Catalonia & the Pyrenees Best - Discover Spain: Experience the Best of Spain - page 180

mountain. Pilgrims come from far and wide to venerate La Moreneta (The Black Vir-
gin), a 12th-century Romanesque wooden sculpture of Mary with the infant Jesus,
which has been Catalonia's patron since 1881.
From Plaça de Santa Maria you enter the courtyard of the 16th-century basilica
(admission incl La Moreneta €5; 7.30am-8pm Jul-Sep, earlier closing rest of yr) ,
the monastery's church. Follow the signs to the Cambril de la Mare de Déu (
8-10.30am & 12.15-6.30pm) to the right of the main basilica entrance to see the
Black Virgin.
You can explore the mountain above the monastery on a web of paths leading to
some of the peaks and to 13 empty and rather dilapidated hermitages. The Funicu-
lar de Sant Joan (one way/return €4.50/7.20; every 20min 10am-5.40pm Apr-
Oct, 10am-7pm mid-Jul-Aug, 10am-4.30pm Mar & Nov, 11am-4.30pm Dec, closed Jan-
Feb) will carry you up the first 250m from the monastery.
Hotel Abat Cisneros ( 93 877 77 01; s/d €58/101; ) , the only hotel in the
monastery complex, has modern, comfortable rooms, some of which look over
Plaça de Santa Maria. It has a restaurant (meals €35), a cafeteria (meals €15 to
€20) for lunch and a couple of cafes for breakfast.
The information office ( 93 877 77 01; www.abadiamontserrat.net ;
9am-6pm) has information on the complex and walking trails.
The R5 line trains operated by FGC ( 93 205 15 15) run from Plaça d'Espanya
station in Barcelona to Monistrol de Montserrat up to 18 times daily starting at
5.16am. They connect with the rack-and-pinion train, or cremallera ( 902
312020; www.cremallerademontserrat.com ) , which takes 17 minutes to make the
upwards journey and costs €5.15/8.20 one way/return.
GIRONA & THE COSTA BRAVA
Stretching from Blanes north to the French border, the Costa Brava ranks with the
Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol as one of Spain's three great holiday coasts. But
alongside some occasionally awful concrete development, English breakfasts and
Konditoreien (pastry shops), the 'Rugged Coast' has some of the most spectacular
stretches of sand and sea in all of Spain.
A little further inland are the bigger towns of Girona (Castilian: Gerona), with a
sizeable and strikingly well-preserved medieval centre, and Figueres (Castilian:
Figueras), famous for its bizarre Teatre-Museu Dalí, the foremost of a series of sites
associated with the eccentric surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.