Tomorrow we are leaving the Rioja for Bilbao, and Sunday we are leaving Northern Spain for the south.

The Rioja is incredibly beautiful. But it is a place that needs time. There are layers of beauty. I´m not real fond of some of the towns to be totally honest. (Like Abalos, where we are staying.) The land though, is really special, and in time I am sure I could even find Abalos special. Well maybe not. Anyhow.

Today we went to the Dinastia Vivanco wine museum down the road, and before you get visions of little dusty rooms with an old wine press and a couple of old corkscrews in them, let me tell you that this museum was AMAZING. They had wine artifacts from ancient times up through the ages, and a crazy carved ivory staff with a guy eating a naked girls foot, and a painting of Jesus pressing grapes in a vat with his crucifix on his back. Plus films of every part of the winemaking process, as it was in the old days, and as it is now, like picking grapes, making bottles, and making corks. Really and truly a great museum.

Then we went and ate a Big Lunch. It was awesome. We have been starving ourselves trying to see too much. I think you have to make a decision – see a monastery or eat a big lunch. Today we chose the lunch. We ate at a place in Laguardia, the walled town where they have wine cellars bored like a swiss cheese underneath the town… leeks stuffed with ham and cheese and topped with cream sauce, a huge piece of cod cooked only with olive oil and coarse salt, and the Riojan dish of potatoes and chorizo, sort of like a stew. Plus a bottle of Rioja, of course. Then we drove around for a while, then we came home and packed.

Lunch always makes me want dinner so we are going to try the stuffy hotel restaurant again tonight. There are lots of Spanish here so maybe it won´t be like a few nights ago when it was just middle aged English couples. Not that middle aged English couples aren´t sometimes a riot, but here they didn´t say much until the end and then they all started talking to each other.

So we head to the south on Sunday to Clive and Sue´s, which will be a whole new experience. We can´t wait.

Oh one more thing, I forgot to write yesterday, that on that Desperate Housewives show, one of the housewives was a NUN.

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