Day 2

Today my plan was to do nothing, so that’s what I did for about twenty minutes until I decided to visit the Monserrat Monastery about 20 miles outside of Barcelona.

This place, which is on the top of one of the mountains that surround Barcelona is a working Monastery (assuming “working” is the right word to use for this sort of thing) and you get there by taking the Metro beneath the city until you emerge in the country and then take a cable car up through the air to the mountain. The symbolism of this is not lost on me.

When I got there it was cold and drizzly, so I bought a poncho. Between the blue plastic flowing behind me, the large hood and my beard, I really fit right in. However, lacking the necessary credentials, I opted not to bless anyone, assuming that’s a thing that monks do.

But it was very beautiful . . .

and I hiked higher up the mountain for a while, which provided some amazing views of the countryside. If I were a monk, I’d definitely want to be here, especially if I could skip the services most of the time.

And a note on Spanish coffee. I’ve never loved the coffee here but didn’t really pay that much attention to it. When I bought some yesterday at the supermarket to make in my apartment, I noticed that the package said mezcla, or mixture. I was curious about what that meant. Here’s what an online gourmet Spanish food store said about it - "Every bar and restaurant in Spain uses a mezcla of natural roast and torrefacto beans, in their own secret proportions. The torrefacto secret is glazing a percentage of the beans with a fine sugar mist before roasting which reduces acidity and bitterness."

Then I read this from a food writer – “Sipping a café solo in Spain is often like swilling hot, black acid. Bitter, harsh and acrid, with hints of paint thinner. I’d started to suspect a link between torrefacto mixed in the blend and the fact that the local coffee was stripping my esophagus. The run-of-the-mill stuff at your supermarket is generally a nipple-hardening 50/50.”

Turns out that torrefacto, which has sugar sprayed on the beans before roasting, is something Spain has been doing since the Spanish Civil War, when the country was out of everything. Back then, spraying the beans with sugar before roasting them allowed the beans to be kept longer without going bad, hid the flavor of inferior beans and added weight so that the stores were essentially selling burnt sugar at coffee-bean prices. 

There you go, another fantasy destroyed. You’re welcome. 

Tomorrow my plan is to do nothing.