Saturday in La Rioja

At about 9.15 on Saturday morning Jaione and Kepa arrived to pick us up and soon after that we were off to La Rioja to have a look at a vineyard called 'Vivanco'. Vivanco sits beside a little pueblo called Briones, population 853, which dates back to the 1st century AD. It is in the La Rioja region, the major wine producing region in Spain. It borders Gipuzkoa in the Basque Country and is about 1hour 45minutes drive from Azpeitia. The day was cloudy and warm, a very nice day to be driving through the countryside to a vineyard.

First, we were driving through the green hills and valleys of the Basque Country north of Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque Country, and then the countryside changed to wide, flat valleys and then we were in the wheat growing region of Castille y León whit acres and acres of wheat stretching across the land and which would, Jaione told us, turn the landscape golden yellow in August. After a while we were in La Rioja and the acres of wheat became acres of grape vines marching across the landscape for miles and miles on either side of the road.

 wheat fields I think there must be an anti-sun film over the car wondows which have made the photos taken from the car to be a bit off colour. I thought I'd put some on here anyway.

Along with the wheat and the grape vines are the villages which are scattered across the countryside like mushrooms and usually looking like they've just risen up out of the dirt because the buildings are the same pale, biscuity colour as the dirt.

The road wound through the town of Hora which is about the same size as Azpeitia, 11,000 people, and then down the road a bit to Briones and there we came to the Vivanco vineyard, which turned out to be just one of quite a few vineyards around the little village. All of them have very grand buildings and are very prosperous looking enterprises.

Briones

We were booked in to do a tour at 11am and had arrived in good time. 

Vivanco - the main entrance building taken from the back on the way to where we went down into the cellars.

from the same place as the photo above looking down the grape vines to Briones

At the end of every row there are roses growing, and the reason for this, the guide told us in response to a question, is that the roses are very clever plants and tell the growers what diseases and/or pests are around in time for the appropriate action can be taken to save the grapes. I'm not sure if I knew this already or if I did and am a bit cynical about it. 

The photo I took of the huge vats didn't come out, was very dark, for some reason. This is one of the small barrels, some of the thousands of them.

Jaione was told that the English language audio guides weren't working very well so not to use them, and the tour guide spoke in Spanish, so Jaione translated as we went. It was a bit tricky because there was no allowance for translating time so it was done 'on the run,' so to speak. I did understand some of what the guide was saying but not everything, not by a long stretch. I imagine that we missed a lot of information, not because Jaione didn't do a good translating job, but because it wasn't possible to do more than a quick chat as we went along with the guide and the tour group. 

As well as the huge wine vats and the cellars with thousands of smaller barrels in them there was mock ups of the machines used for the processes which happen to turn grapes into wine. 

From the cellars we went back up to the main building and into a lovely room overlooking the vines and had a wine tasting of 2 red wines. The first one was a Crianza and the 2nd was a Reserva. Crianza reds must be aged in oak for at least 1 year and Reserva reds must be aged for at least 3 years and 2 of those years must be in oak. I've come to enjoy red wine after donkey's years of being a white wine only drinker and since being in Azpeitia my favourite is crianza. I must say that the reserva that we had at the vineyard was a very, very nice drop.

 between the main building and the cellar building

After the wine tasting we went to the vineyard museum. It is a very extensive collection of all the paraphanalia to do with wine growing, making and drinking - an enormous amount of stuff over 4 floors. We all found it hugely interesting but had to cut our time there short because we were booked into a restaurant in the town of Hora at 2.30pm. 

This is in a section in the museum about wine growing areas and the history of the growth of wine making across the globe.  Yes, they found NZ.

 The front entrance/exit 

And so it was off to Hora for lunch. I was impressed with Jaione and Kepa's knowledge of Hora and when I finally said to Jaione that she seemed to know the town quite well, she said that she did because Kepa's parents have a campervan permanently parked up in a campsite nearby and her and Kepa spend a lot of time there and consequently also a lot of time in Hora.

here's some photos of Hora although I don't have one of where we had lunch which was delicious and quite flash. It goes without saying that we were stuffed to the eyeballs by the time we'd finished.

 the town was very quiet because it was siesta time! 

most of the buildings had glassed in balconies like in the towns on the coast and in Beyonne and Paris. Was an interesting observation, we thought.

After lunch we had a walk about and then another drink here, under the sign for the Camino de Santiago amongst other things. The Camino de Santiago sign pops up all over the place, there must be many ways to go. Barry's doing his best to tell the waiter what he wants which turned out to be cointreau

and then it was time to head back to the car. On the way I spied this relic. I'll never get used to seeing such ancient things just sitting there as they've done since forever.

The way back to Azpeitia was uneventful ... except for .... THE SNAKE!!!!

Not far out of Hora we came to an ancient bridge, not so ancient to be Roman, though, and we stopped to have a look at it and Jaione and I were walking together over the bridge and suddenly she shrieked  and rushed backwards. At the same time that she shrieked I spotted the same thing that she had - a snake! a very long snake! I grabbed my camera and stupidly walked towards it and of course, it started slithering away and so this is why I got a photo of a part of it and not the whole thing.  If I had of just stayed still and used the zoom I would have got all of it. When I say that I walked towards it, I was still a decent distance away. It went through the hole in the bridge and ended up curled up in a weed growing out of the bridge on the other side.

By this time Jaione was almost back at the end of the bridge, she hates them with a phobic passion.

After that excitement it was in the car and back to Azpeitia

It was a fairly quiet trip back. Jaione drove and Barry went to sleep! Kepa and Jaline chatted to each other, mostly and I looked at the passing countryside, I coild never have enough of that.

 We got home at about 8pm. It had been another wonderful day thanks to the generosity of a couple of lovely people - thanks a bunch, Jaione and Kepa.

We lay about on the sofas trying to decide if we would have something to eat before we went to bed and in the end, at about 10.30 pm, Barry cooked us some scrambled eggs, not a lot given the amount of food we'd eaten for lunch. Goodnight, Saturday.

Sunday was wet and cold and after talking with Sam on skype for a little while we decided that we should pack all our 'stuff' to make sure that we would be under the weight restrictions for the flights. Ryan Air from Zaragoza to London - 20kgs checked in and 10 kgs cabin bag. Everything must be in the 2 bags, can't carry anything. London to Singapore to Auckland - 30kgs checked in and 7kgs cabin bag and we can carry somethings like a handbag, coat, umbrella and such like. It took a good chunk of the day to get sorted. Just remembered that we've paid for an extra 15kg bag on Ryan air and we'll have another sort out when we get to London.

On Saturday night we had dinner with the our land lady and her family. Another good feed and a lot of fun. They are a very nice family and with their bit of English and my bit of Spanish we had a very good night.

Just before we left to go home

Here they are in Paris (could you guess that) the 4 of them together.

It's a 5 minute walk from their place to ours except that this Sunday night, on the way home, we called into the bar called Pastorkua, to say goodbye to one of the staff there. A youg guy called Eneko,  who had talked to us the first time we went there when we first got to Azpeitia, in very food English. When I asked how come he spoke such good English he said that he'd lived in Wellington for 2 years. How about that!  He now lives in Getaria, where he grew up, and works there as a draughtsman and works on Pastorkua on Sundays. We got into a routine of going to Pastorkua for dinner on Sunday nights, and he'd come over and have a chat with us and as we'd be gone next Sunday night we just called into say goodbye. No, I don't have a photo of him, damn it. He has all of our NZ contact details so who knows, maybe one day,  he'll turn up on our doorstep.

And then it was home. The next day, Monday,  began the countdown to my final class on Thursday afternoon.