Meet your guide in central Barcelona and board your comfortable minivan for the scenic one-hour drive to Montserrat. From the base of the craggy mountain, you have the option to ride the Montserrat cable car (own expense) for fabulous valley views as you make the steep climb to the top of the mountain. If heights aren’t your thing, stay on board with your guide to drive to the mountaintop by minivan.

At the top of Montserrat, visit the 1,000-year-old Santa Maria de Montserrat Basilica to see its claim to fame: La Moreneta, the Black Virgin of Montserrat. Then tour the Museum of Montserrat’s five collections of archaeology, religious art and sculpture, or follow trails winding across the mountaintop for wonderful views over the whole of Catalonia. For equally stunning but less strenuous views, take a ride around the mountaintop by rack railway (own expense).

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Make the most of your time in Barcelona by combining your Montserrat tour with skip-the-line entry to Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia church -- the snaking queues here are almost as legendary as the building’s fantastical architecture, but you can avoid them! Before you go inside, admire the sculpted portals, spires and chapels of this UNESCO World Heritage Site, under construction since 1882 and not due for completion until 2026, and take a guided walk around the basilica’s exterior. Your guide will point out the building’s Nativity and Passion facades, with their groups of four spires, and explain the symbolism and images from nature hidden in the sculptures’ intricate details.

Then skip the line to spend 45 minutes inside the church, with its forest of treelike columns, stained-glass windows, vivid ornamentation and rich carvings.