For The Love Of Port

Last night, our first in country was spent at the home of Ryan and Gabriella Opaz (of Catavino fame) with wine documentarian Zev Robinson and our friend Oscar Quevedo. What a ton of fun. Ryan's awesome apartment also provides rooftop access where he did the BBQing and we had a slew of great wines. Amazing evening and boy did we crash hard when he got back to our hotel.

Today was spent at the Ramblas a mile+ walking mall in the middle of the city with all kinds of art exhibits, live entertainment, open air food markets that make Seattle's Pike Place Market look like a deli by comparison. Then we did a full on tour of the city and in a half hour will be meeting last night's group for a do-over except in a restaurant tonight.

More later.

Spain is one of my favorite places. Food, wine, sightseeing, even cigars!

Today we took a train north to Figueres, to see The Dali Museum. I've been to many exhibits of Dali in various countries, but this was 100% Dali and the museum dedicated full time to his work. In a word: Surreal. We're here only 2.5 days and if I left tomorrow, I'd say this was one spectacular trip so far. We've seen and done a lot in a short period of time.

Tomorrow we will begin four days of wine travel. First we'll head NE of Barcelona to the areas of Montsant and Priorat (I love and seriously collect Priorat). After a couple of days up there we will then head back to Barcelona before moving east to Logrono and Haro in the heart of Rioja for some stellar appointments at some places I can't wait to visit. That will end the vinous explorations and we have other fun things on the agenda for the following week and other parts of Spain to visit.

Fiesta San Fermin starts on July 7 in Pamplona. Any chance to be part of that madness?

I have much less "on line" time during this vacation than expected. So I will convert from continuing this blog to dividing up our trip in 2-3 sections on the homepage BLOG area when time permits. Thx for understanding!