Monserrat

Since we went on vacation for a week, we wanted to visit some place outside Barcelona, ideally somewhere in the countryside. The choice was clear, we definitely wanted to see Monserrat. Trains go there quite often, in the morning they go every hour.

We wanted to go to Aeri de Monserrat, go up from there by cable car, visit the monastery and surroundings and then walk down to Monistrol de Monserrat and go back by train from there.

The R5 train was departing from Placa Espanya, there was no need to leave the subway but in the subway there were directly signs for the R5 line going to Monserrat. We decided to go on Thursday at 9:36.

I wanted to buy tickets right at the station because I found online tickets pretty confusing, especially when we could not buy return ticket when we wanted to go back from another stop. We arrived at the station and saw an office upstairs and we could see that it was the company going to Monserrat. We were surprised that they were open from 9:00 only but we arrived a few minutes before nine, so we had to wait just a couple of minutes. But the gentleman at the window told me that train tickets were sold downstairs. We went downstairs, and we saw the queue for tickets with the Monserrat sign below. I have seen in the queue already that the sign of cable car is crossed out in the pictures and that they sell only tickets for rack railway but I thought that we would buy only train tickets and buy the cable car tickets on the spot. But when it was finally our turn, the salesman told me that they sell only train + rack railway, but not train + cable car and not even a separate train ticket that it can be bought only in the machine. Well, that’s exactly what I wanted to avoid.

I do not like vending machines and seeing the number of possible combinations I just wanted to buy it at the counter. And my concerns were fulfilled :p  The machine was so complicated that it had to be operated by a person. And even my knowledge of Spanish and university education was not enough for me to buy the right tickets at the first go. I came to the lady who operated the machine and said in Spanish that I wanted a train ticket to Aeri de Monserrat and from there the ticket for the cable car. The lady typed it in, I paid, and then we wondered whether to buy the ticket back here or at Monistrol de Monserrat. I decided to ask the lady and she said I had a return ticket already. Well, but back by cable car, which we didn’t want as we wanted to go on foot to Monistrol de Monserrat. I told her I didn’t ask her to buy the return ticket. She said I didn’t say that. But I just said I wanted to get to Aeri and up with the cable car, nothing about the return ticket.

I didn’t say a word about the way back, so she can’t assume that I want a return ticket directly, especially when there are several options. So the lady asked us to go to his colleague to the next machine. She told us they will return the money for the way back but that we would have to go up to the office. Well, when I looked at my watch, I thought we would manage it on very last moment. Fortunately, the man had the opportunity to return the bad ticket and buy a new ticket directly in the machine and returned us the money. Good thing we had so many time – we arrived to the station 45 minutes earlier and in the end we had the right tickets in our hands just 5 minutes before the train departure: p It was a suburban train that looks more like a metro. It took 1 hour to arrive to Aeri de Monserrat. The train shows the current and next stops so you can´t miss the right stop to get off.