The first two days of our trip to Spain were both half-days so I am combining them for this first post that gets into a little more detail on all the things that we did on this trip we enjoyed so much. I have also included one of the interesting lessons that we learned on this trip, and I will be adding other lessons on some of the upcoming posts for each day.
We always fly over at least a day ahead of the start of any group trip that we take, primarily due to paranoia that that if we have any delays in our flight over, the group will leave without us. We have never had that kind of delay before a trip but there is enough stress leaving on a long trip and this is one less thing to worry about, and it gives us a day to start to adjust to the time change. We were also able to get a one stop flight on United through Brussels at a lower cost than a non-stop flight. Very disappointed that for the first time we did not get upgraded to Business Class with my United Priority Points. When I was flying frequently for business I had high status and we were upgraded every time. Since I retired in January I only had one other flight this year and there were other people with Priority Points that had higher status than me and they got the upgrades.
Our connection in Brussels was delayed two hours, supposedly to let 30 people connecting get on that fight but when we finally took off, no additional people had boarded. As a result we did not check into our hotel until 3 PM on Saturday the 17th and did not have the full afternoon for sightseeing that we had planned. We stayed in the Marriott Aloft hotel in Madrid which is in a very convenient location to walk to the main sights. We enjoyed a nice glass of Albariño on the rooftop terrace bar of the hotel and organized our clothes for a one night stay at this hotel and a one night stay at the next hotel so we would have minimum unpacking and packing. I went to the ATM linked to our bank, about a 20 minute walk each way, to get additional Euros.
The 17th was Beth’s birthday so she selected a highly ranked Paella restaurant for her birthday dinner, Restaurante Paella Real Madrid. I was not able to get a reservation there on line but we walked there and got there shortly after they opened for dinner at 8:00 and they did seat us. We decided to split the seafood Paella and each have a starter. Beth ordered what she thought was the House Salad, but it came with a lovely salmon filet and was a dinner salad in size but only 9€. the picture shows the one salad split between the two of us. I got the plate of Iberico Ham, something we love but is typically over $90/lb in the US, and the picture shows that it too was a very large portion for 15€. Despite the large starters, we did some serious damage to the Seafood Paella and highly recommend this restaurant. At one point on our trip our guide, Antonio, started talking about Paella and made a very strong point that there is food served on top of rice and there is Paella. If it does not have chicken, rabbit, sausage, and seafood, it is food on top of rice. Real Paella has to have the rich assortment of different meats and seafood to be Paella. Based on that we had delicious seafood on rice – but we loved it.
Lesson #1 – We quickly learned that the Spanish approach to meals is very different from what we have in the US. Breakfast is a full meal, not just some yoghurt which is my typical breakfast. Lunch is the primary meal of the day and is eaten between 2 and 4 PM. It can be a very long meal with many courses, and we had several lunches that were over 2 ½ hours. Dinner is a very light meal, generally just some Tapas or Pintxos. Pintxos are most common in northern Spain and the name means skewer. They are small portions cooked and served on a skewer. It is pronounced PIN shos and the “x” being pronounced as an “sh” sound will come up in one of the lovely white wines we were introduced to on this trip. This light dinner is generally eaten around 9 or 10 PM and many of the restaurants don’t open until 8:00 or 8:30. Those opening early, or offering a menu of full meals, are targeting the tourist traffic so our Paella restaurant falls into that category. It was full up when we left but it looked like a mix of tourists and some Spaniards who were sharing a bowl of Paella so it would have been a light meal for them.
When we got the detailed agenda from Howard we saw that we had a full breakfast included at each hotel and lunches most of the days at one of the wineries. Only two dinners were included so we budgeted money for the other dinners and hoped that just some tapas might be enough so we would not have a lot of expensive dinners to pay for. We ended up skipping most dinners completely and just having a glass of wine at the hotel at the end of the day. In addition to the delicious full lunches that we had, the wineries that we visited before lunch all had platters of cheese, Spanish ham, sliced chorizo, and great bread for us to shack on so we had plenty to eat each day. We were able to adapt to the Spanish approach to meals quickly and found them enjoyable.
After the dinner we took a walking tour of Old Town Madrid. We walked down to the Royal Palace and the Cathedral and took some pictures. Beth’s new phone, the Google Pixel 6, has an option that automatically removes people and other objects from pictures and uses AI to put in the background they were standing in front of. Beth hates to have people ruining her pictures so she really loved the ability to get rid of them. We then walked up to the Plaza Mayor, stopping just before it to survey the Mercado San Miguel, recommended by some friends from Norbeck Country Club. We fell immediately in love with the many food stands of great Spanish food and the ability to get a glass of wine or beer from any of the bars and walk abound to the different food stands and try what they had. We locked in plans to spend a few hours there when we returned to Madrid at the end of the wine tasting trip.
Our impression of Plaza Mayor was that you could pick it up and put it in Lisbon, London, Barcelona, or most any other city in Europe and no one would notice. A typical European large square. We walked from there back to the hotel. We logged 7.6 miles walking that day, the highest of any day of the trip.
On Sunday we took a short plane hop on Iberia Airlines from Madrid to Santiago de Compestela, the capital city of the province of Galicia. The Marriot booked a cab for us at 9:30 that was waiting for us right after we finished breakfast and it was a 25 minute ride out to the airport. We also took a cab in from the airport on Saturday and it is a fixed price of 30€ to or from the airport and the cabs all take credit cards so it was very easy. We met up with Howard at the airport and got introduced to Antonio, our guide, and a number of other people that were taking Howard’s wine tour. Most of them had flown over from the US on Iberia, arriving that morning, and changing planes to go to Santiago.
I am NOT a fan of Iberia Airlines. We had a real problem with them about a lost bag that took three days to get to us on an earlier trip to Seville. I had no interest in flying them over from the US. The tickets for Madrid to Santiago were only 46€ each. But when I went online to check in for the flight on Saturday, I found I also needed to pay for a seat and could only bring one carry on bag on board and it could not be a roller board. All checked bags had to be paid for. It was another 60€ each to actually take the flight. I am NOT a fan of Iberia Airlines.
Howard had a bus meeting us at the airport in Santiago and taking us to our hotel which is about a mile outside the walled town for our one night stay there. We had the afternoon free, so Beth and I walked to Santiago, had lunch at a nice Italian restaurant, L. Incontro Santiago, and explored the Cathedral which is the burial site for St. James the Apostle.
The Way of St. James, El Camino de Santiago
A church was built in Santiago in 899 and quickly became a popular pilgrimage site. The great Romanesque Cathedral that we see now was originally consecrated in 1211. The Way of St. James is a very popular pilgrimage destination with a number of popular starting points across Europe and attracting over 200,000 pilgrims each year. Many of the routes are 500 – 700+ Km long and can take a month to hike on foot. Pilgrims can purchase a Credencial or pilgrim’s passport which give access to overnight accommodations along the way with the ability to record where they ate and slept along their path.
The goal of the pilgrimage is to get the Compostela which is a certificate of accomplishment. To earn it one must walk at least 100 km or bike at least 200 km for spiritual reasons, collecting stamps from the places that you pass through with the Credencial stamped at least twice each day for the final 100 km. and ending in Santiago de Compostela.
The many routes are marked with the Scallop shell as shown in the picture. These can be in the ground or mounted on walls or trees. We passed a number of hiking pilgrims as we went out to the vineyards to begin our tours of different wineries. The two pilgrims in the picture are celebrating they have reached the final scallop shell in front of the cathedral and their pilgrimage is over.
One of the famous objects in the Cathedral is their enormous censer or botafumerio which is shown in the picture. It is over 5 feet tall and weighs about 180 pounds. When used in a service 8 men take up the ropes shown in the picture to swing it back and forth. Legend has it that the early pilgrims filling the church had been marching for a month of longer with minimal opportunities to bathe and a great deal of incense needed to be burned to overcome their aroma.
We also got to walk into the church through the Holy Door which is only open in years when St. James Day, July 25, falls on a Sunday. There are special blessings for walking through the Holy Door.
We stepped out of the church to grab a delicious quick bite before the 7:30 service at Restaurante El Trebol and when we came back the church was filled with hundreds standing. We were each able to sit on the base of one the pillars and join the service before walking back to the hotel. We finished this day with 5.6 miles walking.
Bill's Thoughts on Wine, Travel, and Food 