Touching history

 The wonderful part of living in Europe is touching history, things only read about in books when I was a child.

As part of playing tourist yesterday we went to the abbey of St. Michel Cuixà. There has been a religious site since 840 but the original abbey was destroyed in 878 by a flood, and with the torrential rain and the raging river nearby, the event seemed a bit more real.

Abbot Oliba, whose signature is scrawled in stone within the abbey that he began in the 1080s.

We wandered the corridors, viewed the altars including a Madonna and child dating back to the original construction.

I could almost hear the voices of the monks from ages gone by singing a mass. I could imagine their feet shuffling over the ancient stones.