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Day 3

Vilafranca - Penedes

Today Allison and I decided to go on a tour of a winery in a nearby city. Somehow I had read about it and we decided to go, if everything could have gone wrong, it almost did.

First: after we woke up the maid knocked on our door telling us that it was time to go! We weren't really sure about why we would have a wakeup call, but whatever. We got ready at our leisure and walked downstairs and out. The reception guy was not a very happy guy. We weren't sure why. We went downstairs only to realize I had forgotten my money so we had to return and the reception guy was yelling at us that we couldn't go back in our room and that we had to be out at the right times in order to get the room clean etc. Our response was that we had paid for it and it is ours to get into. As we are in the room we were very confused, so upon leaving again we decided to ask what we had done wrong, because really we couldn't figure it out. After trying to figure out what his angry Spanish was saying, we realized he thought we were checking out -- we had to confirm that we were there until Sunday, not Friday. It was weird. We confirmed with everyone else after that and there was no problem. It was very nice to know Spanish at that moment.

Then we headed to the metro station, only to realize that even if it says “Placa Catalunya Metro” There are many entrances that are not necessarily connected and thus you have to choose the right entrance! Placa Catalunya actually has a train station, but you have to look for the Cercanias symbol. Well, we didn't know that at first and went to the wrong station. At this point, between waking up late, being yelled at by the guy at the hotel, and now having issues with getting to the train we just decided to eat brunch. Allison and I were both done.

Well, we got our breakfast, but they didn't have the food that is typical, which we wanted. Go figure! We were at a tourist spot. Soooo annoying, but they had cafe con leche!

Finally, we found the correct station. There are many entrances around each of the big plazas with Metro stations, so it wasn't really that hard to walk to the correct one. Once we bought our ticket the train was there in about 5 minutes and we were on our way.

Penedes is a cute little quaint town. It reminded me of a mountainous Jerez, which is ironic because how Mom and I accidently happened upon our adventures in Jerez, Allison and I did the same in Penedes. We saw the map and decided to try and find the Torres Winery, and just walked through the city. Then we decided to find the tourist office, only to realize it was siesta hour, and especially in those little towns, EVERYONE takes it!

We then grabbed some coffee at the one open restaurant. It was fun to just relax and sit there after we had the morning that we did. Finally the Tourist Information place opened. She gave us some advice and sent us to the last tour of the Torres Winery. She called the Winery and spoke Catalan. Catalan seems to be a good mixture of both French and Spanish. It was pretty neat to listen to.

The Winery was very impressive. We went on a long tour through the fields and the various steps of the wine making process. There are 3 different parts really: a video, a train ride (with a recorded guide that is programed with the train -- you can find it in your language) and a guide. I was really impressed with our guide in that she spoke French, English and Spanish. She spoke all of them on the trip. It was neat.

The Torres have a few different wineries and have been around since before the civil war (1930’s). They survived the war and have grown. One of the wineries is in California. One of the goals of the family is to be kind to the environment so they do a lot to try and decrease how much energy they use and try to use a “greener” manner. They still pick their grapes by hand apparently and choose what grapes are ready. Apparently in California there was a terrible disease that destroyed crops all over the state. What was discovered was that the rosebushes would show evidence of the disease a few weeks before it would hit the vines, so now they plant rose bushes every few vines as a warning light of the disease. I thought they were just there to be pretty, alas I stand corrected.

After we left there we decided to grab a ticket for the train, but had missed it by a few minutes so we had to kill an hour and decided to walk into a restaurant nearby and began talking with all the people and stayed for 2 hours! It was neat because it was a fairly small place where people just sit for hours and are incredibly friendly. It was pretty fun. We took the last train back. It was crazy!

When we finally made it back to the Pension, we were done and decided to just sleep. Though it was a rough start, the end was great!

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