Michelle's Travel Adventures

Day 1: Penedes

We rented a car near the train station in Barcelona and headed for the cava producing countryside of Penedes.  I unknowingly had my google map settings set to avoid all highways and tolls, I didn’t even know there was such settings until now…so anyways, it took a bit longer to get to Sant Sadurni D’Anoia then origanlly planned.  But hey, we got the to see the scenic route!

We arrived in Sant Sadurni D’Anoia around 1:30 PM (I remember because we were an hour late for our lunch reservation).  The town is CUTE!!!  The whole area reminded us a lot of the Chianti area in Tuscany.  Lots of rolling hills with charming vineyards.  The town had a market in the streets when we arrived.  But we didn’t linger at any of the stalls since we were late for our reservation, and we thought we’d check it out after lunch.

For lunch we ate at Cal Ticus, and it was one of our favourites of the entire trip.  It’s a family run restaurant (one brother is the chef and the other brother works front of house) and they focus on local food which we love.  The menu is only in Catalan, so between my bad Spanish, his OK English and a lot of help from google translate, we ended up ordering some amazing food!  We had a citrus and beet salad with soft cheese to start, a baked eggplant parmigiana flatbread  , mountain rice (which was a rice dish with local mushrooms and chorizo sausage) and for dessert we had chocolate brownies.

After lunch we were disappointed that the market had already packed up, so we decided to head to Vilafranca del Penedes to pick up some groceries.  Can I tell you a little secret about myself when I travel?  I frigging LOVE grocery shopping in different countries!  Like it’s a highlight of my trip to wander up and down the aisles and marvel at the produce, checking out the local cheeses, and the fresh baked bread.  You guys the red peppers in Spain are massive!!!!  Like I’m not joking!  They are so big!  Things that were awesome at Spanish grocery stores:  You could juice your own fresh orange juice in store.  The oranges were the BEST oranges I’ve ever tasted!  Spanish onions are even better/sweeter in Spain, so sweet in fact you can eat them raw no problem.  Local saffron, enough said about that one!  They had an Iberian Ham station with legs of ham and someone there just carving off slices for you.  Amazing!  The wine selection!  You could get one of the best local wines for as little as 2 euros a bottle.  Seriously I had the best Rose of my life and it was 2 euros!  Hahaha we are the weirdo tourists running around grocery stores taking pictures and videos like we’ve never been in a grocery store before.  

After loading up on groceries, it was time to check into our Airbnb.  We booked a guest house in the small village of Sant Marti Sarroca, on a family vineyard estate.  The owners live on site, and they were an absolutely lovely family, with 3 teenagers similar in age to Makena and Macy.  

They had 2 sweet dogs, 2 cats, 2 horses, and a pen with chickens.  We absolutely loved it!  On our first night Stephen grilled some kebabs and red peppers on the barbecue and we had a tomato and onion salad along with a baguette.

Day 2 in Penedes

Today is our first wine tour and we are heading to Freixenet.   The tour started with a video in their theatre, followed by a guided tour of the cellars, and ends with a cheese and cava tasting. There were 4 cava and cheese pairings, and the cavas were all delicious.  For each new bottle of cava that had to be opened for the tasting, our guide offered the opportunity to pop the cork to anyone in the group.  We had lots of successful tries.  Macy successfully opened one.  For one of the last bottles, I decided to give it a go.  Now I have opened many bottles of sparkling wines successfully before. I even taught Macy how to do it.   But the way this guide was teaching the group:  she said to keep the wire cage on the cork (which I don’t do at home) and to hold the bottom of the bottle of wine in one hand and the cork in your dominant hand.  Well as I was easing the cork off, I knew I was about to “Blow” it.  I knew the pressure was way too much for my left hand to control, and the bottle shot out of my hand spewing cava all over Makena, breaking the cheese plates and making a huge mess of the table and ourselves.  I actually have it on video, but for here I’ll post a screenshot of my face as the knowledge of the situation becomes apparent lol  Life lesson: don’t cry over spilled cava.  (It dries pretty quick and it isn’t too sticky! hahahahah)

Ok, ok, OK! I will post the screen shot from the video of my disastrous wine opening attempt…lol my face!!!

After our tour we wandered over to the Simon Coll Chocolate factory which has a beautiful chocolate shop.  We were a little more tipsy then we thought and basically made a lunch out of sampling chocolates, and made lots of spontaneous chocolate purchases.  We all left with multiple bags of chocolate and hot chocolate mixes!  For the afternoon, we relaxed back at our Airbnb, some read by the pool, others took naps.  It was all lovely

For dinner that night we headed in to Vilafranca Del Penedes and ate at El Cigro d’Or.  The server spoke only Catalan and Spanish and the menu was only in Catalan.  So again, between my poor Spanish skills and google translate, we were able to order some delicious dishes.  The kitchen was open to the dining room so it was cool to watch our meal be prepared.  Something about the Spanish people that we were really surprised about is that they eat dinner late.  And I mean really late.  They don’t eat dinner until 10 or 11 pm.  And most restaurants don’t open for dinner service until 8:30 pm, which is on the later side for us.  We would normally eat at around 7pm.  So every time we went out to dinner at a restaurant that locals would eat at, we would have our reservation at opening time, which would be 8:30, and we were the only people at the restaurant.  No exaggeration!  We were literally the only ones there.  By the time we were paying our bill, the place would be just starting to fill up.

Day 3 in Penedes

This morning Macy, Stephen and I decided to get up early and hike the trails behind our Airbnb.  The trails were beautiful, you could hike or bike through and endless wide trail system through the vineyards and no vehicle traffic is permitted on the trails.  It was gorgeous!

After we got back from our walk we started to get ready for our wine tour at Torres, but Macy had an unfortunate accident and struck her head really hard on a beam in their loft bedroom.  I was scared she might have a concussion, so we decided the best thing for her would be to rest in bed and Stephen would stay back with her.  So Makena and I had a private tour at Torres.  Not to rub it in Macy, BUT It was one of the most beautiful vineyards I’ve ever seen and the tour was one of the most in depth, informative tours I’ve ever been on.  And the wine tasting and tapas were out of this world good!  Sorry Macy, we’ll have to go back someday 😦  Again the tour started with a video in their theatre and then we went for a walk through the beautiful Mas La Plana vineyards. We were even able to see the house that Miguel Torres and his wife still live in to this day.   Then we boarded a 100% solar powered vehicle to take us through some of their old growth vineyards and over to the processing area and then to the Waltraud Cellars.  

After that section of the tour we then came back for our wine and tapas tasting in the Torres wine museum.  We had 4 different wines to try that paired with 4 tapas. Our first wine and tapas pairing was Waltraud, a Riesling paired with an octopus salad.  I’ve attempted octopus on multiple occasions in Europe, and I can say that I was never a big fan, until I tried this octopus salad.  Wow!  It was fantastic and tender, and the Reisling was spectacular and aromatic and tasted like more.  As in, pour me some more!  Who would have guessed that Spain can make a fantastic Riesling?!  This Riesling was made in honour and named after of Miguel Torres  wife (who is of German descent).  Our second wine to try was Sons de Prades, a chardonnay which was paired with a smoked liquid cheese.  It was in a shooter glass, and I’ve honestly never had anything quite like it before.  It was one of those things that was like, this is so weird, but I actually think I like it.  And it paired perfectly with the Chardonnay.  Our third wine was Vinyarets Red, a young Grenache and Tempranillo blend paired with sausage meat on a baguette slice.  And for the last and final wine and tapas tasting we had Purgatori, a delicious big bold carinena and garnacha blend paired with a smoked eggplant with tahini sauce and topped with Iberian ham.  OMG soooo good!

Our guide was able to get us an outdoor table at El Celleret for lunch, so we thought we may as well enjoy lunch since Macy was sleeping.  Holy wow. I really do hope I get to come back here again some day.  We ordered a bottle of the Waltraud Riesling, it is such a good wine paired with any food really.  And we may have gone a bit over board with our food order.  Our server actually came back to confirm that the order was correct and that we did indeed want all the food we had ordered lol.  We ordered: the Patatas Bravas (these ones were by far the best patatas bravas we had ever tasted.  They win first prize), a plate of mixed olives, roasted beetroot hummus, a vegetable pesto lasagna (my mouth is watering just thinking about it) and a Catalan rice and sausage with aioli sauce.  The food was amazing, the setting was absolutely beautiful, we couldn’t eat even half of the food so we messaged Stephen to come join us.  Which he did, and we still packed up plenty to go for Macy to try later when she was feeling better.

On our way home from Torres we decided to stop by Cava Rovellats because our hosts told us they have a DJ  in their gardens and cava tastings in the afternoon, which sounded like fun.  However when we arrived we found out we had just missed it, so we just had a quick wander about the property, spoke with the owner and heard about the story of Rovellats.  After all the activities of the day we decided to stay home for the rest of the evening and keep things quite for Macy in hopes that she’d feel better for tomorrow.

Day 4 in Penedes

This morning we have a cava tastings and tour at Codorniu.  Macy woke up and felt like herself again, so all plans were back on schedule!  Codorniu is on a beautiful estate.  This was the largest group of all the tours we’d been on in Penedes.  We headed straight to the cellars and on to a train system that took us quickly around part of the cellars.  Then back up to the main area and down into their “tasting area” which kind of felt like an old gymnasium. Everyone just stood around as our guide quickly poured 2 types of cava for everyone to taste and then off everyone went.  This was definitely not my favourite tour experience, actually probably one of my least favourite.  It felt like, how can we quickly get as many people in and out as possible.  Oh well.  On with the day!

For the afternoon we decided to head to the beach and check out Sitges.  This was one of the places that for some reason is way better in real life then in photos.  We thought this place had a fun vibe, beautiful beach, and we loved the “love is love” friendly atmosphere.  We strolled the beaches, sat outside at a cafe and did some fun people watching while a Spanish man sang Frank Sinatra karaoke to us.  Life is great!  

We had dinner again at our Airbnb and started taking up again because in the morning we head back to Barcelona to drop off our car rental and get the high speed train to Madrid.