When we arrived in Spain, we spent the first night in the city called Blanes. We were struggling to find a suitable place to spend the night during many hours of driving through coastal towns and villages on the south coast of Spain. So at one point when it was already dark, we just parked the car near the beach and called it a night. There were still many people walking around and it was noisy and hot, thereby it was difficult to fall asleep. In the morning we made a quick swim and continued towards Barcelona.
Kaija had been to Barca before, and since she was going to have a meeting with her colleagues working there, then Jaanus was going to discover the city himself. Jaanus went to Sagrada Familia church which is still unfinished church of Antoni Gaudi. Kaija said its the ugliest church she had ever seen. Well, to be honest, the church does look a little bit strange and its no wonders its still unfinished because there are so many details and towers and it just seems to be too big of a project. This means that taking pictures of the church you are actually taking pictures of the cranes as well which makes the whole experience weird. There were also just too many people.
The meeting Kaija was having was in the Sant Pau hospital complex and there is also a museum in old hospital buildings. Since Kaija was already there Jaanus decided to also go and we both looked around in the museum. This museum was actually a good find. Seems that it’s not the most popular museum in Barca but the exhibition was well presented. We both liked there very much and we were amazed at how much art and beautiful architecture a hospital can contain. There were also underground tunnels to gain quick access to different hospital buildings
Later this evening Jaanus dropped Kaija to the airport because she was flying back to Estonia for 4 days due to the wedding of her sister. Jaanus booked a hostel a little bit outside from the city. This hostel was a typical hostel in Spain having several bunk beds in a single room with shared shower and toilet. On the way to the hostel Jaanus was lucky to have this amazing view
This hostel was kind of a funny interesting cool place. First of all, I paid 18 euros per night with breakfast included. It was well maintained and clean hostel with comfortable beds. There was even a sports area with a pool.
The people there made this place very interesting and also fun. The guests were from all around the world. Many of them were also backpackers. But there were people with kids or family as well and also couples. For example, there was an old American couple and I heard one of the conversations they were having with someone and they said that they have been there already 19 days. Odd place to spend a vacation that long 😊.
There was an old Canadian guy Dan who was
There was also one Australian guy who I was hanging out with most of the time. He also took some time off from his job from London to travel around and was planning to go back to Australia in the end.
I met also an Irish guy named Ashley who was really friendly and easy going. He was doing
I also met a really strange Brazilian guy, who defiantly was doing some drugs or had been doing too much of those. He was constantly talking to himself. Next level was that he was talking to his phone pretending there is someone on the line. All his movements where very impulsive and abrupt.
There was a guy from Chicago named Andrea who had been living in many different places in Europe and he was there because they were filming for some movie around Barca. He was an odd guy in a good way because he was all this spiritual and constantly talking about
Then there was a French lady Miriam and a bunch of young kids. The kids were all from troubled homes and she was doing a tour
Last evening I met two Mexican guys and one Indian guy. Mexican guys were tripping around in this side of Atlantic and they had just come from Morocco and they were talking about their trip and how epic this had been. The Indian guy was praising Estonia because Estonia is known as IT or e-country and he seemed to know all about the e-residency of Estonia.
I spent most of the 4 days in the hostel area. Working with the blog, doing some laundry and just having a good rest. In the evenings I was hanging out with others – did you know that you can buy a bottle of wine in Spain for 1 euro 😊 So you can guess how we spent the evenings with other fellows.
One day, however, I decided to do a little hike in Montserrat. The parking area there is paid to park. I managed to park my car a few hundred meters before the official parking in a graveled area. There was only one spot left among other cars. Montserrat is famous for its monastery which is literally built inside the mountain. But I was
Cross of San Miguel, can you find it? 
On the way there I bumped into a couple who came from the opposite direction and I asked what is that way and they said basically nothing but good views from the mountain and that in the end, this trail will head back to the where I started. So instead of heading directly back, I decided to go via the trail the couple was coming from. I did not get any trail map from the information center, so I had no idea how long the trail was or which signs to follow so I just followed my intuition. After an hour of hiking I reached to the point where there were many different options where to go, luckily there was also a trail map. I noticed there is a peak called Sant Jeroni which is the highest peak of Montserrat and it should take another 1.5 hours to reach it. So I decided to take this path and I did not regret. The views en route and especially from the top where breathtaking. If you ever decide to go hiking in Montserrat then Sant Jeroni peak is a must go place. It took about 2.5 hours for me to reach on top but I also took the longer trail to go up there. The path down was not longer than 1 hour.
On 24th August, the evening Jaanus picked up Kaija again from the airport. Jaanus had done the check out from the hostel the same morning. However since nobody was checking which cars or people come and go to the territory then Jaanus had decided that we will spend this night also there, but sleeping in the car. Jaanus was familiar to everybody anyway already so nobody was suspecting anything 🙂 We had a swim in the pool and went to sleep.
Jaanus had heard few times from others, that they had seen a family of wild boars few times in the territory. Well, this evening when we were sleeping in the car we heard some noise coming from the bushes. It was too loud to be a cat or a dog. In a minute or so, a big wild boar came out and walked by our car. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get this on the picture because the flash was turned off and it was just too dark.
Next morning we took the direction towards Andorra where we had also some hiking planned.
Although Jaanus spent 4 days in Barcelona area, he didn’t do much. It was nice to have just some time for himself and to have proper rest by not doing anything particularly 😊 Kaija on the opposite, was extremely
Barcelona surprised us with good prices for wine and chorizo. Also, the amazing hike in Montserrat which Jaanus would like to do again in some day because there was just something magical of those mountains. Something which is difficult to but in the words. The pictures will give you some idea, but to experience all this by being there is even more beautiful, powerful and magical. Also if you are around and need a place to sleep we would definitely recommend staying in one of those hostels with bunk beds because there are usually so many interesting people to meet.
