Day 7

April 7, 2011
Morning, we had the complimentary breakfast at the hotel. Breakfast was an impressive spread of fruit, Iberian cold cuts, pastries, variety of cheeses, fresh squeezed orange juice to drink, and local bread. This wasn’t your Holiday Inn continental breakfast by any stretch of the imagination.


Long before our hotel existed it was one of the oldest wineries in Spain. The family winery still exist, underneath the hotel lies the catacombs of the original wine collections.




These are priceless 100 year old wines. Included in this collection, the very first vintage bottle ever produced. The winery tour, part of the Marques De Riscal experience, is not to be missed.

The next town over is the small town of Laguardia, Spain. Laguardia is a small sleepy fortress town that you can walk from one end to other in ten minutes. The town is completely surrounded by a big wall and built on top of a hill with moldy catacombs used for wine underneath.

When we got there everything was shut down for their afternoon siesta, “when in Rome.”

On the out skirts of town along the foothills, lies Bodegas Ysios designed by architect Santiago Calatrava. The project was completed in 2000 and was named after the Egyptian goddess of magic, who oversaw the conversion of grapes into wine. The building mimicked the landscape in the background.

For dinner that night we ate at Posada Mayor de Migueloa. It was so delicious; it tasted like what I imagined as a home cooked meal in a Spanish household. The flavors were so refreshing from all the heavy buttery dishes we have had.

I didn’t take any photos of our food, picture via this blog.