Since we got back from Germany we have not really been doing much at all. Most days I have been relaxing at home, studying a little bit of Spanish and meeting my various intercambio friends for coffee and conversation. When I’m not occupied with all things Spanish, I’m cooking extravagant meals for no reason – a luxury I miss being on the road all the time – and on the occasions when I don’t feel like slaving over a stove for three hours, going out on the town for some pintxos and good times.
The other morning we woke up and opened the lounge room blinds. There was something strange shining back through the window panes at me. Bright, bold sun, accompanied by perfect blue skies. Not a cloud in sight. We knew we had to take advantage of this wonderful winter weather and get out and about, so we decided to go and spend a day in Laguardia.
Laguardia is a small town in the Álava province, just 15 kilometres north of Logroño. Whilst Álava is technically part of the Basque Country, the comarca (a region within a region) where Laguardia is, called Rioja Alavesa, has a close relationship with La Rioja, partly to do with it’s proximity to the region. This area is also well known for its wineries, and wines produced in Rioja Alavesa are still classified as Rioja wines, despite the fact the grapes are grown in Basque soil (just to make things confusing). The wine business is a big game here, and there are certain wineries which have been some of the most extravagant and exorbitantly expensive recent architectural wonders.
Laguardia was especially pleasant this particular day. Being the week between Christmas and New Year, coupled with the fact it is the middle of winter, meant there was absolutely no tourists around. It was just us and the locals enjoying the wonderful weather. Although it sounds perfect, we didn’t quite think the plan through entirely. It was a Saturday, and we arrived around 2.30pm. Right bang on Spanish lunch hour. To add to our woes, majority of the restaurants were closed for holidays between Christmas and New Year. One restaurant in particular we were keen to try out was closed. Last time we were in Laguardia, they were closed for their summer holidays. Now they were closed for their winter holidays. Forgive me for feeling slightly cursed!
Never mind, it was time to explore inside the city walls and see what we could find. We have one little lunch spot that is great for a menu del día, but it was there that we felt the first impact of our oversight. Every seat in the house was full. For the Spanish, this is no problem. They will crowd around the bar and each pintxos or racións instead. Unfortunately we have got too accustomed to the local way of turning up for lunch at 2.45pm, and by the time we had arrived all the bar real estate was occupied too. There was not a single square inch of standing space left in that tiny little bar.
We ended up at nice little bodega called, coincidentally, Bodegon. In Spain, the word bodega can be used interchangeably to mean a winery, or a small local restaurant/bar, often with a focus on wine. It can also refer to a wine cellar/storage area. I was initially surprised at the prices at this bodega– coming from Logroño where it’s possible to eat four pintxos with wine and spend less than 10 euros, a ración (which is more or less, a large tapa to share) at 15 euros seemed incredibly steep. But there is a lot of money in Laguardia. And the people who visit here mean serious business. Sometimes some people who are really into their wine will even overlook the wineries around in La Rioja in favour of the offering in Rioja Alavesa. So obviously, the prices reflect this around the town. We still managed to eat, sufficiently, two of us for 35 euros but it was definitely more than we are used to paying.
C chose ponchos a la riojana, a local bean stew cooked with a tomato based broth and chorizo. I chose the spinach and prawn croquetas, and we got talked into ordering the alcachofas crujientes (crispy artichokes) by the waiter. The alcachofas were nice in theory, but in practice I would estimate about 30% of the crujiente (crispy bits) were actually jamón, the Spanish ham. Now you can ask a waiter in Spain if the dish is completely vegetarian, and they will swear to the end of the earth and back that it is. But when it arrives, you will find jamón sprinkled through, or better yet, a great big slice plonked on top of everything. Jamón is effectively it’s own food group here. There is meat. There are vegetables. And there is jamón. So if you ask that the dish has no meat, of course, it has no meat. That’s not meat. It’s jamón. Every vegetarians nightmare. I am quite adjusted to this now. I am sure I have accidentally eaten jamón on many occasions but I am still alive to tell the tale. It doesn’t kill me. But for some unknown reason, I was feeling particularly vegetarian this day. Even the sight of the chorizo and speck in Carlos’s bean soup put me off my food. I had to look the other way. Yep. I am definitely still vegetarian, just incase I was confused.
After lunch we decided to do a bit of sightseeing, just for the fun of it. We had four hours to kill before the next bus back to Logroño, and I had not really seen much of Laguardia except for inside bars and restaurants – strange for me, not! Laguardia itself, for lack of better description, is super cute! The old city is surrounded entirely by 15th century medieval walls, with tiny little narrow streets flanked by buildings from the same era, and cobblestone streets that will send you flying on your bum if you step a foot wrong. Underneath almost every building in the city, there is another little world. There are underground bodegas dug out of the rock for production and storage of the local wine. On a usual day many of these will offer guided tours and tastings, but being such a small town, everyone had shut up shop for the Christmas period.
Never mind, Laguardia’s whole two tourist sites were open. Laguardia was originally the site of a 10th century castle, and two of the castles towers standing today. One of them is open to climb, so we took the 170-odd step climb to the top. Somewhere along the way, the wind had seriously picked up. I somehow managed to trip over in the wind whilst we were walking to the tower. It was that strong. Needless to say, I was a little nervous about going up to the top. I was about halfway up inside the tower, on the metal spiral staircase and the wind was blowing such a howling gale that I nearly chickened out and went back down. I am so glad that I didn’t, because once we burst through the door out to the top of the tower, the wind seemed to skim underneath us and the sun blazed down. What a view!
After our tower climbing expedition, we decided to take wander around. We stumbled across a great little bar, pokey and tiny, with maybe 7 seats inside. The kitsch mismatched antique furniture, wonky floorboards and pokey little rooms gave it a hip little vibe.This rugged vintage way of decorating in bars and quite cafes is popular in cities such as London, Berlin, even Barcelona, it’s not a common sight in the north of Spain. A break from the norm is good, indoors and sheltered from the wind, with plenty of local wine to go around. What’s there not to love?
We had one last stop (the second and last tourist attraction in Laguardia) to check off – Santa Maria de los Reyes, the local church. Now the system here is a little strange. The church is closed except for a handful of specific times, which vary according to the day and the mood of the church warden. The first stop on any visit to Laguardia is to check the door of the church and see what times it is open that day! When the church opens, it opens just at that time – if you aren’t there waiting to go inside, you miss out because once everyone is inside, the church warden locks the door again.
For 2 euros you get a 20-30 minute explanation of the portico and inside the church (only in Spanish, and the lady talks very fast with little consideration for the non-native speakers!) but it is worth it just to see the portico, the decorative sculptures you see over the doors as soon as you step inside the entrance. The official name of the portico is La Virgen de los Reyes, a wooden arch formed by five archivolts, all of them intricately decorated. The carvings are depicting prophets, virgins, martyrs, kings and angels, on top of intertwined plant patterns. In the middle of the arch the sculptures are depicting The Last Supper. When I walked inside the lights were off. There were about 40 other people around all gathering to have the opportunity to see this amazing piece of art. It didn’t seem like much, but as soon as the lights are switched on without warning, you suddenly realise why this portico is worth your time. It’s considered to be one of the most beautiful Gothic doorways in Spain, and it’s easy to understand why.
On an ordinary day when the tourist information is open, you just go and ask for the key from the tourist information if the opening times don’t suit you. This means you can let yourself in and have a poke around without joining the “tour” and being one soul in a crowd of people (and there is always a crowd of people!) I wanted have the novelty of letting myself inside the church, but alas, that will have to wait for when I return in the summer. I’ll experience the portico without a large crowd of people, finally try the always-on-holiday restaurant, but mostly I’m excited to check out the Rioja Alavesa wineries and discover what all the fuss is about.
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