We woke up to another blustery day. The weather forecast called for rain most of the day and they were right. We are trying to get back into the rythym of France, and we forgot that Sundays are really a day of rest.
Our plans were to drive to two towns to visit wineries and walk around the towns. Most of the drive today was on a road which is on top of a levee for the Loire River, it was quite pretty, and would have been even better if it was not raining most of the way.
This was about the only blue sky we saw today.
The first town we stopped at was Bourgueil. It seemed like a nice enough town and there were a bunch of wineries that looked interesting but everything was closed up. We took a quick stroll thru town and then it started to rain so we headed back to François.
The Abby in Bourgueil. Built around 1150.
We had decided to treat ourselves to a proper campground with showers and indoor plumbing so we are parked in the municipal campground looking at the Fort of Chinon. When we arrived it was raining quite hard so Ton made a nice lunch, and prepared dinner while Ron lounged around in bed until the rain stopped.
The Fort of Chinon, with the town below it behind the trees.
The castle at Chinon is another medieval fort that is partly in ruins but dominates the area. It is quite a climb to the top so we decided to take a look at it from the bottom of the hill, and head to a winery that google said was open. We had a walk thru the town which also has some examples of half timbered homes which are common in the area. It was a nice walk and it did not rain which was a good thing because the winery was not open. Finally learning that Sunday is indeed a day of rest (despite what google might think) we headed back to François had dinner, a long hot shower, and listened to the rain on the roof.
The French often refer to the retail part of a winery as the Cave, it is the French equivalent of cellar. In this case it really is a cave.
We are finally having to focus more on direction than interesting places. We picked the destination of Tournon-sur-Rhone based on it being a good distance north towards Sens.
When we arrived in Tournon we were not initially impressed. It was a nice enough town with a nice view of the Rhone River. There were two river cruise boats docked near town. We learned that Tournon had a sister city on the other side of the river called Hermitage. They were connected by a wooden pedestrian bridge.
The wooden bridge across the Rhone between Tournon and Hermitage.
We found another aire for the night and headed into town. We did a pass thru Tournon and it was pleasant, and then headed over to Hermitage as Ton wanted to get some pictures of the Rhone and the river cruise boats. Once we reached Hermitage we saw they had a chocolate museum. The chocolate museum was really awesome. It is called Valrhona, and is attached to a factory by the same name. We decided not to take the tour, but just went thru the attached store. The store had all you could eat samples of all of their chocolates. Ron probably ate about 5€ worth of samples, and Ton about 4€ worth. The chocolate was excellent, and we were almost tempted to buy some but we were full from our free samples!
One of the river cruise ships pulling away from the dock in Hermitage.
On the way back we saw some vineyards on the Tournon side of the river that were really interesting looking. They were on this incredible slope of about 15 degrees with old stone walls between parcels. We decided to walk over to get a better view. They were even more impressive up close. It turns out that this is a Grand Cru ( the highest quality wine in France) for Syrah, and is considered the spiritual birth place for Syrah. So we are going to look for a bottle of the local stuff tomorrow to check it out.
The hills above Tournon which are supposed to be the spiritual home of the Syrah grape.
The plan for today was to visit Roussillon which is another one of the most beautiful villages in France, but we also had to find a place to dump our tanks, add water, and we needed to get some propane. Depending on when we had accomplished all of those things we would decide on the next step for the day.
We were up bright and early, so we headed over to Roussillon and were amongst the first arrivals of the day. Roussillon is famous in France for it’s red earth. It is another pretty village and very upscale, in fact Bradjelina (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie) had their French house here. It was once again nice and worth a visit, but frankly the most interesting thing was watching a truck driver maneuver a large delivery truck down a street with literally inches to spare on each side while shop keepers were pulling in awnings, and moving flower pots out of the way. French truck drivers really earn their living here on these narrow streets and roads.
The buildings in Roussillon all have this red tint to them from the surrounding earth.
We have been trying to visit an olive oil factory for about a week and thought we had found one on the way out of Rousillon. After Ron and the GPS had several arguements about the best way we finally arrived at an olive oil factory quite near to where we spent the night. It was one of our disappointments of the trip. The staff was not very helpful, and the promised tour did not exist, so after a short walk thru we were out to François and deciding on our next step.
During the drive we passed thru a nice canyon between Gordes and Orange.
Ron found a winery in the Chateauneuf du Pape area that was a French Passion site, and we decided to see if we could stay there. French Passion sites are provided with our rental, and are wineries and farms throughout France that let you stay on their property for “free” if you are a member. The catch is that you are highly encouraged to sample their product. In the case of our stay tonight for roughly the cost of a normal campground we purchased two very nice bottles of wine, and got to enjoy a beautiful warm evening on a very peaceful winery in Provence. It is worth every penny.
Some of the vineyard at Chateau Cabrieres. If you look carefully you will see the incredible amount of stones in the vineyards. This apparently is what makes Chateauneuf du Pape wines famous.
Today turned into a maintenance day. We are at a campground in Rivieres and we did not move here. After we were done visiting Albi yesterday we moved to this campground for the night, but to tell the truth when I wrote the blog last night we had no idea what town we were in. When we woke up this morning we decided it would be a good day to take care of cleaning up and doing laundry. By the time we were finished with the laundry we decided to stay another night.
While we were doing the laundry Ton was reading about the local area and noted that this is one of the oldest wine producing areas in France. The area is called Gaillac and the original vineyards were planted during the Roman times, and for the Romans it was the major wine production area in Gaul (France more or less).
So when I extended us for another night I asked the owner of the campground to recommend a winery in the area. She recommended Domaine Escausses. So after a quick stop at Lidl (grocery store), and a stop to replace one of our propane bottles we headed up into the countryside to Domaine Escausses.
The mustard is taller and a little further along than what we saw in Burgundy.
The setting for the winery is right out of a movie. The views are spectacular, and the tasting room is small and quite nice. We were met by the 7th generation winemaker who in addition to pouring wine for us was taking care of her children. We had a great discussion about the unique varieties around Gaillac. Her white wines were superb. Her daughter is about 9 or 10 years old and is already in training to be the 8th generation winemaker. She was kind enough to give us some ideas about places to visit going forward. So even though it was a maintenance day we had time to enjoy another touch of France.
We woke up to a pretty steady rain in our Aire in Cluny. Ton pointed out that I had been throwing the term Aire around in the blog when there is nothing like it in the US. An Aire is a very basic place for RV’s to park up for the night. There are thousands of them in France and they range from designated areas in parking lots with no services, to parking areas with electric, water, and dump stations. Most of them do not provide electric, but do provide a place to get rid of the waste water. A surprising amount of them are free, and the rest charge a nominal amount. The towns put them in figuring if you park up for the night you will end up dropping a few Euro somewhere in town.
Typical countryside in Beaujolais. It is as green as Oregon this time of year.
After a quick check of the weather and seeing that it was supposed to clear up shortly, we hit the road. The intent was to follow the route of one of the scenic drives in Ton’s DK Backroads France book. The drive was called the heart of France and was about 60km’s. We managed to keep on it for most of the trip though there were a couple of unexpected detours caused by missed turns.
Typical vineyard just as the bud is breaking on the vine.
Around lunch we came to Chateau de la Greffirere that advertised tasting and a museum. When we arrived we were met by a lady who asked if we spoke any French at all, when we said no, she looked a little flustered but began pouring us wine. A couple of minutes later we were greeted by another lady who completed the tasting and gave us a tour of the facilities. At the end she opened up the real prize for us and as it was lunch time handed us an English book and went off to lunch. The museum was fantastic as it was full of antique wine production equipment. We spent about an hour wandering around and really enjoyed ourselves.
Antique wine making equipment.
Leaving we continued following the Heart of France drive, but went amiss somewhere and ended up in the town of Macon. It felt more urban than anything else we have encountered so we punched in the place we planned to stop for the night and let Garmin guide us from there.
For the night we are staying at a France Passion site on a winery called Domaine Mortet. We were greeted by Jean Pierre Mortet after we parked up for the night. He was just in from the fields, but took us down into his cellar for a personal tasting. It was fun and very interesting speaking to Jean as he is a literally a one man show. He is the owner, winemaker, vineyard manager, and sales manager. He took over the winery from his father, who dropped in while we were tasting. We want to thank Jean Pierre for his hospitality.
Jean Pierre and Ton in the cave of Domaine Mortet. Thanks so much Jean Pierre.
The jet lag is starting to wear off a bit and we were both up and moving around a little earlier. We were undecided about the day as it is supposed to rain this afternoon, and it was spitting a little this morning to give us a taste.
We did want to visit a winery and after much research Ton decided on Bernard Rion Sarl in the village of Vosnee Romanee. It was a great choice. We were met by the owners wife as we pulled up in front. She assigned us to Bastien who gave us a personal tour of the winery and poured about 8 or 9 wines for us to taste. During the pouring the wife came down and offered us some truffles and bread to go with the tasting from their kitchen. A little later the owner Bernard came in and said hello, and offered us some tips on where to find good beer in the area. We decided to buy only two bottles as we do not have a lot of room. Ron was very tempted by the Grand Cru but at 90 Euro a bottle it seemed a little extravagant for anything we could whip up in the RV. We instead settled for a couple of lessor wines that were still very good, and one we will save for a special night before we leave.
Ron pretending he is a tasting room worker in France.
As we are learning the system here we needed some more supplies so we popped in to another grocery store for some more stuff. After tasting some great wine, Ton was fascinated with the wine selection in the grocery and decided to buy a 1.99 Euro bottle to compare with what we had just tasted. We are drinking it as we write this and it is quite enjoyable, though not up to the standard of Bernard Rion Sarl.
Bird along the Canal De Bourgogne. Not a species we are familiar with.
When we arrived at Dijon the weather was not very threatening so we decided to head into town. It was about a mile and half walk mostly along the river to the old part of town. Tomorrow we are going to explore the town seriously, but today we visited the Musee Del Bel Artes in the old Duke of Bourgogne’s palace. It was a very impressive museum with great medieval art and armaments. The palace itself is massive and reflects the power the Duchy of Bourgogne had during the early Renaissance period. It was under construction so there will be more to see in the future.
The square outside the Duke of Bourgogne’s palace.
We decided to head back a little early as the sky was starting to threaten rain. We made it back just in time before a really large thunderstorm moved thru the area complete with lightning and a real gully washer of rain that would have competed with any thunderstorm in the mid-west.
The original plan for today was to visit Auxerre which is an interesting looking medieval town. We are both fighting jet lag so after some conversation at 130 am we both finally fell asleep until after 9am. So the day got off to a late start. The first stop was another grocery store to pick up the things we missed yesterday.
After that we headed into Auxerre to find a place to park. The first choice was going to be the Aire but it was closed. We then decided to bite the bullet and go to the municipal campground, when we arrived the office was staffed, but it turns out it was also closed. They recommended a place in Vincelles and after some wandering around admiring the countryside we ended up in a nice campground, the receptionist informed me that we were the first Americans he had ever checked in, at first he could not find the US in the database in his computer and asked if we minded being listed as British, but a few seconds later he proudly informed us that he had found the US and we would be listed properly in their database.
After a quick lunch we headed to the Bailley Lapierre Caves. The caves were originally an under ground stone quarry to supply building in Paris and operated from the middle ages till the 1920’s. It was converted to a wine production facility in 1972. The scale is impressive as we drove the RV (Ton is calling it Frenchy) into the cave for parking. The entire facility is underground in the caves leftover from the quarry. The tour was pretty interesting though we both regretted our lack of French. We tasted some brut at the end and while we are generally not big fans of sparkling wine we enjoyed this one.
In addition to the wine there is some nice art work along the way.
We finished the day with a nice walk along the canal and River Yonne. The mustard is in full flower and the yellow fields lined the river. It was quite nice.
Mustard field with old church whose bells we have been listening to all day.
From the beginning we intended to visit Grand Coulee Dam. Ton had it on her mini-bucket list. When we woke up in the morning it was raining quite hard and continued the entire time we drove to Grand Coulee. The dam is impressive and is the largest on the Columbia River system. We watched a movie on the construction of the dam and poked around the visitors center for a while before moving on.
The drive out on the Grand Coulee Scenic Highway was very beautiful. Unfortunately with the bad weather there are no pictures. We will definitely be heading that way again in the future when the weather is better.
Looking for a place for the night we decided we needed a full service campground to clean up before heading home the next day. We settled on Wine Country RV park in Prosser Washington. It turned out to be a good choice. As we checked in they told us there were 10 tasting rooms a quarter mile away, and the RV park was having an evening wine tasting.
We headed down to the tasting rooms and sampled some wine, and ended up having a nice dinner. As we were setting up for the night the clouds lifted and we were treated to this sunset.
Ron was very excited as we were going to take one of his favorite drives, the Big Sur. The plan was to drive down to the point were the road is closed. Last winter a giant land slide took out a large part of the road so at this point you drive down about 60 miles along the coast until the road is closed. It is a wonderful road with incredible views. We also intended to visit San Simeon to look at the Elephant Seal colony that has taken up residence there.
The weather was perfect, and probably because of the closure traffic was light. Big Sur lived up to Ron’s expectations though he was worried that Noi and Dang were not impressed. Ton assured him that Dang thought it was great, Noi slept a lot of the way. The detour was a one and a half lane road over the mountains and thru Fort Hunter-Ligget. It was a tough drive, but fortunately we had abandoned Elephant in Monterey and took a rental car for the day. Ron enjoyed the challenge of the road, and everyone else endured.
Part of the Big Sur along PCH,
On our way into San Simeon we passed thru Paso Robles. We decided to stop for lunch at Doce Robles winery. Ton, Dang, and Ron split a bottle of wine with lunch which perked everyone up. We headed to San Simeon where the juvenile elephant seals were in residence, both the adult males and females are off in Alaska. They are still an amazing site and worth a visit if you are in the area.
Juvenile Elephant Seals play fighting.
We ended the night with a great dinner at Monterey Fish House. This was our farewell dinner as tomorrow we are splitting up, with Ron and Ton heading to Oregon, and Dang and Noi heading home to Thailand. We all enjoyed ourselves tremendously as the food was outstanding, and even Noi enjoyed a little wine. If you are in Monterey I highly recommend the Monterey Fish House.
Originally we planned to spend two nights in Yosemite NP, but due to very cold temperatures there and concerns about road closures we had to adjust our plans. So instead we are heading for Monterey California for the next several days and we will have to come up with some new plans.
Today was mostly taken up with driving from Bakersfield to Monterey, and some more shopping at Costco. Ton has shared her love of all things Costco with Noi and Dang and they are embracing it enthusiastically.
A field of nursery flowers in the central valley.
We arrived in time to visit a couple of wineries in the Salinas area. Noi was interested in shooting some of the vineyards as the leaves were turning colors. Ton, Dang, and Ron were much more interested in drinking wine. On an earlier trip we had visited Passagno Winery and really enjoyed ourselves so we returned to see if it was still good. We really enjoyed ourselves and have three bottles to take back with us to California.
“Display” grapes near the entrance to the winery.
Tonight we are settled in at Monterey Pines RV Park next to the Navy Golf Course in Monterey and working on plans for the next two days. Stay tuned to see what we come up with.
Today we are beginning to head home so the primary goal was to get north. We recently joined an organization called Harvest Host which allows people who join to dry camp in participating wineries. Our friends and fellow Malayan owners the Cooks recommended the organization. After an uneventful but windy drive mostly on I-5 we arrived at Indian Peak Winery in the very small town of Manton California.
The drive from I-5 was interesting as we entered a whole different environment closer to eastern Oregon than the Sierra foothills we had been in. As we approached the winery we had several nice views of Mt. Lassen, and determined to return later when the roads thru the park are open all of the way.
Our campsite for tonight.
We were not quite sure what to expect when we pulled into Indian Peak. It is a very small winery closer to the scale we are used to in Oregon than the massive wineries we have been seeing in California. The tasting room was nice but empty when we walked in, and suddenly we heard a voice from upstairs saying I’ll be right down. The voice belonged to Donna the co-owner along with her husband Fred. We tasted and enjoyed all of the wines, with Fred relieving Donna about half way thru the tasting process so she could return to doing her paperwork upstairs. After completing the tasting we purchased a bottle of wine that we intended to drink with dinner, but before we could leave Fred grabbed a couple of the bottles from the tasting table and said “why don’t we go outside and enjoy the day and drink some wine.” We couldn’t pass up an offer like that, and 3 hours later we had drank a lot of wine and had an impromptu barbecue with Donna and Fred. All in all it was a wonderful evening that we thoroughly enjoyed. Good company, good food, and good wine. Donna and Fred have certainly set a high bar for future harvest host visits and we would like to thank them.
Today we planned a day with Supachai and Pae. We started off by going to Folsom Lake to see the fish hatchery there. When we pulled in there was a special event going on, an intercollegiate rowing competition on the lake, we watched the last two events and enjoyed the atmosphere as there were about 20 universities represented.
One of the teams from the University rowing meet on Folsom Lake.
Next we moved on to the Amador County wine region to check out a couple of wineries. We had a nice lunch at one of the wineries, and Supachai became a member of the wine club there so we were entitled to a free lunch at their sister winery. Not being able to pass up a free meal we went to the other winery and enjoyed our second lunch.
The vines were just starting to bud at the winery.
On the way home we noticed that there was a road bike race taking place in the mall near Pae and Supachai’s house, so we stopped and watched the last 10 one mile laps of the race. We are not sure who won as the place we thought was the finish line turned out not to be the finish line!
Inspired by the bicyclists Supachai wanted to go for a bike ride. It was fun to watch Ton deal with gears on a bicycle for the first time in her life. Pae was a great coach and got Ton thru the ride without any damage to her or the bicycle.
We finished the day by having a delicious steak dinner prepared by Supachai, while watching the Anaheim Ducks win in overtime to advance to the next round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Pae and Supachai are always great hosts, but this time we really want to thank them as they truly outdid themselves. Thanks so much for a wonderful weekend.
Today was a day to sight see around Monterey. We started by visiting Point Lobos State Reserve. Another stretch of beautiful coast with views over to Pebble Beach and out to sea. We saw more birds, sea lions, and harbor seals. We walked for a couple of hours just enjoying the view and of course taking many pictures.
Sea Lions on the rocks at Point Lobos State Reserve.
After Point Lobos Ton wanted to head over to Salinas to visit the John Steinbeck Museum. On the way we were amazed with the amount of vegetables and other crops we could not identify. I know the mid-west is supposed to be America’s bed basket, but as you drive thru it is long sections of one crop. What we always find amazing about California is the diversity of crops in small areas, I guess this makes California Americas fruit and vegetable stand.
One of the many vegetable fields we saw around Salinas.
We stopped in a great visitors center in Salinas. The place was tucked into a strip mall, but was staffed with the typical friendly people you find in all visitors centers, and had a plethora of information about the central coast and the rest of California. Ton loved the free local raisins.
The Steinbeck Museum was nice, though one of the exhibits was closed and they were preparing for a festival. I enjoyed the exhibits on his early life in Salinas and how the local area influenced his writing. But the highlight for me was seeing Rocinante Steinbeck’s truck camper he used for researching Travels With Charley this book was one of my inspirations for doing this. I only wish I had Steinbeck’s ability to write about what we are seeing, but I am sure I am not the first person who wished they could write like Steinbeck.
Finished the day by visiting Pessagno Winery. We enjoyed our talk with the tasting room manager Chris about the Salinas Valley, the Philippine influence on the local culture, and how the local people felt about Steinbeck. The wine was good also.
We ended the day with a dinner at Pebble Beach. The sunset was a bit of a disappointment, but not the day.
Taormina was on Ton’s must see list today. I made a scouting run down to the terminal to discover the best way to Taormina. Option 1 was a hop on hop off bus that gave us use of the tourist bus and the regular bus for €14 each or take a regular bus for €3. We were torn about what to do, and still had not made up our mind when we got to the terminal. We finally chose the regular bus, but after we bought the ticket the cashier who must have heard our debate, asked the Hop on Hop off bus driver to let us ride to Taormina, so we ended up with the best of both worlds. This good samaritan was the same guy who had rebuffed my earlier attempt to ask him about the bus to Taormina in halting Italian, with a gruff “What do you want?” in English.
Taormina is the town between the two high points of land.
Taormina has been a town since the ancient Greeks, and it is really a spectacular site on a large bluff overlooking the harbor at Giardini-Naxos. We were dropped off at a nondescript bus terminal, but as soon as we began hiking up the road to the town the views were spectacular. As we got closer to the town center we both became more charmed. Despite the fact that Taormina is definitely on the tourist trail, complete with all of the brand name stores lining its main street, it still had a spirit that we both really enjoyed.
The main road in Taormina lined with big brand shops, but still beautiful.
The town meanders up and down hill. The main road is wide and flat, but all of the roads off of it are either up or down and quite narrow, which adds to the atmosphere. Off of the main road the shops were run by locals who were very friendly without being pushy. Ton had picked out two potential restaurants for lunch, but one had gone out of business, and the other was not open. Just down the street was a cheese store that advertised lunch and we were both drawn to it. We went inside to take a look and saw a restaurant in the back. We asked the lady at the counter if they served lunch and she said yes in an hour, would we like a reservation. Something I have learned is that in romance languages my short name “Ron” is perplexing, so when she acted confused about my name I switched it to Ronaldo, she immediately connected the dots and had a good laugh with one of the customers.
Typical side “road” in Taormina.
Having an hour to kill we decided to head up to the Greek Theater which is the big attraction in town. When we got there it was €10 to get in, and since we have seen a lot of antiquity sites on this trip decided to pass. We still had time to kill so we went to the municipal park and sat down on a park bench to enjoy the views.
The view from our park bench in Taormina.
The lunch at the cheese shop was superb. We opted for a Sicilian food and wine tasting. It consisted of three wines, and a plate of cheeses, meats, and grilled vegetables. We have had a lot of good meals on our trips in Europe, but we both agreed that so far this is the best. The food and wine while simple was fresh and delicious. The service of the husband and wife was great and they enjoyed explaining the food and wine to us. They were clearly proud of their Sicilian heritage and happy to share it with us. At the end neither of us could bring ourselves to leave so we stalled with a coffee, and an aperitif. Ton was tempted to return for dinner, but they were full, though we could tell if we pushed and had some flexibility they would have found a way to accommodate us. We rarely mention places by name but if you are ever in town do not miss La Bottega Del Formaggio.
I really enjoyed this meal much more than my expression shows!
Our first full day in Italy was a treat. We were still a little unsettled about our plans for Sicily when we woke up. Marsala is famous for a type of fortified wine and while I was sleeping Ton found a place where we could have a tour. So while I was making coffee she proposed we spend the day here and take the tour. The winery was too far away to walk to, and it required reservations so we had to find out if we could get in and arrange for a taxi to take us there. I went up to the office and asked if they could arrange a taxi, and call the winery for us as we do not have a sim card for Italy in our phone. The owner of the campground said he would take us and the winery could accommodate us at 10am. Since it was already 9:15, I ran back to tell Ton to get ready as we needed to leave in 20 minutes. Giacomo the owner of the campground ran off to change into better clothes and also to quickly give the van from the campground a wash. We arrived at Florio winery with 10 minutes to spare.
Our breakfast today, not healthy but delicious.
Florio Winery was founded in the early 1800’s to produce Marsala. It was the first Marsala Wine producer to be owned by Italians as prior to that the fortified wine industry in Marsala was dominated by English. The Florio family went on to become quite a conglomerate including wine, shipping, agriculture, and light industry. At one time they were by far the richest family on Sicily. They also made their mark by providing some of the original assistance to Garibaldi as he began his campaign to unite Italy into one country. Like many family dynasties the first generation makes all of the money, the second generation maintains the fortune, and the third generation squanders it all. The third generation of the Florio’s ended up selling off the winery to raise cash to pay for their extravagant lifestyle.
A 700 liter wine cask built for an exhibition in San Francisco in 1915. It is still in use today for production of cooking wine.
After we completed the wine tasting we followed the harbor to the old town. Things are scruffier in Sicily, but very charming. We enjoyed walking around town looking at the sites when we realized that our breakfast had been fortified wine. We found a nice restaurant near Garibaldi square. The food was outstanding, and the service was really outstanding. The waiter was a young guy who may have been the son of the owner, and if not acted like he was. At the end we asked for coffee and when we commented on how much we liked it he lit up and told us it was a local coffee and talked us thru the beans and roasting process with great passion.
The Garibaldi Gate near the point where Garibaldi landed with his initial 100 supporters in his successful campaign to unify Italy.
We arranged for Giacomo to pick us up at a local grocery store. After delivering us to François I saw him sitting in a chair near the office having a beer and struck up a conversation. It turns out between driving us to town and picking us up he had spent the day harvesting the olives from the trees around the campground. Talking to him it turns out he had retired from the Italian Army after 20 years and returned home to Marsala to open the campground on part of his fathers farm. He took us around the campground showing us the different plants and herbs he had planted around the campground. It was a treat to spend some time with him.
Some of the olives harvested by Giacomo the owner of the campground we are staying in.
The problem with traveling during shoulder season is the weather is unpredictable. It has been a wet October in Spain, and it culminated with today. When we checked the weather last night they predicted a very large storm with possible flash floods, high winds and thunderstorms. It was supposed to last all day. Our original thoughts were to begin moving north towards France by bounding up the coast to Roses. But when we checked the weather there it was actually supposed to be worst than Mataros. Eventually we decided to hunker down for the day.
This picture is recycled as the weather did not allow us to get anything nice today.
Unfortunately the weatherman got it right and it was spectacularly bad weather all day. We were a little surprised that so many people were choosing to leave when the weather was so bad, and we were beginning to think we were wimps for not carrying on with our plans. It turns out we did not know that today was the last day the campground was open this year and everyone has to be out by tomorrow morning.
We were going a little stir crazy so we decided to see if the campground had anything planned for the evening, and they did, a wine tasting. We signed up and it became the highlight of our day. The tasting was by a local winery in Mataro, and there were only 6 people at the tasting, two English couples and us. Laura the representative from the winery had brought 4 wines to taste. She did a great job of explaining the characteristics of the wine from Mataro, and the wines were quite good. During the tasting we struck up a conversation with one of the English couples , and at the end of the tasting Laura surprised us by putting the 4 bottles in the center of the table and told us we were free to finish them, not knowing this we had also purchased a wine from them, so the 4 of us had the duty of finishing off 5 bottles of wine. Lyndsey and her husband John were kind enough to invite us over for supper so we could have some food with the wine. It turned into a fun night, and it was nearly 1am when we made it to bed having done our duty and finished off all of the wine. Thanks for the exceptional hospitality Lyndsey and John.
Tonight we are parked at a winery called Cellar Battl Artcava. We are little bit southwest of Barcelona. This area is known for a sparkling wine called Cava.
We had booked a visit to the largest producer of Cava in Spain called Codorniu, it has been in business since 1541, and is still owned by the 18th generation of the original family. We both woke up early and even though it was only a couple of hours to the winery we left pretty early, and sure enough arrived very early for our 330 pm tour. After looking at our options we decided to head into one of the larger towns nearby to see if we could knock out some laundry. That did not happen, but we did find a Lidl which is Ton’s favorite grocery store here.
After spending some money in Lidl we headed back to the winery and still had some time to kill so, so we settled in and did some reading. Finally we went in and had the light lunch we had scheduled, we met a couple from Austin who were touring Italy and Spain by car. We swapped stories about wine regions before beginning the tour.
In the foreground is a very large vessel used for olive oil production in the 16th century, in the background is a wine press from the 19th century.
We have been on a lot of wine tours but this one was unique. This is an industrial sized winery and they have the capacity to produce one million bottles in a year, though last year they “only” made 600,000 bottles. Around 1911 they focused exclusively on Cava which is a sparkling wine. The tour focused on their storage caves which are about 90 feet underground and according to the guide cover 13.5 km’s of tunnels. To prove the extent of the tunnels at one point they loaded us all onto a train and drove us around the tunnels for about 10 minutes. They are really vast. The wine was good, but we still are not great fans of sparkling wines.
Part of the extensive cellars used to store Cava while it ages 2 to 10 years.
After the tour we moved over to Cellar Battl Artcava which is supposed to be located 5 minutes from the source of the original vineyards in Catalan, so it is the Cava (winery) closest to the origin of wine here.
We have been in Catalan for a few days now and are beginning to get even more confused with romance languages. The signs here are in Catalan and Spanish. Catalan unlike Basque is a romance language, but it is as different from Spanish as French or Portuguese is. As an example wine in French is Vin, in Spanish is Vino, and in Catalan is Vi. There has been a bit of a political uproar as the Catalan parliament voted to leave Spain last year, but driving around there is no sign that anything is happening to move that forward or to stymie it, but of course we cannot read the signs in Spanish or Catalan!
This vineyard is 2 minutes from the location of the original vineyard in Catalan.
The aire we are staying at is owned by a Spanish/British couple who are RVer’s also. You can tell as they designed it in a way that is really user friendly, their experience shows. They are considering a trip to the US so we exchanged some information with them.
Later in the day we headed into Malaga which is a town we are both familiar with from school. We took a local bus into town, as we came around a point of land we had our first view of the harbor. To our dismay their were 3 cruise ships in port including the largest one we have ever seen. It turns out there was actually a 4th one but it was a sailing cruise ship and did not stand out. We knew then that the town would be packed.
Two of the cruise ships in port, the one in the foreground is a normal sized one, the one in the background is the largest we have ever seen.
Malaga had a really nice vibe to it, and we enjoyed wandering around town. As usual we checked out the cathedral, the castle (Arabic), and some old buildings. The old town is dwarfed by the new town, but it was still quite large. The Spanish do a great job of making their down town cores pedestrian friendly. The walkways are wide, and most streets have very limited access for cars and delivery trucks, so the roads can also safely be used for pedestrian traffic. Ton really loves how they make it easy to enjoy a stroll.
Typical Spanish “street” scene.
The high light of the day was the Picasso Museum. Picasso was originally from Malaga and the museum did a good job of showing the different phases of his development. Unfortunately there are no photos allowed in the museum. It is an excellent museum without having any of his famous works. Because of this they focused more on how his work developed from his early days as a student until his late works in his 90’s.
Interior courtyard of the Picasso Museum.
After that we were wandering down a street looking for the market when we came upon an old bar that looked interesting, it was founded in 1840 and was the official supplier of sherrie for Queen Isabel II before she abdicated and moved to France. They served glasses of different sherries out of giant wooden casks. They had a variety of different local sherries which is a regional specialty around Malaga. They also had a very interesting way of keeping the tab, after you order they take a piece of chalk and write the amount you owe for the round on the wooden bar in front of you. It’s simple and you know right where you stand, and as an Englishman next to us explained you do not have to worry about losing your spot at the bar when you go to the bathroom, because for someone to take your spot at the bar, they also inherit your tab! Unfortunately we forgot to get a liter to go.
Some of the sherrie barrels, a little out of focus after sampling the wares!
We had wanted to visit some of the caves under Laguardia, but when we arrived yesterday it was too late to get in. We decided to stay around another day and get in a tour.
With time in the morning we lazed around a bit before heading over to Laguardia. We had a specific winery we were most interested in, but today they were only offering tours in Spanish, we contemplated going along, but they said it would be a waste as they spent a lot of time explaining the process and if we were not fluent it would be boring.
While waiting for the tour we watched the Basque dancers on the clock tower on the town hall.
Instead we went to another winery and booked ourselves on a tour of Bodega Carlos San Pedro. We had a couple of hours to kill so we settled into a coffee shop and watched a replay of the Real Madrid game with the local team Since we did not know the score it was live to us. In the end the local team scored literally at the final whistle, and all of the locals who had kindly not given away the score shared a big high five with us.
Ton liked the Basqueness of this fellow.
When we got to Carlos San Pedro it was packed. In fact the owner was startled about how many English speaking guests he had. Towards the end he began asking people to wait 15 minutes and he would run a second tour. Ton and I decided to join his tour, as he was clearly the owner and winemaker. It was a good decision as Carlos gave an in depth and clear description of the winemaking process in the Rioja region. He showed us the original winemaking facility before admitting that they had moved to a modern facility about 15 years ago. They did have a splendid video of the process using the old equipment including a hand operated press that was still on display.
After the explanation we went down into the caves under the winery to see the cement tanks they use, as well as the barrel and bottle rooms. The caves have been under the town for hundreds of years, and go back to the time when the town was a fortress. There are over 300 caves under the town, and many have been used for winemaking and storage for the last 150 years.
Ron looking into the 6000l tank of Rioja Wine.
It ended with a taste of the wine that was in a 6000 liter tank aging, as well as two from the bottle. The wine was superb, and we have been on a lot of wine tours in our time, but this was one of the best.
Thank you Carlos.
It was still pretty early so we decided to move south a little bit to get us positioned for another town tomorrow. Tonight we are in the parking lot of a major grocery store with 6 other motorhomes. We were able to get some supplies. The drive to here was thru the Cebollera National Park, and it was quite beautiful, though the weather was a little sketchy or we may have stopped for the night. It gives us something to aim for in the future.
Today we left the land of Pintxo (Basque) and entered the land of Tapas (Spanish). We stopped in two towns today. The first town was a planned stop to see some things we were interested in, and the second was picked based on it being a good distance to drive, with a decent place to sleep.
We spent a noisy night in the parking lot of a Leclerc grocery store in Soria. The store was located in a kind of industrial park, and had a lot of truck traffic going by. Both of us have a bit of a bug so neither one of us slept very well between being sick and the noise of the traffic all night.
Our plan for the day was to head for the town of Aranda de Duero. It is another old fortified town with a bunch of caves under it that were originally for defense of the town, but have recently been converted to wine production. The drive from Soria was easy, in general the roads in Spain are a little wider and a little straighter than France, and this results in quicker and easier trips between towns. We arrived a little before noon, found the aire for the town and headed into town to check it out. After a quick stop at the visitors center we headed off to a Bodega that also had a cave under it that we could tour. We arrived at the Bodega at the same time as a Danish couple so we went on the tour together. When the tour was done we walked around town, and decided we had seen enough of Aranda. As it was still early we decided to drive a couple more hours.
The cave below the Bodega in Aranda.
After some research we picked the town of Tordesillas based on it being the distance we wanted to drive with a good place to sleep for the night. Our intention was to get to the campground early, and take it easy for the rest of the night. But as we pulled in the town looked interesting, and the restaurant was offering a great deal on a Asada (meat) platter for two. So we ended up walking into the town to admire the churches, and having probably our best meal so far in Spain. It was a very nice ending to the day. During the meal we ended up talking to a Dutch/English couple who raved about Portugal. We are getting really tempted to visit.
Ton really likes these trees, we think these are Spanish evergreen oaks.The town of Tordesillas.
