Day 4 Laguardia, and my first day of being shitfaced in Espana

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We woke up in Llanes, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and hightailed it for Laguardia. This was a longer drive, long but amazing. We hugged the northern coastline and went through a whole bunch of mountains. It took us about 3 hours to get to Laguardia, which is small enough that we actually didn't get lost. Laguardia is a fortified hilltop town with all of it's original walls, and cars are not allowed in the city. So we parked outside and hussled our stuff in to the hostel. The city is incredibly cool. With it's narrow cobblestone streets and tall stone walls and buildings, Laguardia was like going back in time. Melissa and I stayed at Hostel Biazterri, which also had a restaurant. When we got there Melissa was starving, so we did an early dinner. For 11 Euro we got the meal of the day, which was 3 courses and gave us a few options. Melissa started with a salad and then got grilled chicken and fries. I had a fancy mac and cheese for the first dish and it was awesome. For the second dish I fucked up. I thought I was ordering scallops (escalopes), but what I ordered was actually breaded beef steak. It literally looked like someone stretched out a scrotum, and if I were to eat scrotum I imagine this is what it would taste like. The saving grace was the wine, produced in Laguardia every bottle we had was amazing, it was good enough that I happily wolfed down my breaded scrotum. After a quick siesta, it was time to head out on the town about 10 o clock. We started at Don Miguel Bodega, this was a local winery that was amazing. They had 4 choices, Joven (Young) up to Grand Reserve (old). We went with the Joven and once again the wine was amazingly good. Next we headed to an Irish pub and had (whatelse) a few guinesses. By this point we were both a little tipsy. We walked the town a little bit and found the Irish pub was the only place open, so we headed back and ordered a couple more bottles of wine. There was a hammered drunk Spaniard who was happy to talk to some Americans, so Melissa and I chatted him up for a while. The highlight was when he showed me his chest tattoo that said Rolling Stones inversely. Turns out he was shitfaced listening to the stones and decided to tattoo them on himself while looking in a mirror, hence the inverse. I finished off the rest of my cuban cigar and did some serious boozing with rolling stones guy, and Melissa dragged me to bed about 2:30. The next morning was rough, as I had a grade a hangover. We got a quick breakfast in town of some chorizo and eggs, and then it was back on the road for about an hour drive to Pamplona and the running of the bulls. I'm writing this in Hotel Angorra near Pamplona, while Melissa catches some quick z's. The hilarious Spaniards decided to locate our nice hotel a mile and a half down a road that goes through an industrial center and is unlabeled, so finding this place was a fucking blast. The hotel itself is actually the nicest we've stayed in, and once you clear the industrial center you actually enter a little villa surrounded by farms, so it literally looks like we're staying in Tuscany. I'll get back on here tomorrow and talk about the first night in Pamplona, the festival kicks off with a parade at midnight, and there are already a million drunken souls partying it up.

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