Toro and Zamora

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Saturday, September 13, we went to Toro and then to Zamora. Both are small cities (or really big towns, whichever makes it easier to imagine) with a lot of history. But in Toro, we really didn't get much history. Instead, we went to a bodega (winery) and had a wine tasting! Apparently in Spain it's perfectly okay to drink before 5pm, because the wine tasting was at 11am. The bodega is medium-sized I would say (though I have nothing to compare it to). They gave us 2 wines to try. One of their reds and a white. They get the grapes for the white from another bodega in an area that's better for white-wine grapes. Though I did about spit out the red because it was way too strong, I actually liked the white (here, "like" means "could stand to drink a glass and not be completely grossed out"). I think I liked it because it was sweeter than most wines I've tried.
I did learn quite a bit about how wines are made, too, so it was educational, as I knew nothing about wines beforehand.
After the wine tasting, we drove over to Zamora. There's not really much to say about it. There were old buildings, but the town doesn't have a lot of cool history. But right outside Zamora is a very small town where we ate lunch. This town has very few paved streets, but what they do have is wine cellars. There are doors spotting the countryside, leading to stairs down to underground wine cellars. A few of these wine cellars were converted into restaurants (which is where we went for lunch). I pity the vegetarians who go to that restaurant unaware of the food they serve there. We got a simple salad at the beginning, which was the only green we received for the rest of the meal. The rest was chorizo, bacon, and ribs. Mounds and mounds of chorizo, bacon, and ribs. The chorizo is different than the chorizo served in Mexican restaurants in the US. It's much better. It's a special kind of sausage, marinated in wine, and kind of spicy. It's really tasty. The bacon was strange; it definitely wasn't like any bacon I've ever had. It was cut about a 1/2 inch thick and really flavorful. Not salty like bacon in the US. And not deep reddish-brown, either. It was light brown. The ribs were delicious! Though I was secretly wishing for some barbecue sauce. After lunch we headed back to Salamanca. And if you couldn't guess already, I didn't eat dinner.

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Photos

The 4 sizes of wine they sell
Supposedly the bottle second from left is the best size to buy because just the right amount of air is inside so the wine ages nicely.

Wine!
The name of the winery is Estación Piedra.

Liz and Claire
With their wine!

Yum!
Kind of.

The wine I liked
It's called Verdejo.

Zamora
The protective wall surrounding Zamora. Who would attack such a small city? I don't know either.

The whole group
There are too many of us.

Thief
So the story is that there was a thief trying to steal something from the church. As he was escaping from this window, God shrank the window and turned him into stone.

Me and Claire
At the Puente Romano (Roman Bridge)

What's wrong with this picture?
Does anything look stange to you?

The ribs
and that is only one of the plates. and that plate is half eaten

The chorizo
After we couldn't eat anymore.