This morning was much more successful than yesterday's - we woke up to the 6:30 alarm and were out of the hostel by 7, which was perfect timing for our 7:35 train to Logroño. I set an alarm for 11:10am, ten minutes before we were supposed to arrive, and promptly fell asleep listening to "War Horse." (Every time I woke up, he was still at war. Surprise!) Rosie didn't have any issues with a morning nap either.
When we got to the train station, the Avis office was right there. We got our tiny, adorable, manual Fiat and... couldn't figure out how to get it in reverse. Turns out you need to pull up on a safety catch to do that.
After that, it was probably only a mile to our hotel, but it was a mile filled with pedestrian streets, roundabouts, invisible roads the GPS wanted us to take, and more! There were signs for the hotel, which were pointing down a street that had a no entry sign but with conditions that excluded "auto de tourisidad" or something similar. I figured the only way for us to get to the hotel was on this pedestrian-ish street, and I forced Rosie to go down it, placating her that I would pay the ticket if we got in trouble.
A simple block down, there was Hotel Marques de Vallejo and a parallel parking spot right in front of it. We parked, checked in, grabbed a map, got directions for our first winery, and was told it was only 12 minutes away. We had 25 minutes before our tour. We were out to prove them wrong.
The combination of the map and GPS helped us figure out when we accidentally crossed the river, but after that we were right on track.
Campo Viejo is one of a few brands owned by a wine conglomerate, and it has fairly new (from 2000) facilities that mimic the sandy brown soil and are energy-efficient in the face of the blazing sun.
Our tour got started a bit late, and was a spastic alternation between Spanish and English. The production volume of the winery is amazing: 30 million bottles a year, with 40% being exported.
This winery ages all their wine at least two years in oak and up to three more in the bottle for a crianza (which we tasted one - it was spicy, younger-tasting, though the spice was tempered by the salami we had with it). Reservas are three years in oak, gran reservas are four (and this is for the entire Rioja region). The gran reserva we tried was smooth, with a good early taste, but no complexity since it was 100% Tempranillo grapes. Those grapes are the basis of all Rioja wines, but the more complex ones are blends.
Also to add complexity is the oak it is aged in. Campo Viejo had about 30% of its oak as French oak, which gives a coffee flavor, and the rest as American oak, with more vanilla flavors.
The process for making that much wine was impressive as well. The rooms with the steel tanks, the barrels, and the bottles were all impossibly large.
El Toro, their forklift, takes the pallets of wine bottles to be "dressed" by robots and packed into a truck in 7 minutes. My final fact: a barrel holds 225 liters, which is 300 bottles.
And now, pictures of the countryside - a little browner than I imagined, but beautiful nonetheless.
We drove down back into Logroño and our public parking lot, where we made the car look as non-interesting as possible. (Thus far, we haven't had any issues with theft or pick-pocketing, so let's hope it continues!)
We walked back to the hotel, wandering through a few plazas with some frozen yogurt on the way. The town was basically closed for the siesta, so we took the hint and had ourselves a two-hour nap as well.
We awoke and asked the hotel reception more questions - where should we go for espresso? where are good tapas? what about octopus? what's your favorite? and then started with the espresso. (I keep trying her coffee and only the super frozen sugary one at Parc Güell have I liked.)
We had our paseo (walk) around another park until it was appropriate time for tapas.
I was slightly disappointed at the restrictive tapas in Barcelona. Today more than made up for it. There were bars with great windows of food, lots of people, and beautiful houses and alleys.
We started by trying to redeem ourselves from the bad octopus last night with "pulpo al a vinagreta" (octopus in olive oil) at a pulpería called Bar La Universidad. It was much, much better than yesterday's. A cup of gazpacho was the perfect size to try as well, though it just came from a bottle, so we'll have to do better.
Our espresso maker's recommendation was a potato omelet ("tortilla de pâtata") with salsa at Bar Sebas. It had a great texture and was well-spiced. Then we had killer mushrooms topped with shrimp ("champiñón a la plancha") from Bar Ángel. We got to watch them simmer in oil, then get filled with garlic butter and salt before being pinned with a toothpick and placed on a slice of bread.
After the mushrooms, we took a break, wandering back toward our hotel for a complimentary glass of wine and some card-playing. But the tapas weren't over yet!
The guy that gave us wine at the hotel suggested rotos, so we went to Bodeguilla Los Rotos for "un roto de gulas" (a hollowed-out roll with fake baby eel made from an Alaskan fish called surimi with squid ink to color its "back").
Our final tapas stop was to get "pimiento relleno" (meat-stuffed pepper covered in sauce) from Bar Rte. Las Cubanas. Once we had ordered our dish, we noticed the crowd favorite was clearly a meat dish that wasn't in our handy guide. So we ordered the suckling pig, "cochinillo," for a great final wrap-up.
We wandered, we ate ice cream (or a weirdly alcoholic-tasting sorbet in Rosie's case), and we played rummy 500, in which I was beaten terribly. I think our Barcelona bedtime is still what we are used to, since it crept its way toward 3am easily. We do have things to do tomorrow, so it'll be a great (and air conditioned!) rest in our snazzy hotel. 
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