We took off from Chicago on December 26th around 7pm, had a short connection in the Zurich airport (one of the most organized I’ve ever been to) and landed in Barcelona around 2pm. The flight was smooth and on time, we had an extra seat to spread out on, and I was able to get some sleep. From the airport, we rushed to Barcelona Nord station to catch our 4pm bus to Logrono.
Around 9pm, after 5 hours on the bus, we finally arrived and walked the 5 minutes to our hotel, Marques de Vallejo, in the center of town. We checked in and headed up to our room, where it took us a good 10 minutes to figure out how to turn the light on. Turns out we needed to insert our key into a slot – this ensures you won’t leave the lights on when you aren’t in the room. It’s a great “green feature” but it certainly confused us!
The hotel was basic but nice, with a commom area with internet access so we could keep in touch with family and friends back home.
We washed up, got our second wind and headed out to take part in the old town’s famous Saturday night tapas crawl. We turned a corner on Calle Laurel and couldn’t believe the crowds of people eating, drinking, and socializing in the streets.
DAN: After long hours of travel and after crossing time zone after time zone, running from plane to bus, walking half-lost in search of a hotel in a country where you can only make out every third word and only if spoken very slowly (p.s. - it never is), looking for streets that aren’t on the map, any map and let’s face it you probably have at least 4 maps of varying size in your bag, it’s easy to get distracted and forget that you’re on vacation and even forget that you are in a completely different country…exhaustion and frustration start to take over and your body starts to ache and you begin to wonder if it’s really worth it. Than, by some luck, you find a warm bed by which to drop your bag and drag yourself back into the world hoping for some sort of reassurance that it’ll be okay…
“Turning the corner” as my wife wrote was a great way to put it, both actually and more so for me, figuratively. I can’t begin to tell you how amazing and invigorating it was seeing the narrow cobble stone side-street filled with people eating and drinking. I instantly snapped back into a good mood and was reminded that it is after all indeed “worth it”. I couldn’t wait to find out what lay ahead.
We hopped from place to place, trying to figure out what all these yummy looking things were and how we went about ordering them.
We had a few language issues but figured out that pointing to what we wanted along with a few key words worked fine. We had some patatas bravas, croquetas, chorizo, a slice of omelet, and lots of cheap (about $1.50 a glass) Rioja wine. We stopped in one place that only had shrimp and pineapple kebabs. Dan convinced me to try a piece of shrimp (my first time) and I loved it. 
Then we went back to our original place for profiteroles for dessert. In all we had about 6 or 7 glasses of wine each and 6 plates for about 30 euros.We slept until noon the next day and then set out to explore Logrono. We wandered the streets, did some shopping, and grabbed a lunch on the go.
We took a short nap before the nightly paseo (when everyone - old, young, families – comes out for a long walk down the streets before dinner) and then headed for more tapas. This time we had calamari, more patatas bravas, bruschettas topped with egg, and a jamon stuffed artichoke, with of course more Rioja wine.
Monday we took a 2, 50 Euro bus to the nearby medieval walled town of Laguardia. It was built in the 7th century as a town to guard the neighboring, more important, town of Navarra. There is more space under the city, in the form of tunnels, than above.
Monday we took a 2, 50 Euro bus to the nearby medieval walled town of Laguardia. It was built in the 7th century as a town to guard the neighboring, more important, town of Navarra. There is more space under the city, in the form of tunnels, than above.
In the 14th century, when the town was no longer needed to defend Navarra, the tunnels were sealed off and used as wine cellars. We toured two of them – Bodega Fabulista and Carlos San Pedro. Bodega Fabulista was the more exciting of the two, with a better guide, and more tasty wine, but both were enjoyable and we learned a whole lot about Rioja wine, which is made very differently than other wines we have tasted.
The town itself was amazing. There are only 4 entrances into the walls and it is very quiet. The day we were there was very foggy, giving the whole town a mysterious atmosphere.
It was a bit cold but we still had a great time exploring, taking pictures, and stopping into a few cafes for more wine while we waited for our bus (which we missed, and had to wait for a later one). We finally got back to Logrono around 5pm, shopped at the local Zara for a bit and then went to a sit-down dinner of pork in puff pasty with Roquefort sauce (very good) and grilled chorizo (excellent) with wine and dessert. We called it an early night, since we had to be up early for our bus to San Sebastian.
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