Sitges & Cava

The road led out of Barcelona on one of the super fast Autovias, which is Spanish for highway. We rode until we saw no more city, and Montserrat came upon us. What a beautiful sight it was. A sheer mountain of rock that jets out of the tierra with no foothills or surrounding large mountains. We had entered the primary wine country of Spain, and we were on our way to taste some cava, or Catalonia's special brand of sparkling wine.

We arrived upon Codorníu just in time for our tour, and we began. We saw the houses from the original 16th century, and our guide explained that the family can be traced all the way back to 1551 on the property.

             This building was from the 1800's. It is now used to host parties and celebrations.

                                         This is the oldest building on the vineyard.

We then saw some of the really old presses and the museum for the vineyard. I can't believe that some of the presses were as old as America and even older! That is one thing I cannot believe is how old everything here is! It really is some really old history surviving here.

    This is a statue that can be seen from three different angles. Here it is simply a woman.

                                               Here it is the Virgin of Montserrat.

                                                 And here is a wine bottle.

We then ran around the wine cellars and saw some miraculous things, including a chamber dedicated to the family and a piece of wonderful artwork symbolizing the family tree.

Finally, we left our tour, and headed for Sitges, a Spanish town on the coast. It was much smaller than Barcelona, and may serve as a good launching point for my capstone studies. There we saw the Mediterranean and some of our friends went swimming, but I wandered around the town with my apartment mate Addison, partly trying to find las chicas, but also just seeing the town for what it was.

Later on in the night I decided to get some pan, tomates, y queso for dinner and lunches in the future. I had my first mishap with cultural relevancy when I did not weigh and tag the tomatoes and apples correctly, and I think I sort of pissed off the checkout lady a bit. It turns out that in Spain you weigh your own vegetables and fruits and you tag them for payment using your own scale. So after that ordeal I ended up coming back to the apartment and taking a nap, and now I'm on here. Who knows what my free day for tomorrow will look like... I still have to plan it out somewhat and see where it goes from there.