Wine, Castles, and the Camino

After a partially sleepless night, thanks to my noisy next door neighbors (the girls, not Jorge), we headed for a winery tour in Penafiel.  We had wanted to see this winery the last time I was here, but it was closed to tours because it was being remodeled.  When we arrived, we saw a small building near the top of the hill.  After a short film intro, they took us into the old bodega where they still store some barrels of wine.  We didn't have any idea what we were going to see further on.

                                                                  The old bodega...

                                                                  ....and the new.

In all, the winery has over a mile of area under the mountain, all reinforced with concrete, in which they create, process, and store the wine while it ages.  The tour was in Spanish, but Jorge obliged by translating the important parts.  Different qualities of wine are aged for different amounts of time, and different types of barrels are used to age different ages of wine.  Then they are blended to create the different wines.  They took us deeper and deeper, into the newer part of the storage area, which was built to allow the use of forklifts (yes!).  At the end of the tour, we had to climb over three levels of spiral stairs to get back to ground level.  There was an elevator, but I didn't know how far we were going, so I didn't opt to take it.  Bad move.

At the end of the tour, we had a mini wine-tasting class, then got to taste two of the varieties.  No translations were needed here.  We got to keep our wineglasses, so I hope I can get mine home without shattering it!

                                                                 Penafiel castle

After the wine-tasting we went up the hill to see Penafiel castle.  We opted not to actually go in because 1) there were stairs - a lot of them, 2) my knee has been better lately and I didn't want to make it worse, and 3) the wine-tasting made us lose a fair amount of our ambition.  It was beginning to be very hot, so we admired the view for a bit, took some pictures, and headed off again.

We were running a little late to make the museum visit that we had intended in Valladolid, so we decided to go to Leon instead, to see San Isidoro church.  We ate at a Spanish version of Subway, called Pans and Company (Breads and Company), which was really good.  I had a "British", which was a crispy baguette with bacon and cheese, served hot.  Then we walked to the church, which was unfortunately closed to tours on Sunday.  Ah well.... next time!  It has a beautiful painted ceiling that Jorge wanted me to see, but there was a photo of it on the outside wall, so I have some idea of what it was like.

Along the street were recycling stations, for paper, cans, bottles and batteries.  I have seen these all over the place.

Leon Cathedral is a stop on the Camino de Santiago, too, and we saw several pilgrims along the way to Leon.  In the city Jorge pointed out some people walking in front us with very dark legs and very white ankles.  He said, "That's what happens when you walk the Camino in socks." 

                      A modernized version of the pilgrim's scallop shell in the sidewalks of Leon.  It is a symbold of the Camino, and it shows the pilgrims that they are on the right path.

Now we are in Mieres, where we will be tonight and tomorrow.  Unfortunately, the wifi doesn't work in my room (probably too far from the server, since I am on the 4th floor), so my contact may be limited.  Hey Wire has also decided not to work for me anymore, but one way or another I will be able to access my regular email.  Happy Mother's Day to all of my mom friends and relatives, including my mom!