the Monastery is nested into the mountain with beautiful spires and peaks standing guard over the buildings. The views out through the valley are outstanding.

We took our time and visited the various buildings including the beautiful church and the wonderful Art Museum. 

The interior of the church with it's beautiful stained glass, natural stone and gold leaf is magnificent.

The Art Museum is multi-level and has original artwork dating back several centuries and works by well known artists such as Picasso and Salvador Dali.

On the way out we stopped in at the Monastery Bakery and Store and bought some great Pastries to snack on as we traveled to our next stop.

After a beautiful ride down the twisting road of the mountain, Jordi drove us to the Codorniu Winery. He had made the arrangements specifically for our party to tour the winery.

This Wine Company was established in the 1500"s by the Raventos family and has been handed down through 17 generations of the family.  In 1872 the entire winery was switched over to manufacture only CAVA wine.  CAVA is a sparkling wine manufactured using the Champaign method, it cannot be called Champaign as only Sparkling wine manufactured in the Champaign Region of France can be sold as Champaign. 

The manufacturing and storage facilities which were constructed originally in the 1600's are marvelous. Basically the production building look's like an old and beautiful one story factory with wonderful landscaping and lots of stone and massive doors and windows. In fact in 1976 the entire Winery was declared a National Artistic Monument.  What amazed us was the fact that under the factory building and in fact under most of the gardens and other land there are 5 underground layers devoted to production on the 2nd story down and to aging and storage on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th story down.  In the storage areas which mother nature keeps at a constant 58d, Fahrenheit. The company produces several million bottles a year and with final fermenting in the bottle for up to 5 years before shipping they can ferment and store over 100 million bottles of wine in the 33 km of underground tunnels contained in the 4 lower floors.

About 3:45 pm we headed back to Barcelona where Jordi dropped us off at our hotels.

We had experienced two great days of sightseeing in and around Barcelona and knew that we had seen things and had received the best explanations of them from our new friend Jordi Borrellas.