a la Rioja

January 3rd, 2014
Since I was in Spain for 10 days and I was having a glass of red wine every day, it made perfect sense to go wine tasting in Spain.
Known for their Rioja wine, we ventured off to La Guardia and la Rioja to drink more wine and eat more food.

This is a Christmas tree that is decorated with wine and wine boxes.

My next idea for my Christmas tree if I am lacking ornaments.

This nativity scene is inside the tourist information office and is filled with wine corks. An idea that surprise my mother and lead her to take about 20 pictures of every little detail and gave her the idea to do it in our house next year. 

(My mother still talks about it nativity scene, one month later)

This is the view from the town of La Guardia, just like Leyre it was foggy and the piece of land was the only thing I could see/ take a picture of.

 As we were walking around and waiting for a tour of a main church in the town of La Guardia, we stopped at a bar for some coffee and tapas.

This is bread with pork and some round thing I forgot sprinkled with balsamic vinegar.

It looked really fancy, but I didn't get it.

This is bread with jamón iberico, a croqueta of jamón y queso with a frito of shrimp.

This is what I had.

Two chicken nuggets with brie cheese in the middle, on top of jamón and bread with a cup of coffee.

Because no matter what time it is (11AM) there is always time for a super salty tapa and a strong cup of coffee.

Fun fact: while walking around the town, we noticed that many homes had their doors open.

Like wide open with cool designs on the ground but nothing inside when you walked in. 

I didn't go in the house but I did take this picture, I don't know I thought it was really interesting.

Normally when I leave my door open it's because I have food in my room/apartment and want people to eat it.

These people didn't have food, so I still have no idea why their door was open.

Let me make this clear, these are not real shoes.

I know, I'm sad too, just the thought of having a table of shoes just laying there for all to take sounds like my heaven.

But these are statues cemented on the table just for show.

I have no idea what the reason is for but it was still cool to look at.

 In La Guardia, stands a church of Santa Maria which has been standing for many years. The unique thing about this church is the entrance. Normally when you walk into a church, you enter into the church and see the designs from there. Here there is an entrance with it's own designs and then the church.

Even thought it looks gold all around it is actually painted. Many years ago the paint was chipping and so workers came in and repainted the church so that it wouldn't lose it's color and it still remains today.

Like many arches in the church there are figures that represent saints, angels, moments in religious history and other symbolic figures.

The picture above and below represents the 12 apostles of Jesus. The ones closer to the door were the ones closer to Jesus and the farthest were the ones not so close.

Note how in the bottom picture Judas is in the back, because he stabbed Jesus in the back (or hand), literally. 

These figures off in the corner are the King and Queen of Spain when the church was built...I think, I don't really remember but they are the King and Queen that's for sure.

This is the entrance to the church, the gold covered building looking thing is the altar.

This is a doll replica of the Nativity Scene. 

Fun Fact about these dolls is that they don't have bodies, it's just their heads under cloaks.

So I guess you can say that they have no BODY holding them up! 

But I mean at least they have a good head on their shoulders.

This is the church's nativity scene which stands during Christmas time and moves during certain parts of the day.

This is a sign of Jesus Christ after he was taken off the cross or like the signs says: Dead Jesus Christ.

They were quite blunt about him being dead. Like just flat out dead.

 After the tour of the church we stopped at our first wine tasting.
Owned by a son and father, the winery was underground in a dark cave like room.
With no flash allowed in the winery, I did the best I could with taking pictures,

This tank seen above is where the wine that we tasted was. Using a porron like glass, he scooped the wine and carried it to the other room where we tasted the wine under the cave.

After the first wine tasting, we ventured off to another winery about 30 minutes away from La Guardia.

For the wine tour, they took us into a movie theater where they showed us how the winery began. 

But on a gloomy day, in a small room and comfy chairs, I had no idea how the winery got started, I was too busy being comfy.

This is a famous building that stands in the winery,  was built by Guggenheim, who in a previous post made the big flower dog in Bilbao.

View from the winery

Here in the beige and red house is where the wine is kept.

And this is where the wine is kept.

26 gigantic barrels of grape-turned-into-wine all sit here until the wine is ready to serve, be bottled and drank.

Next to the big barrel room is more smaller barrels in a dark and cold room.

After the tour we finally got to taste the wine and have some free nuts as well. Which was perfect because I was starving.

White Wine- please mind the bad manicure

Red Wine-Rioja

 My stomach was not the only one that was starving, everyone else's was too so we quickly left the winery and went to eat.

This is called "Chaca" which is a cold salad with crab in it.

This is Jamón Asado with french fries and a pepper

And flan, the one dessert I did miss and unfortunately did not have in Barcelona.

It was so good to reunite with this wonderful dish. 

It really was.

After stuffing our faces once again, we went back home dropped our stuff and went to my great great aunt's and uncle house to have coffee and desserts and then to my other uncle's house and ate some more until 2AM.

At this point, I'm really surprised that my stomach didn't explode with all the food that I had eaten in a short amount of time that day.