We had a delicious dinner yesterday, as typical of the region it started late but was very quick, with the glasses of wine delivered immediately after ordering and food not ten minutes after. I had the trout (local style, which includes ham) and Arne octopus.
We made an effort to stay up a bit, but fell asleep around eleven or so. Breakfast is only from eight thirty anyway, so we set the alarm at seven thirty and I manage to not wake up before that, exceptionally. Even so, we’re packed even before breakfast, so it’s a quick exit afterwards, to drop off our luggage in the car.
The hotel is actually in a former monastery, which was sold by the state (after they booted out the monks) to raise money and the whole property was transformed into a park to showcase the many waterfalls, caves and canyons. It’s not terribly big, but the pedestrian walkway meanders all over the place, so the entire tour is five kilometers or so.
We’ve actually been here before in 2015, after a tip from our B&B owner in Euskadi, and always wanted to come back. We enter the park around ten, a late start for us, but we’re almost alone, it looks like everybody else is still at breakfast. There’s no carefully manicured grounds and flower beds here, just the gravel paths through the woods with a waterfall around every corner, some as high as 30 m. As you would expect of an area with many waterfalls, it’s full of cliffs and caves, with staircases (sometimes cut into the cliffs as tunnels) to connect everything. Difficult to describe, the pictures almost don’t do it justice, especially since they’re lacking the constant sound of water flowing, falling and thundering.
We visit the old abbey as well, there’s still the cloister and (the bottom half) of the church, a wine museum as well as a chocolate museum. The wine is obvious: this is a region where they’ve made wine for ages. The chocolate surprised me, apparently this abbey was the first to cook with chocolate after it was brought from the Americas by the Spanish conquistadors. I’m not 100% sure, since the text was only in Spanish..
We have a quick lunch in the park, then start the next leg of our trip: to the Rioja. I’m getting more and more confused about local geography, or rather geopolitical history. Spain has both provinces and autonomous states and the borders don’t match up. Anyway, we’re driving to Logroño, which is definitely in the area where they make Rioja wines. We choose the scenic route through the Sierra de Cebollera – a mountain range which is also a nature reserve. The scenery varies from rocky/arid to rocky/green to muy accidentado – very rough and jagged. We see hilltop castle ruins, charming villages with blocky, ornate church towers, medieval bridges and many, many high cliffs. A beautiful drive.
We arrive at the hotel around five thirty, lounge in the spa for an hour and are currently very much looking forward to dinner, at eight thirty.
Febe writes 