Sau swamp
THE BIG SITE
We are in ** Vic **. It's Saturday so let's go to main square market soon because then it gets saturated. They also celebrate it on Tuesdays but the weekend is the most powerful. They sell fresh, local and quality products. Winter is not the best time to take a look at the orchard fruits, but there is always something: homemade bread, pampered greenhouse tomatoes, honey, cheese... Remember: the best souvenirs are the ones that end up in the stomach . The others only make the house ugly and make moving difficult. On Sundays, on Paseo de la Generalitat, there is another grocery market, smaller but super effective to undermine the gastroconsumist monkey. It's still Saturday and if, moreover, it's the first of the month, then you have to go to Plaza de los Santos Mártires (we're still in Vic, huh!) to take a look at the antiques and old knickknacks market. It is not the Flea Market of Paris, it is evident, but it serves to hang out. Hopefully, you can even buy a retro siphon at a good price.
SANTA RITA'S STINKY WOUND
Religious art is a hilarious thing, but few people know it . It is also inspiring and beautiful, but if we were not to talk about the comic possibilities that it offers, perhaps few people would go to the Episcopal Museum of Vic. The selection of Romanesque and Gothic objects that it has is simply disturbing, all conveniently rescued from the churches of Catalonia. The best? The reliquaries with the skull of Saint Sebastian -unofficial patron saint of the gay community- and the jaw of Santa Rita, patron saint of the impossible, that saint whom Jesus put to the test, sticking a thorn in her forehead, causing a wound that smelled fatal. Christian love.
WHAT DO THE CATALANS EAT?
There is nothing else to see here. Well, yes there is (the 2nd century Roman temple and a gazillion other things) but we want to go now. Well, we're lying again, not yet. We headed to the **Ca L’U** restaurant to eat a few Catalan concoctions, local cuisine and all that. Let each one ask for what they want, but let it be known that the foie and porcini croquettes are a cannon and the veal steak tartare , also.
THE EARTH WAS ROUND BEFORE IT WAS ROUND
Come on, look for the C-154 road that we are going to Lluçà. Take a little (too much) out of hand, towards the northwest, beyond Prat de Lluçanes and some may be disappointed to see this architectural poodle. Santa María de Lluça is a church, a very small one that was built on a rock because there were (and may continue to be) almost insignificant earthquakes, like an untimely orgasm. The building is tiny and dark, a cave, because in the twelfth century they did not have enough architectural knowledge to open windows, and even less so in a place where the earth trembled frequently. It has a mini-cloister, with storied mini-capitals and some revolutionary frescoes (exhibited in the monastery) in which God holds a sphere of the world. The funny thing is that they are from the 14th century, when the world was still flat. Make a phone call beforehand to find out if they open it: 93 853 01 30.
HONEY ALL OVER THE BODY
In the Pre-Pyrenees it also gets dark. And there are bees on top. Spooky. We go to Torelló and, from there, to Sant Peré de Torelló, which is where the people of Abellaires d' Osona It has set up a spectacular beach bar. They are beekeepers, an entire family dedicated to milking bees. They make an exquisite honey, in petit committee (the one with flowers is a cannon shot, sweet and light, it could almost be taken in shots) but the best thing about their invention is that they show it to others, open the doors of their little honey world and explain what the hell bees are for, how they live, what they do, what they feel and why they function that way. The experience is completed with a visit to the honeycombs (conveniently dressed, of course) to collect honey, watch the bees working or, best of all, taste pieces of wax and chew them like there is no tomorrow . If you think human beings are complex, wait until you hear what these insects are capable of. The experience enlightens but, above all, it excites. More information: Can Panosa, in Sant Pere de Torelló. Phones. 938 592 534 or 618 880 949.
The people of Abellaires d'Osona and their exquisite honey
SWEATING TAVERTET
You get up early because you slept well. You slept well because you slept in a bed in the ** little houses of L'Avenc **, rural accommodation located in Tavertet, a beautiful village . Here we go, Tavertet, to see those strange surroundings you have, that Moebius would have liked to imagine. The fault lay with the earthquakes that shook the mountains and tore apart the stones and left everything turned into a Christ, like the Barret de la Perereda, a slender menhir that seems to remain standing by a miracle . It is easily visible from the BV-5207, just two kilometers from Tavertet, a semi-secret town (that is to say, almost everyone knows it) that is very busy on weekends because Barcelonans come here looking for what they don't have in the capital: a bit of silence, stone houses from the 17th century , a flirtatious hermitage of Romanesque origins and the peace that the foreigners who walk the Rambla with a pedete of sangria do not give. Tavertet is the starting point for a thousand and one activities, whether mountain biking, adventure sports or simply hiking. The company Pacha Mama Experience is specialized in all of this. Also, they are very nice guys.
The surroundings of Tavertet: silence, mountains and stones
FRANCO DID NOT INAUGURATE THIS SWAMP
We are going to walk, but downhill, which is less tiring. we go to sau swamp , which is down there, which gives many people a drink and which A few years ago it was so dry that the church of Sant Romá de Sau was exposed . But we do not take the car, but we do it through the signposted route that starts from Tavertet and that crosses the forests, quarries and ravines, today very protected, from which the crossbars of the Barcelona-Puigcerdá railway came out and the cobblestones that they are stepped on in the expansion of the city of Barcelona. In a couple of hours it arrives. Calmly. And that's it. Everyone to your house.
Vic's main square