Thank you Queen Elizabeth for having your Jubilee and thank you Wifey Yvonne Chan for coming to visit me in London so we can do this awesome trip! Wine, sunshine, beautiful Spanish countryside, tapas, great friends (Kevin, Diana, Min, and Andrew)and my Wifey and hubby, what else can a girl ask for!
This trip was particularly adventurous as we had an extra long weekend to explore. We arrived in Bilboa, drove to the Rioja region basing ourselves in a tiny village of Abalos and from there touring the region north, south, east, and west, visiting Laguardia, Labastida, Samaniego, Elciego, Labraza, Haro, Brinas and everything in between, including many-many wineries J I was the DD, so I had to hold back on the wine tasting, which is probably a good thing as it’s too easy to get carried away when you are surrounded by so much great and cheap wine!
Kevin and Diana got an early start, arriving in Bilbao the night before us. This gave a great excuse to drive through the city and check it out (getting lost 10 times really helped check it out hehe), and lunch on some delicious cookies they managed to find. From there on, we hit the road to Rioja with Haro wineries being our stop number one! The driving to and through Rioja was very enjoyable, with rolling hills littered with vinyards, mountains, cathedrals and cute villages as the backdrop. We hit up Bodegas Roda where the service was fantastic, and we found our fave olive oil and one of our fave reds, the Sela. Later in the day we also hit up CVNE, a much larger and commercial winery with ok wines but with a very cool tasting room containing a bar from the 1800’s as its centrepiece. In between we took some time to explore Haro and grab lunch at a local resto specializing in lamb roast. I pretty much had a plate of jamon and lamb for lunch – it was meatlover’s paradise that became our lunch and dinner. It was then time to go to the hotel for a night of more wine sampling and some very competitive rounds of Uno and Connect Four. The hotel called Villas de Abalos deserves a special mention. Located in a tiny village of Abalos, not too big or too small and family run, it was a perfect base. The rooms were quaint and had great views, and hotel itself was very pretty. The best feature was definitely the home made breakfast served by the sweetest lady called Emma. We were absolutely dotted on by her with freshly squeezed juices and all the tasty food we can eat. Poor Min was sick and Emma made her home made soup to make sure she eats well and feels better. We wanted to kidnap her on our way back, but couldn’t decide who she should come with hehe. The owner of the hotel actually also ran his own winery (and was alittle unhappy that we brough outsider wines...but how can you not when you are surrounded by hundreds of wineries!)
The following day was Sunday and we were a little worried since it’s Spain and of course everything is closed on Sundays. Everything is closed anyhow everyday for siestas, which are mandatory from noon to 4 pm. Our plan was to visit Remelluri winery that is one of the few ones open on Sunday and then spend the rest of the day throwing a BBQ and enjoying the wine and the local goodies: chorizo, cheese, bread and olive oil. Unfortunately poor Min was in bed with a cold so she missed out on the day L Remelluri is a stunning winery, but they only make one kind of wine. What they also do in the back (as we have sneakily discovered) is that they smoke their own bacon! It’s a huge property so you can actually hike for hours around it as it goes all the way from the valley up the mountain (naturally, we were too lazy to do that hehe). After the winery, we made our way to the town of San Vincente de la Sonsierra village, famous for its grand monastery on top of the hill. We really wanted to check out the monastery, but never made it there as we drove by a very lively looking street with people standing outside the tavernas and drinking on the street, women in traditional costumes and horses (for whatever reason), so we decided to check out the festivities. So instead, we ended up going to a bar and forgetting all about the monastery hehe. On the way back we stopped by a bunch of wineries, taking the trial and error approach to see if they opened. Everything was closed until this last winery right in our village. We ended up having the best time there! The owner didn’t speak any English and was a jolly middle aged Spanish man. He actually took us to his organic vinyard to try the white wine he makes – only the second white wine in Rioja as it’s not the region that typically make white BUT it ended up being everybody’s fave wine of the whole trip! And each bottle was only 4 euros/pop. There ya go, amazing organic white wine for 4 euros a bottle = find of the century! We then proceeded into the wine cellar where the guy actually opened up his barrels to let us try the wine – we’ve never seen that anywhere. It was great because he actually matched us glass for glass every wine we tried. Maybe that’s why he was so jolly! Power to him!
We were now well stocked with wine and meats to do our BBQ. We ended up going to one of the parks set up with barbeques to have it. Kevin had the great idea to take the back road, which was pretty much up the mountain through tight and winding Labastida streets and then down the mountain on a dirty road. The route was scenic, but not very fun for the driver (i.e. me lol). We had a blast barbequing! Watching the boys work the barbeque, drinking our delicious white, and then feasting on chorizo, Iberian ham, stuffed peppers, cheese and bread while basking in the sun was wonderful. Watching Andrew trying to climb his tipsy way out of a ditch was equally priceless lol. The theme pretty much continued into the evening and we came home to find Min in a much better shape, so overall the day was a great success!
On our last full day there, we felt like we’ve done enough drinking and wanted to do more exploring. That sensible idea was totally overturned later in the afternoon where the boys decided to buy MORE wine. We ended up with 7 bottles of wine that we didn’t drink as a result lol. Like I said, it’s easy to overdo it in Rioja! We’ve visited the crooked hotel in the nearby village (which wasn’t really crooked), spent some time in Laguardia, visited the medieval town of Labraza (that was COMPLETELY dead; it was eerie! We were greeted by a single old man who went back to his house, got a giant key with which he opened up the town’s cathedral, and proceeded to give us a full cathedral and town tour in Spanish. That was both a cool and an uncomfortable experience lol...it’s also how harrow movies start haha), had lunch in Viana, stopped at one last winery and made it home to have home-cooked dinner at our hotel. Whew!
Tuesday was the last day of our extra long Queen’s Jubilee weekend, and it was unfortunately time for our group to part ways as Yvonne and I proceeded to San Sebastian for 3 more days of sunshine and Spanish food, while everyone else had to return back to work.
San Sebastian is a beach town 40 km from the border with France, and is a beautiful town with an even more beautiful La Concha beach, which is regarded as one of the nicest beaches in Europe. We got a kick-butt apartment 5 min walk from the beach which served as our base for the next 3 days. Unfortunately the weather was a mix of sun and clouds, so we didn’t spend as much time on the beach as we would’ve hoped. What we did instead though is that we ran along the beach and back, a good 5 km run, which you have to understand is impressive after 1 solid week of drinking wine and stuffing our faces! We spent the rest of our time there exploring the town, its cute winding streets and cathedrals, shopping (damn you Zara that’s so much cheaper in Europe), and sampling various bakeries and tapas places. I was in heaven as everything had cheese and seafood. Poor Yvonne wasn’t as it’s the 2 things she can’t eat :S But the many delicious bakeries kept her happy! We took half the day to hike around the town’s main hill stat houses a giant statue of Jesus (a la Rio) for more sweet views.
San Sebastian was not nice to us on the last day as it started to rain, so we took off to Bilbao to explore the city for the day before it was time to go back. It was our least fave place in the Basque country, but we glad we got to experience that. The Guggenheim museum area was really nice, and so was the main shopping street (and the shopping was nice too! I love Spanish fashion!). What wasn’t nice is the rest of the city. At one point we found ourselves on the wrong side of the tracks (literally) where on just one street we saw a woman doing her business on the street, a whole bunch of shady individuals and a creepy guy taking pictures of us). Now we can say we’ve experienced (and survived) the shady side of Bilbao hehe.
Sigh, I miss our trip! Here’s a visualization of our adventures J
The Crew minus Min for that day on the organic wine farm
Poser ladies
The wine cellar
And our antics after some wine tasting :D
The lovely picnic
...and the lovely Rioja countryside views
Our matching wheels :D
Yvonne with the Labraza mayor
Our other friend, the organic winemaker
And our lovely Emma who adopted us all for the weekend
Lamb by the bowlfull!
Meeting sunset in San Sebastian!
Followed by sightseeing, bakeries, more sightseeing and more food
Bilbao Highlights--the Guggenheim and the flower puppy
