The Rough Guide to Barcelona 8 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

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For picnic supplies visit the Mercat Municipal (Mon–Thurs 8am–2pm, Fri &
Sat 8am–2pm & 5.30–8.30pm), close to the train station on Avinguda Artur
Carbonell. Every restaurant along the front does a paella with a promenade view,
while typical of the new wave of classier seafood places is Fragata, Pg. de la Ribera
1 (T938 941 086, W ), where catch-of-the-day
choices like monkfish casserole, shellfish and rice, tuna tartare or grilled local
prawns cost €17–25. Alternatively, the Chiringuito, Pg. de la Ribera (T938 947
596), claims to be Spain’s oldest beach bar, offering grilled sardines, fried calamari,
sandwiches and snacks at budget Beach House, c/Sant Pau 34 (T 938 949
029, W , closed Dec to Easter), there’s a table d’hôte
menu €25) that changes every day and offers four courses of the best in Asian-
Med fusion food. Modern French cuisine gets an airing at stylish Ogmios, c/Sant
Buenaventura 17 (T 938 947 135; dinner only, though open Sat & Sun lunch, also
closed Tues) – things like salmon and anchovy salad, and sea bass with almonds,
from €25 – while just down the road at c/Sant Buenaventura 5, La Borda (T 938
112 002, closed Thurs in winter) is a cheery old-style Catalan restaurant with
good-value, all-inclusive menus between €15 and €20.
The epicentre of local nightlife is c/Primer de Maig and c/Montroig,
where café-terrassas like Vikingos and the staunchly gay Parrot’s Pub (W www
) are local fixtures. Parrot’s also now has a stylish Mediter-
ranean restaurant next door (dinner only). For more of a pub atmosphere,
there’s the longstanding Dutch bar Nieuw Amsterdam, c/de les Parellades 70,
a fixture for over 40 years, serving foreign beers and Indonesian and Dutch
food specialities. And there’s also the Barone on c/Sant Gaudenci, definitely
not a style bar, but a real slice of Sitges nonetheless – a cubbyhole of a tavern
that’s the favoured haunt of a cross-section of locals, all smoking away
furiously amid the faded black-and-white photos.
Montserrat
The mountain of Montserrat, with its weirdly shaped crags of rock, vast
monastery and hermitage caves, stands just 40km northwest of Barcelona, off
the road to Lleida. It’s the most popular day-trip from the city, reached in
around ninety minutes by train and then cable car or rack railway for a thrilling
ride up to the monastery. Once there, you can visit the basilica and monastery
buildings, and complete your day with a walk around the woods and crags,
using the two funicular railways that depart from the monastery complex.
Legends hang easily upon Montserrat. Fifty years after the birth of Christ,
St Peter is said to have deposited an image of theVirgin (known as La Moreneta,
the Black Virgin), carved by St Luke, in one of the mountain caves. The icon
was lost in the early eighth century after being hidden during the Moorish
invasion, but reappeared in 880, accompanied by the customary visions and
celestial music. A chapel was built to house it, and in 976 this was superseded
by a Benedictine monastery, set at an altitude of nearly 1000m. Miracles
abounded and the Virgin of Montserrat soon became the chief cult-image of
Catalunya and a pilgrimage centre second in Spain only to Santiago de
Compostela in Galicia – the main pilgrimages to Montserrat take place on
April 27 and September 8.
For centuries, the monastery enjoyed outrageous prosperity, having its own
flag and a form of extraterritorial independence along the lines of the Vatican
OUT OF THE CITY
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Montserrat