Trip Report
Chapter 6
The Tour
Madrid, Escorial, Barcelona, and Wine/Cava tasting
Madrid: Saturday, October 22
We started our city tour with a short bus ride to the center of the old section of Madrid, then started a walking tour. Our first significant stop was at the “Palya Major” or City Square, only this was a BIG city square. There were five story buildings surrounding the square and a monument with King Felipe III astride a horse in the middle of the square.
King Filipe is surrounded by a large city square.
We walked through the square fairly early in the morning, so it was rather quiet. You can get a better idea of the size of the square and how quiet it was in this video. It turns out, however, that if we had come through this square a day later, it would have been much different. I happened to catch a news broadcast the next evening showing the annual herding of the sheep through the square and there were more than a thousand sheep, and a few goats, in the square. It is apparently an annual celebration of the moving of the sheep from the summer grazing areas to the winter grazing fields and the herders make sure everyone is aware of this by herding the animals through the square.
We continued our walking tour through and by several notable buildings and streets with little plazas and monuments to various Spanish notables. All this was OK, but I really preferred some of the shops we saw along the way.
I thought a “Ham cutting course” might be interesting and tasty.
After about a 30-minute walk, we arrived at a large grouping of very important appearing buildings. The first of these was the Almudena Cathedral (Santa María la Real de La Almudena) and, although it was still early in the day, there was already a long line of people waiting outside for a tour.
The Almudena Cathedral: notice the number of people in line in front of it.
We had already toured a number of churches and cathedrals (and mosques) on this trip, so I was perfectly happy to not stand in line to see another one. Just across a plaza was another very large building, the Royal Palace of Madrid. Although it is the official residence of the Spanish royal family, it is now only used for state ceremonies as well as housing many famous pieces of art and the national armory. With over 3400 rooms, it is the largest royal palace in Europe. It is also open for tours when not hosting official events. Some of the people in our group did make reservations to visit the cathedral and/or the palace that afternoon.
Walking by one side of the royal palace
There is a metro (subway and bus service) station underground adjacent to the palace and we went there to meet up with our bus for transportation to our next destination, the Museo National del Prado. The Museum Del Prado is the main Spanish national art museum and it is a very big place.
The Museo Nacional del Prado art museum.
Our group had reservations to tour the art museum and we got a nice guided tour that took about 90 minutes, but touched only a small part of the art on display. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed inside the galleries, so I have no examples to show here. The museum is famous for its collection of El Greco, and Francisco Goya, both of which had distinctive styles and which we got somewhat of an education about. Other significant collections which we did not tour include Rubens, Bosch, Velazquez and others. It was quite an impressive facility.
A short distance from the Museo del Prado, at the intersection of a couple of main streets, is the Cibeles Fountain and monument.
The fountain at the Plaza de Cibeles
The location of this plaza and monument is significant in that it is the symbolic meeting point for the several adjacent districts so it represents a sort of “coming together” of the people of Madrid and the plaza is now considered an important symbol of Madrid.
In the afternoon we joined most of our tour group in an optional tour to El Escorial, a very large complex about an hour outside of Madrid. Technically, the name San Lorenzo de El Escorial refers to a town west of Madrid, but most visitors are actually referring to the Royal Site in that town. The Escorial is a large complex of buildings that were conceived by King Phillip II as a burial place for his father, a monastery, and a palace. It is sometimes referred to as the El Escorial Mausoleum, but it is very much more than that. First, it is very large, almost on the same scale as the royal palace in Madrid. It took 20 years to build and was completed in 1584, although it has been modified and expanded some since that time.
One side of the Escorial, which is essentially a square building.
We entered the building through a lobby entrance which opened into a courtyard and, from that point on, no photographs were allowed, so I have very few images here.
The courtyard was the last place I could take photos.
Although it appears to be one large building, it is considered to have three unique components: the church, the [monastery, royal palace, and college], and the library. The first area we visited was the main room of the library and it was impressive for today: I can only imagine how it seemed four hundred years ago. There are also many paintings and other artwork by masters from Spain and around the world. One really strange area was the “underground” (probably two floors below ground level) Royal Pantheon chapel, with the bodies of several Spanish kings and other noble men (and a few women). It was fascinating (and I am sure some people would love to study it for a long time), but I was rather glad to get back to ground level and sunlight.
Well, not so much sunlight after all. When we next looked out a window, it was raining outside: not real hard, but certainly enough to get wet on our walk back to the bus.
I did sneak this photo out a window: see the rain?
There is a pretty extensive garden on the outside of the building and we could see the rain coming down and lots of puddles. Our bus was parked about a half mile away so this looked like a rather wet walk. Thankfully, by the time we actually exited the buildings, the rain had almost stopped, so we really only had to avoid some puddles.
We rode the bus back to Madrid, rested a little while, and went out to find some dinner. We called it an early night as we were to get up a little early in the morning.
High Speed Train to Barcelona: Sunday, Oct 23
The early rise was to allow a early departure to the Madrid train station for our ride to Barcelona. Our train was to be one of the “High Speed” trains and it would take about 3 hours to cover the 625 km (390 miles) which would have taken all day and then some on the tour bus.
Our train was the one to Barcelona Sants at 9:30. It was on time.
We got through the check-in process and security (not quite as severe as when flying) and settled in for the 90 minute wait for our train. We had to manage our own luggage this time and that was no problem for us, but some people had very large suitcases or multiple suitcases to manage. The luggage would become more of an issue in a few minutes. We found places to sit and spent the time reading and occasionally getting up to wander around the terminal. When the time came for our train, there was some confusion as to which platform it would depart from, but that got sorted out when the train actually rolled into the station. We filed down the ramp to the platform with our luggage under the assumption (from Andrea) that our luggage would be stored in an area of our train car with us. One of the train/station staff informed us that, no, our luggage would go in a separate baggage car and we had to organize and load it. We soon formed sort of a “bucket brigade” passing bags to Andrea who was inside the baggage car, shoving bags up into shelves. We got it all loaded and to our assigned car and seats with a couple of minutes to spare.
Once underway the ride was smooth and relatively quiet. There were some entertainment screens with shows in Spanish and, in the front of the car, a sign showing, among other things, the current speed of the train. Most of the time the speed was between 290 and 300 kph (about 183 mph) and I saw it hit 300 one time.
If you look close, you might be able to read the 294 kph.
It certainly seemed fast enough to me. Sitting relatively close to the ground you have a much better sense of speed than you do thousands of feet high in an airliner. You can get some idea of the sense of speed in this short video. We spent most of the time reading and looking out the window at the scenery and the changing agricultural crops. It started as mostly olive trees and pastures and gradually changed to some vineyards and even vegetable farms as we neared Barcelona
Close to Madrid: mostly pastures olive trees, and open land
Along the way we made three stops, with only 3 or 4 minutes at each stop. As we approached Barcelona, we were hoping that we would have longer than that to unload our luggage; we were a little nervous that the train might start up and leave with some of our luggage still on board. As we pulled into the Barcelona station, our group got off the train as quickly as possible and headed for the baggage car. The bucket brigade line was formed again with the men lifting and hauling the bags and the women attempting to organize the bags once they hit the platform. Everyone worked as quickly as they could, but it turned out that we had plenty of time. As a group, we all grabbed our own luggage and headed inside the Barcelona train station.
We made it into the Barcelona train station.
We had to kill about 15 minutes in the station while Andrea found our bus and got it into position where we could board it, but soon we were on our way. We did not go directly to our hotel, but instead took a brief tour of part of Barcelona, including the site of the 1992 Olympics and a hill overlooking Barcelona. From the bus, I took a photo that turned out to have a lot of history in it.
There is a lot of history included in this photo.
The two towers at the edges of the foreground are call the Venetian Towers and were modeled after the campanile in St Marks Square in Venice (which we had seen last year). Straight down the street is a fountain (no water flowing this day) called The Magic Fountain of Montjuïc (Font màgica de Montjuïc). “Magic” because it was built in only one year in 1929 in time for the “Great Universal Exposition” which was held in 1929. At night there are many colored lights that illuminate the waters, proving a kind of light show not unlike the one at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.
Next you can see four columns that don’t support anything. Four columns were originally built in 1919 to symbolize the four stripes of the Catalan senyera, a symbol of the Catalan movement. The columns were destroyed in 1928 to prevent them being seen during the 1929 Universal Exposition, but new columns were constructed in 1999. (As usual, there is more to the story, but I don’t have the time/space to go into it here.) Behind the columns is the Palau Nacional (Catalan for “National Palace”) which was completed in 1924. It was the primary structure in support of the Universal Exposition of 1929 and, a few years after the exposition was over, it was converted to be the National Art Museum of Calalonia and currently contains over 5000 artworks.
Although you cannot see it in the photo above, just behind the Palau Nacional is the site of most of the 1992 Olympic events. Most of it is still in use today and many of the Olympic symbols are still evident.
This was the symbol of the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.
We rode around the area, seeing may of the venues for the Olympics. Just the other side of the Olympic area is a hill overlooking the city of Barcelona. Much of the hill is a park area with fountains, picnic areas and places to lay on the grass and relax, as many people were doing this day. It did afford a good view of the city.
Downtown Barcelona straight ahead, the port/harbor on the right.
We took in the views with Andrea trying to point out some of the landmarks, some of which we would be visiting over the next day or two. We loaded back into the bus and headed for our hotel, which was not very far away, on La Parallel street, just a short walk from the harbor. We checked in and got organized and decided to take a walk. Andrea had mentioned several times that one of the main avenues in Barcelona, Las Ramblas was an interesting place to visit and was not far from our hotel, so we headed that direction.
On the way to Las Ramblas there were the usual narrow streets with lots of people wandering around. We noticed that there was a police station on this street, so perhaps that is why everyone was behaving.
Shops, small restaurants, and a police station on this street
There was the normal mix of shops, restaurants and such, including one restaurant with a rather, um, interesting name. There seemed to be mostly young people milling around the restaurant. Perhaps they were hesitant to go in, not sure of what they would find.
An interesting, if not so imaginative, name
We continued on and when we came to Las Rambles, there was no doubt that we had found the right street. Las Rambles is a wide pedestrian stret, flanked on both sides by a one or two lane vehicle lane. The pedestrian part was packed with people. After all, this was Sunday afternoon on a very nice day with beautiful weather. There were many shops lining the vehicle streets and also lots of vendors in temporary and permanent stores along the pedestrian area. There were all kinds of shops, including all kinds of souvenirs, shoe sellers, book stores, and even stores selling vegetable and flower seeds.
Las Ramblas on a beautiful but crowded Sunday afternoon
Unfortunately, this is also where we experienced the only occasion where we felt we got “taken” by a merchant. We wanted a light snack and decided that a glass of wine with some calamari would be good. The first place we stopped at only sold wine by the bottle and we didn’t want that much, so we continued on. The next place was advertising Sangria and that sounded good to us so we ordered two glasses and an order of calamari. When the sangria arrived, it was in huge, probably one liter, beer steins. Of course, it was half ice, and the sangria had very little wine and almost no added fruit, just 90% fruit juice. When we got the bill, the sangria was 18 euro per glass. Perhaps we should have asked the price or checked the size of the glass prior to ordering, but the high price and poor quality of the sangria just left a bad taste.
We continued walking up Las Rambles to the Placa de Catalynua, a large plaza and square considered to be in the center of the city, with several fountains and monuments. There were many people milling around and a couple of people were exploring the water around the fountains. In the southern corner of the plaza is a sculpture of La Deessa (The Goddess) in front of a stone monument.
I don’t think the boy was impressed by the sculpture of La Deessa.
We wandered around the square for a little while then retraced our steps back down Las Ramblas and back to our hotel before heading out for dinner. Andrea had described several areas where there should be street-side restaurants serving tapas and local dishes, but when we explored those areas, it seemed that the restaurants were not open yet or there were no available tables. We wandered a little further and located a good possibility, although it did seem to have a bit of a “Spanish Sports Bar” atmosphere. The food and service was good and the price was very reasonable, unlike our earlier experience along Las Ramblas.
Barcelona: Monday, October 24
The agenda today includes a Barcelona city tour (via bus and walking) in the morning and an afternoon exploring on our own. We boarded the bus and started by cruising along the harbor and waterfront, admiring all the sailboats in the several marinas and the large yachts lined up along some of the docks.
You can see some of the yachts and just a few sailboats here.
We were soon to find that Barcelona seems to have a very high interest level in the architects who work there. Buildings and even plazas are named for the architects who designed them. We stopped alongside one large marina to admire some of the more recent or modern buildings that had been built since the 1992 Olympics.
Just one of several marinas full of sailboats
Several of the buildings were rather “unique” in appearance, and I could not keep up with which buildings had been designed by which architects.
Just a couple of the unique buildings in one small area.
Of course, we had to get at least one photo of us here, just to prove we really did visit Barcelona.
Yes, we really did get to Barcelona,
We got back on the bus, rode to one of the older sections of the city, and walked through some of the narrow streets and large plazas. The photo below is an example of the many buildings and monuments that had been adorned with various displays of support for Ukraine in their current struggle.
One of the many flags, signs, and banners showing support for Ukraine
The many narrow streets had the usual combinations of shops, restaurants, and small hotels. Some store windows were more colorful than others.
One store selling dolls and figurines
Although Barcelona is rightly proud of its home grown architects, we did see frequent examples of styles borrowed from elsewhere. There were lots of classical Roman features, Moorish style arches, and French gothic styles. There were a couple of “bridges” between buildings that very much reminded me of some of the bridges between buildings and over canals in Venice.
This could have been in Venice, but it was over a street rather than a canal.
We soon came to a large open plaza (Placa Nova) in front of the Barcelona Cathedral. The good news about this cathedral is that it was being treated to a major renovation lasting several years. The bad news is that the company paying the bills (Samsung) insisted on displaying a large sign on the front of the cathedral. I am glad that the cathedral is getting a good make-over, but the sign does rather spoil the view.
It would look better without the sign.
A photo of the cathedral that does not include the sign is certainly more pleasant, although somewhat incomplete.
An incomplete view of the cathedral, but still rather impressive.
One interesting fact about some of the popular plazas such as this one is that there are no public restrooms. Our local guide suggested that we go to one of the several coffee shops around the sides of the plaza, purchase an inexpensive cup of coffee, and then make use of that shop’s restroom. It actually costs very little more than some of the places where restrooms were available for .5 euro, and we ended up with a cup of good coffee. Of course, that coffee soon had one looking for the next restroom.
We met up with our bus again and continued our tour, heading into some of the newer sections of the city. “Newer” in this case meant that most buildings were built in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here, some of the prominent architects really stood out. Probably the best known, as well as the most controversial, Spanish architect was Antoni Gaudi. He designed many buildings in Spain, largely in Barcelona, and several of them are considered to demonstrate his unique style elements. I soon understood where our word “gaudy” came from. The La Pedrera Casa Mila was initially designed as a private residence on the ground floor and rental apartments on the upper floors. Today it houses a cultural center and other cultural offices and facilities and is open for tours. The curving, undulating, balconies and the fanciful balcony railings are both rather distinctive.
Some of the La Piedrera (the “Stone Quarry”) features can be seen from the street.
But probably the most famous, and certainly the most noticeable, of Gaudi’s designs is La Sagrada Familia, a basilica on the outskirts of Barcelona. Gaudi actually took over design of the church from another architect, Francisco de Paula del Villar, but soon completely revamped the design into his own style. Construction of the church started in 1882 and continues to this day. It is completely funded by private contributions and has recently received more support so the engineers now expect to finish the building in 2026.
Looking toward the northeast side of the La Sagrada Familia
A prime design point of the church was that Gaudi wanted 18 towers representing 18 important people in the bible: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the 12 disciples, etc. Some towers will be taller than others but none will be exactly “small”.
Looking at the western corner of the church.
There are several design elements of the church that might not be noticed at first. For example, the eastern side of the church, the side that faces the rising sun, features sculptures of people in friendly, natural poses, carvings of fresh fruits, and generally represents birth and life. The western side, facing the setting sun, has very angular, straight and gaunt images of people, representing decline and death. You can see some of these figures in the photos just above and below.
Looking at the southern corner of La Sagrada Familia
Almost all of the figures and other artwork has been done by other Barcelona artists, but they have generally kept to Gaudi’s concept of what the figures should represent. We did not tour the interior of the church, but many people were doing so the day we visited. I suspect that the admission fees to go inside the church provide a large part of the funding to continue the construction.
After walking around the La Sagrada Familia, we loaded back into the bus and continued the tour. We were in a district of Barcelona where almost all the buildings were built at about the same time and were of a common architecture. There was not much outstanding about the style and architecture, except for one feature: where there were intersections of the streets, the corner of the buildings facing that intersection were chopped off. This creates a much larger and more open area around the intersection, allowing for a small square/plaza in the middle of the intersection, or a more open and less constricted traffic pattern. In some cases, a traffic circle (round-about) was placed in the middle of the open space created by this design, allowing for even better vehicle flow. Since the corners of buildings do not really have much usable space, this design had relatively little effect on the available space in the building.
An example of the “chopped corner” design, providing a more open intersection
We rode around this part of the city a little, heading back toward our hotel. When the tour was over, we were on our own for the rest of the day. For lunch, Susan and I ate some leftovers and some cheese and sausage at a park close to the hotel and planned out the afternoon. Our hotel was about a 5 minute walk from the waterfront and harbor and there was another large monument to Christopher Columbus close to the harbor, so we headed that way.
One of the larger Christopher Columbus monuments we saw
In this section of the harbor there were a number of excursion boats giving various tours and also a rather unique walkway over to a large shopping area in the middle of the harbor called the MareMagnum. Since we always enjoy walking around marinas and such, we headed out and and took in the sights. You can get some idea of the walkway, some of the buildings, as well as another view of the Christopher Columbus monument in this video. We walked over to the MareMagnum and entered the shopping area of the building: it was spread over three floors, but the top floor was lightly occupied, mainly just a couple of restaurants. There were plenty of shops of all kinds, primarily aimed at the tourist trade, but I got the impression that there were quite a few locals out for an afternoon also. There were a couple of platforms on the upper floor where you could get a good view of the local area.
From MareMagnum, looking back toward Barcelona.
We wandered around for a while, then headed back to the hotel for a brief rest before dinner. We discussed the dinner options for our last dinner on our own this trip and decided to head back over to the MareMagnum for dinner at one of the restaurants on the upper level. It turned out to be a very nice dinner, with a table overlooking the harbor, good food, and a nice bottle of wine.
Tuesday, October 25: Barcelona and Wine & Cava tasting
Today was a totally open day. There were no included/standard activities, only an optional morning trip to Montserrat to view “yet another church”. I’m sure that it was beautiful, but we had seen many churches on this trip and had not visited any wineries so we decided that it was time to even things up a little. After a little research the previous day, we had found an excursion to a regular winery and an Cava winery and even included a 4-wheel drive through a vineyard. I had my doubts about that drive through the vineyard as I was not at all sure just what the 4-wheel drive would add to the experience. We signed up for it and kept our fingers crossed that it would be interesting: we were pleasantly surprised.
We started by taking a taxi from the hotel about 20 minutes to a quiet pedestrian street that had a tourist bureau office, although it was not involved in the tour but just served as a convenient meeting place.
The meeting place was down where those people are.
As usual for us, we got there plenty early but at the scheduled time, a coordinator showed up, gathered the 14 of us together, and led us to a small bus parked close by. The other people on this tour were all new to us and, mostly, to each other. About 6 different countries were represented within our group. The coordinator left us and the bus driver took us on the 45 minute drive to the first stop at the CAN-BAS winery. Both this winery and the next we would visit are near the town of Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, west of Barcelona. This area is mainly known for production of Cava (Spanish for “Cave”), a sparkling white wine most comparable to Italian Prosecco or Champagne. There are also a few still wine (not sparkling) wineries in the area and CAN-BAS was one of these.
Looking back up the entrance road from Can-Bas winery.
We were met at the winery by our hostess for the day, a very nice young woman who spoke very good English. We soon discovered that she was actually from Rhode Island: no wonder she spoke good English. She introduced us to the winery and vineyard and gave us a little history of the winery and the area. We soon climbed into a couple of Land Rover vehicles and started our ride through the vineyards. But, before we got very far, we stopped at a small chapel alongside the small road. The chapel dates back to the 10th century and has been expanded a couple of times but is still rather small. Before going in the chapel, our guide gave us another little bit of history.
Some very newly planted grape vines and a very old road
The small road that we had ridden on from the winery to the chapel continued through the vineyard but was somewhat special. A number of old Roman ruins had been found in this area when excavating for new buildings and this road appears to be part of the Via Augusta, a road build by the Roman empire stretching from northern Spain, close to Barcelona, to Gibraltar. This was probably a “side road” rather than the main part of Via Augusta, but research has indicated that it was part of the complex of Roman roads.
The small chapel was interesting to step into, with old wooden benches and even a very old organ, which probably does not work any longer. The chapel had been long closed when, during the Spanish civil war, the other churches in the area were damaged beyond use, so the owners of the land reopened the chapel and updated it a bit to allow it to be used again.
The old chapel had quite a history.
Back into the Land Rovers and off through the vineyards again. It was a nice day for this: the sun was shining and warm, but not overly hot. The winery provided wide brimmed hats to help with the bright sun.
Riding through the vineyards
Our guide provided interesting information about the various parts of the vineyard and the varieties of grapes grown, mixed in with a little history, making it more engaging that I had expected. After about a 30 minute ride, we headed back to the winery for a tour of the facilities there.
Stainless steel vats in the fermentation room
We went through the fermentation room, the barrel room, and a part of the cellar/aging area. There was even one area where they were experimenting with using clay vessels rather than wooden barrels to age the wine, as it probably would have been done in Roman times. After a nice tour, we headed to the tasting room on an upper floor with windows overlooking the grounds of the winery.
A very pleasant view for the tasting
Tables were already set with wine glasses and plates of food to accompany the wines: all we needed was the wine. We tasted two white wines and four reds and all tasted very good to me. CAN BAS does have an interesting way of naming most their wines: they are named after the plot number of the land in the vineyard they are grown in. For example, the Cabernet Sauvignon in the third bottle below is made from grapes grown in Plot number 9 in the vineyard. The fourth bottle is named for the chapel (“La Capella” is “the chapel” in Catalan) and is a blend of several plots by the chapel.
Four of the wines we tasted at CAN BAS
After a very well done tasting, we loaded back onto the bus for the five minute ride to our next stop, the Pere Ventura Cava winery. On the bus I had seen a large facility for Freixenet, which I knew to be a very large producer of Cava: the Pere Ventura Cava facility was not that large, but it turned out to be very impressive. Pere Ventura bought the property, including the CAN BAS vineyards and winery, in the 1990s and has invested large amounts of money into upgrading the vineyards, the buildings, and the quality of the product. I was reminded of the old joke: “Question: How do you make a small fortune in wine? Answer: Start with a large one.”
In explaining Pere Ventura’s plan, our guide said that his intention was to improve and elevate the quality and the world’s view of Cava to put it on a par with Italy’s Prosecco and even France’s Champagne. Cava has generally been seen as the lower cost/quality alternative to the other sparkling wines and he wants to change that. If Pere Ventura’s facilities and wines are any indication, he is off to a good start.
Entering the Pere Ventura visitor facility
After entering what I’ll call the visitor center, we were led to a rather large sitting room/reception area where Mrs. Pere Ventura joined us to talk about their plans and ambitions. To have the wife and co-owner of the winery come out and greet us like this was impressive. I was reminded of when, in 1982, Susan and I were making our first visit to Napa Valley, California and really stumbled into the recently finished new Robert Mondavi winery building and Mrs. Mondavi came out and spoke to our group, apologizing for the appearance of the grounds with all the construction debris spread around. I had to wonder if this was an indication of the future success of Pere Ventura.
We were greeted by Mrs. Pere Ventura.
After the warm welcome by Mrs Ventura, we started on our tour of the winery, first heading down into the cellar where the bottled Cava is aged. Cava is generally aged for, at most, 30 months, but some of the bottles in the cellar tunnels were over 5 years old. And, the cellar is quite extensive.
Just one of several tunnels of Cava in the cellar
When we saw the first “tunnel” in the cellar, we thought “that is a lot of bottles of Cava”. Then we found out that, for every bottle you can see along the walls, there are another 3 bottles lined up behind it. Our guide led us down that tunnel, around the corner, and there was another tunnel, just a big as the first one, then another tunnel, and another. It turns out that there are 2.5 million bottles of Cava in the cellar and even with that many, there is room for another million. At one point we were taken into the “library” (no photos here please) where they have set aside a case or two of every wine and vintage they have ever produced. If a question of issue (good or bad) ever comes up about the wines produced here, they can go into the library and pull a bottle of the identical type and vintage to investigate. It also gives them the opportunity to observe the effect of long-term aging on the various Cava wines.
Cava, like Prosecco and other sparkling wines, is aged primarily in the bottle after the additional juice and yeast has been added to cause the fresh fermentation and produce the CO2 for the “bubbly” effect. After aging, this dead yeast must be removed (an interesting process, but too much to cover here) then a little wine added to refill the bottle and then it can be corked, labeled, and prepared for shipment. Most Cava producers do not age the wine very long at all before bottling it but Ventura is trying something different. They have set up a barrel room where some of the Cava is aged in oak barrels, after fermentation, but before bottling, for one to several years. They are experimenting to see if improves the quality of the wine. Our guide took us into the barrel room as seen in the photo below.
The barrel room was quite impressive, as was its purpose.
As we walked through the room, I tapped on several of the barrels at random and most of them were empty. Also, anyone who has visited many barrel rooms will see something strange about this one: there is only a single “layer” of barrels. Most barrel rooms stack the barrels 2 or three high to get as many barrels as possible into the typically limited space, but space was certainly not an issue here. When I mentioned these two things to our guide, she smiled and said, yes, the size and design of the barrel room is more to make a lasting impression on the visitor than to efficiently age the wine. I guess it was successful.
After leaving the cellar and barrel room, we went to an large open room with several displays of their wine and, like at Can Bas, there were tables set up with wine glasses (suitable for sparkling wine) and some appropriate snacks to pair with the Cava. As before, the tasting was very nicely done with a taste of five different Cavas, including some of their very best bottlings (like the one pictured below).
One of the very nice Cavas
We were impressed enough with both the CAN BAS wines and the Ventura Cava that we were going to purchase a case of various wines and have it shipped home. Then we saw the shipping charge: it was something like $290 for a case of wine. And that was on top of the cost of the wine. Although CAN BAS wines are not exported to the US, Ventura Cava is available here, so we decided to just get our Cava at home.
With our visit over, we climbed back into the bus and headed back to Barcelona. When we got off the bus in Barcelona, we discussed whether to grab a taxi for the trip back to the hotel, or to try walking it. According to Google Maps, walking would take 48 minutes but, of course, that assumes we knew where we were going. (I have discovered that Google Maps is very good at giving driving directions, but much less useful at giving walking instructions.) Anyway, we figured, “why not?” and started walking. Despite having the Google Maps assistance, we were seldom really sure just where we were, but after about 40 minutes, I started seeing some familiar landmarks and we ended up making the walk in less than 50 minutes. We relaxed for a while, did a little pre-packing for our flight the next day, and prepared for our farewell dinner that evening.
At 7:20 we gathered in the hotel lobby for the short (10 minute) walk to the restaurant for our group dinner. It was nicely done, although with the usual service problems of a relatively small restaurant trying to properly serve food and drink for 30 people who all arrive at one time. The main dish of the night was paella and I was hoping that it would be better than the other paellas we had been served so far on this trip. It was presented nicely, with several large prawns on the top (one per person) and a few mussels spread around but the main part of the dish was disappointing: no chorizo sausage, no pork or chicken, very little other seafood, mainly just a lot of rice.
We enjoyed the friendship of the people we had met on the tour and said proper Good-byes to the other tour members and to Andrea.
Unfortunately, the paella looked better than it tasted.
In the morning we caught the bus transfer to the Barcelona airport with about 5 other tour members. This time we were familiar with how the airport worked, since we had been through it just about 12 days before. We got checked in and through security and passport control relatively quickly and then waited about 2 hours until time to board our flight.
End of Chapter 6
That is the end of our Portugal and Spain tour.
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