and cool. One mildly fun object was an unsupported staircase of large stone blocks leading nowhere in particular and positioned right at the edge of a little parapet overlooking the channel through which the railway and cable cars approach. Sitting on a 4' by 8' surface above a very large drop whilst a reasonably gusty wind blows makes you very aware of the contents of your bags and pockets. Unfortunately it was probably designed and built to attempt to make people think they were aware of something else.