Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

Down Logroño main St in old town

The rain has pattered heavily down on Madrid’s streets over the last few days, cleaning the road and feeding the flowers. Our exasperated grey skyline has been continuously wallowing and weeping and the dark clouds imitate a stormy ocean. As typical with spring it’s warm one minute and freezing the next! 

With our fingers and toes crossed that the rain would pass and the sky gods would will the clouds away, we ventured to La Rioja, province and autonomous region in the north of Spain. This was a special occasion, celebrating our now third wedding anniversary with friends! Our road trip (by bus) from Madrid was 4 hours and we arrived late Friday evening into the heart of the wine capital, Logroño. From the bus we walked briskly (in a light drizzle) towards our pension, checked in and then immediately went out exploring!

The old city of Logroño is really stunning, old and medieval. It’s a relatively small community in the north of La Rioja surrounded by vineyards. The inner city called ‘the old town’ is relatively small.

Cycling to the Vine yards 

The following morning was very chilly but the rain was holding off. From the Logroño tourist center, we borrowed their free-to-use bicycles and began to make our way about 4km down the road to the first vineyard. On the way there, the clouds broke and we rode our bikes in icy rain all the way to our destination according to Google Maps. As it turns out, we ended up a stones throw away behind the now inaccessible vineyard. 

After attempting to cross a ditch, backtracking and getting stuck in thick, wet vineyard mud, we spotted a road on the other side of a locked gate. By the time we had squeezed our bikes through a fence and across the vineyards the mud was half way up our legs and the Spanish security guard that came after us didn’t sound too happy. Our conversation went a bit like: him in Spanish: “How did you get through the fence?” us in English and nodding our heads up and down: “Yes, it was a problem”. 

Ontañon wines... yum

Exploring the cellar

We assume that perhaps people don’t cycle much to the vineyards? Never the less, they let us in as there was wine to be drunk!  

Wine tasting at Ontañon

Finished glasses

Next stop we joined a Spanish group as they toured the cellars at Ontañon. We didn’t understand much but the wine was tasty and come with free bruschetta’s and hard cheese. Yummy! From there, the bicycles started getting a bit wobbly so we made our way back to the pension with some bottles of supermarket Rioja wine! 

Art on the Spanish tour

Off we go!

Central Catherdal 

The day was a very educational experience for our little touring group! We learnt that the wine from Rioja and Spain comes in different grades and that is more important than the grape variety. 

This made sense for when you go to a bar the conversation with the waiter goes a bit like this (translated) ‘wine or beer’ “wine” ‘red or white’ “red” ‘young or old’ (?). 

So wine is either joven (young) or crianza (older) but you can also get a higher more premium grade which are reserva or gran reserva and all these labels depend on the amount of time the wine was oaked.

  




After the wine disappeared and a patch of passing rain cleared, we ventured to Calle Laurel and its surrounding block. 

This part of the old town was once a street of Bodegas (wine shops) where merchants came into the city to sell the wine grown from the local region. 

Hopping down Calle Laurel 

Rain on the terraces

Main Plaza, Logroño

Today there are over 50 miniature tapa bars crammed within a small block and the locals call it the ‘elephant walk’ (think 24 bars in 100 steps). 

San Miguel and crispy pork rind

Walking the streets at twilight 

Council building at night

The most amazing street in the WORLD! 

Each barra offers a specialty such as gambas (shrimp), patatas bravas (spicy potato) or setas de ajo (garlic mushrooms) matched with Spanish beer or local wine. 
We even ventured into a nightclub and sung a bit of “Don’t break my heart, my achy breaky heart”..... 

That evening the lighting was spectacular and the old city had a beautiful romantic feel with wet cobblestones and lighting by dimmed street lamp. 

The next morning, after a late start, late breakfast of coffee and a bacon and egg bocodilla and then a late check out, we returned our bikes and followed a part of the Camino de Santigo which ran through the North of the City towards our first winery of the day. 

Parroquia de Santiago Real

San Nicolas fountain

A tiny part of the Camino de Santiago 

The Camino de Santigo is an 800-kilometer pilgrim trail that starts in Southern France and ends in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, first used by pilgrims in the middle ages.

Today walked by tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims annually. The path conveniently led us over the Río Ebro river and towards the Franco Españolas winery. Here we sampled some wines before returning to Calle Laurel for several hours, just to have a few more nibbles and drinks!


A few to many wines/beers and tapas later we picked up some dinner and boarded our bus from the trip home! A truly fantastic weekend! 

Tot siens,
John and Kara

Tapa's? Yes please! 

Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, Charmartin, Madrid, Spain

The only thing that pulled us through this weekend's snotty noses and constant stuttering coughing was visiting the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu to watch Real Madrid play Levante.

Outside the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu
(photo by colgadosporelfutbol.com)

As a little background information the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu is an elite stadium and of course a prestigious football venue that seats more than 83,000 people, owned by the Real Madrid Football Club.

When visiting Madrid you have the oppurtunity to tour the stadium (during the day) but we passed that up to experience a game! Particularly since we only live around 20-25minutes (depending how cold it is) walk from the stadium its very accessible to us. We purchased our tickets online several days earlier and were quite pleased with our seats, since we were right under a heater! The game was scheduled to start at 9pm but we decided to get there early (having heard from others that getting in and through security can be tricky and/or be held up with delays). Although spring is on its way, its dragging its tail a bit and it was a very cool evening. So we packed our backpacks with the regulated 500ml drink bottles (which they later opened for us), sunflower seeds and a lunch box of anchovy olives for half time then briskly walked to the stadium.

The birds eye view! 

As we arrived into the vicinity, the atmosphere was electric! Thousands of people milled the surrounding streets and hung out of the overcrowded local bars and restaurants. Families were purchasing last minute snacks, flags and scarfs at the street vendors and huge buses were dropping masses of people dressed in white and pink off at every corner. There were all kinds of neon lights flashing and herding people towards different doors.  Music was pounding and people stood around in large groups socialising (not really making any effort to go in). We found our gate fairly easily and were at our seats 30minutes before kick off. You can see here that the stadium is still relatively empty looking!

Although high, we had covered seats! 

The game itself was a good watch with Real Madrid coming out 2-0 on top!

¡Hala Madrid! ¡Hala Madrid!

Even though we weren't watching a champion league game (or even a final) the crowd were singing away and many spectators had flags and drums!

Sunflower seeds

One of the most amusing things during the game for us was the constant 'cracking' as the crowd of people around us munched on sunflower seeds, braking open the husks with their teeth and using their tongues to flick out the seed. That was the thing to do and we just so happened to blend in like locals! Hehe!

Then at half time was the bocadillos (large sandwich type snack in a baguette typically filled with meat and cheese or potato) where a seriously large number of people pulled them out and feasted.  Food is just such a huge part of anything Spanish (smile)! So if your playing to go watch a game, for goodness sake, don't forget your sunflowers and your bocadillo!

For now, we're back resting in bed getting over these yucky colds.

Tot Siens,
John and Kara

Patones Arriba, Cancho Cabeza Peak, Madrid, Spain

This past week there has been a dramatic shift in the weather temperature and we are now being blessed with warmth and sunshine! Little blossoms are finally covering the trees and squeezing out their precious pink and white petals. People (including us) seem to be rejoicing by getting outside drinking cañas with their menú del día's on the terraces and patios along the street side, basking in the 20+ degree days.

Pantones de Arriba 

So this weekend (with our couchsurfer) we decided to head back to the foothills of the Sierra Guadarrama mountains to complete a hike called the Cancho Cabeza Peak (boulder head peak). Its a relatively gentle climb which was perfect as Kara is a bit down with a cold. The starting point of our hike was a small hillside town called Patones Arriba and to get there we caught a bus from Madrid which took an hour and a half and dropped us off at Patones.

Walking through the town

Renovated town house

When we arrived at Patones the sun was already beating down and the bus thermometer said 21 degrees. After crossing the road we slowly meandered 2 kilometers  up a small river path towards the settlement Patones Arriba (arriba means "up" in Spanish). The little town, settled quietly amongst the hills, wasn't visible at all. As we got closer and climbed into the hills we realised what an amazing town we had stumbled upon!  To us, it had just been the start of the hike but the town was beautiful. The small hidden historic town was settled by the Paton family, who were Christian refugees escaping the muslim rule, sometime before 1527. They lived quietly going about their lives for centuries building an entire village from shards of black slate. The town eventually grew to be the Kingdom of Patones and was at one time home to 8000 residents ruled by the elected King of Patones. As cars and what not became more freely available a small settlement called Patones Abajo (abajo means "down" in Spanish) was developed (this is where the bus dropped us off) and eventually Patones Arriba was almost all but for a few stragglers abandoned in the mid 1960's. Later in the 1990's both the historic value and location for outdoor activities of Patones Arriba was noted and some restoration took place.

Street in Patones de Arriba

Just follow the trail! 

Walking through the upper town

First views!

So upon arriving and resisting the urge to just sit down on a small barra terrace with a vino tinto we clambered up over the hill though the settlement to find our hiking track. Understanding this hike would be much gentler and relaxed than our previous - this time we weren't hiking through snow - we set off quite confidently. Somehow we got lost. How (again?!) this happened we didn't know, we were following a looped track and there weren't exactly trees hiding the path.

We would consider ourselves quite apt at following directions and pride ourselves with our observation skills when walking but somewhere the path just stopped and changed. This meant an extremely difficult climb off the track up a fire break (where we then found the original track). In our defence, later when back tracking we found the correct path which had no signage stating the path. Anyway, from the top of the Cancho Cabeza Peak the view was breath-taking.... quite literally... we had just climbed a monster of a hillside.

Top of Cancho Cabeza 

We could see the snow peaked mountains of the Sierra Guadarrama range and looked down upon the Ponton de la Oliva reservoir. The surrounding area and hillsides were brushed with cereals, vineyards and olive groves. We stopped here to eat lunch, a baguette with Spanish cheese and jamon!

After our rest we followed the path down and returned to Patones Arriba for a well deserved cold beverage!

Tot Siens,
John and Kara

View towards the Ponton de la Oliva reservoir

Hiking the foothills of Sierra Guadarrama