La Rioja

I had heard talk of La Rioja and its wines before I visited Spain.  Linnell was the first to mention it.  After college, where we had become friends, she had spent one year working as an au pair in Barcelona, and another year in Valladolid as a teaching assistant.  When she returned to the States, she informed me that her favorite wines came from La Rioja.  A few short months later, I was in that very region, visiting my friend Jason as I made my way through Europe.

Just like Linnell and anyone else who has spent more than a few hours in Spain, Jason had developed a respect for the Rioja wines.  I quickly saw why.  In Spain, there are a few wine-producing regions, but none are regarded the way Rioja is.  Standing at the edge of the town of Tricio, where Jason lived, we looked down at the surrounding vineyards.  The valley stretched out around us and flamed with neat little rows of yellow, orange, and red vines.  The scenery was probably similar to the kind found in Spain’s other wine regions at that time of year, but the produce here was different, better.  The people of La Rioja know this, and are proud of it.  Their love for the very ground where they live, and all it produces—especially its famed wines—is contagious.  That pride alone could convince a visitor to love the tempranillos, crianzas, and reservas passed around at Rioja dinner tables.  Fortunately, though, the wines have a taste that lends credence to the delight these people take in their prized beverages.

The best of the bunch was a tempranillo made in a neighboring town and named after Tricio.  They called it Tritium, which is what the Romans called Tricio, and which was a hell of a lot better than “ashtray,” the name of the town where it was bottled.  Jason and his wife, Maite, had an entire case of the stuff left over from their wedding more than a year earlier.  We polished off a few bottles during my stay, and I decided to bring one home for the family to enjoy at Thanksgiving.  Everyone who tasted it loved it just as much as I did, and that bottle was empty before anyone had even finished their turkey. 

My dad enjoyed the Tritium so much that he tried to find it in the States.  He found one place in California that imports it, but none in Washington.  We still haven’t had a second bottle of it.  Thankfully, though, there are plenty of other tasty Rioja wines to be discovered here in the U.S.  More and more people seem to be gaining an appreciation for wines from all corners of the earth.  Just like I first began to do five years ago, when my friends in Buenos Aires introduced me to the malbec. 

The view from Tricio.

Cafe con leche

After the UK and Ireland, I made my way through Amsterdam, Berlin, and Istanbul before hopping over to Spain.  In Amsterdam I had one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten—turkey, sprouts, and honey—but that’s another blog for another time.  When I think back on drinks during that leg of the trip, the only one that stands out is the tiny cup of Turkish coffee I had with my baklava one night in Istanbul. It was a dainty little thing, in an ornately painted blue and gold cup.  But it was powerful.  A bit too strong for my taste, in fact.  And it started to get gritty toward the bottom.  The English and Irish teas were still winning.  Then I flew to Barcelona.

Café con leche.  It just means “coffee with milk,” but it’s so much more than that. Tea with milk, I can make at home, even if it’s not as good as Dave and Chloe’s stuff.  But café con leche, no chance.  They do something special to the mix, whipping it up a little and infusing the coffee with the milk just right.  Toss in a packet of sugar and you’re golden.  Maybe even platinum.  I couldn’t get enough of the stuff during my two weeks in Spain. 

After a few days in Barcelona, I bussed it over to Logroño, where my buddy Jason and his wife, Maite, picked me up at the station.  They took me back to Maite’s parents’ place in a little town up the road called Tricio, where I stayed for a week.  Just about every day during that week, Jason and I would be out and about and find some bar or restaurant and dip in for a cup of café con leche and some food. 

At one of the first places we went, Jason demonstrated an amusing bit of Spanish culture he’d discovered since moving there.  As he finished his pincho (a small plate of food served at bars and cafes in Spain), he wiped his mouth, wadded up his napkin, and as he finished chewing, said, “Watch this.”  Then he threw his napkin on the floor, right in front of the bar.  I looked down, and there were dozens, if not more, wadded-up napkins and toothpicks and other pieces of trash at our feet.  Apparently Spaniards prefer sweeping the floor over cleaning off the bar.  I got into the custom and pretty soon we were both chucking napkins, empty sugar packets, anything, onto the floor with gusto. 

But Jason's new home had a lot more to offer than just coffee and free-spirited littering.  You see, Tricio is in the heart of a region in northern Spain called La Rioja.  And it wasn’t long before I learned just how important that name is to people who enjoy a good glass of wine.  

Cafe.

This was hanging in the bathroom in Maite's parents' house.  It has nothing to do with coffee, but I like it.

Tea Time

The other day, as I sipped some tasty coffee purchased in Haiti, I thought, I should write a few posts devoted to the best drinks I've had while traveling. Here's the first.



At home, I almost never drink tea with milk.  It seems like any time I add milk, I dilute the tea too much and ruin the taste.  But Chloe knew exactly the ratio of milk to water that would make the perfect cup.  Her husband, Dave, had a pretty good knack for it too.  The three of us would reconvene at their London flat every evening during the week that I was there—Dave and Chloe coming from work or acting class or hockey practice, and I from sightseeing—and I could usually count on one of them offering me a cup of tea.  And it was always delicious.  Maybe they just knew how to pour it.  Or maybe it had something to do with the milk, or the tea itself.  The British do have centuries of experience buying tea, after all. (Chloe is from South Africa, but she’s a UK citizen now, so I can refer to her as British.)

During that leg of my trip—from London to Dublin to Belfast to Edinburgh—I was a devoted tea drinker.  Everywhere I had it, whether it was at a café, a restaurant, Dave and Chloe’s flat, or my friend Stew’s apartment in Dublin, it was light brown and milky and flavorful.  When I’m at home, I trade off pretty regularly between coffee and tea.  Both drinks have their charms for me.  But after those two weeks in the UK and Ireland, I was ready to commit to tea full-time.  That is, until I got to Spain.

The Eye

The view from Trafalgar Square

In regards to summer

I've found this handy little widget that will give shivering souls such as myself hope.
Enjoy.

Beard Update

I just realized that I never posted an update about my facial hair.  So here it is.

I ended up paying my friend 50 bucks a few days after that previous post last month.  I was sick of the beard after letting it grow for nearly four weeks, and the girl I had just started dating was sick of it after about four hours.  I'm just not a long-beard kind of guy.  Anything over about 10 days is pushing it for me.

I don't regret giving up on the bet (Though I am still working on bulking up, and I'm about four or five pounds from my goal weight.  My friend and I are in the gym a few days a week.), but I do regret buying shampoo for my beard.  Now I've got a whole bottle of Head and Shoulders and nothing to use it on.

Is it summer yet?

Until about a week ago, we had had a relatively dry fall and winter here in Western Washington.  Now, the rain has come back and begun making up for lost time.  Today at work I mentioned that I couldn’t wait until it was summer.  One of my coworkers responded by saying that because we live in this terrible, dreary, gray, soggy climate (my description), it makes our vacation time more special.  We get to go away to warm, sunny places during our time off, and therefore we really appreciate those nice places and our time off. 

That may be true, but I’d also like to be able to appreciate the place where I live.  And yes, I could just suck it up and look on the bright side, see the glass as half full, etc., etc., and be thankful that I don’t live in Siberia or something.  Or I could save up some money and, instead of just traveling temporarily to a nice place, maybe try living there.  Yeah, maybe do that.  Or just spend more time traveling.  We’ll see.

By the Hair of My Chinny-chin-chin

A friend recently advised me that, if I’m having trouble blogging as often as I’d like to, I should try to focus my blog on something I do daily or almost daily.  I thought about it, and something that popped into my head was weightlifting.  Working out has become so much a part of my life that I’m sore nearly every day.  And I like it.  What I don't like is how long it takes to see results.  So now and then I've devised schemes to motivate me to work harder. 

I blogged a few months ago about trying to gain a few pounds by weightlifting.  I came within three pounds of meeting my goal.  That was in the summer.  Then, during the fall, I took about three and a half weeks off from the gym due to travel and a little bit of illness (related to the travel), and lost a lot of my gains.  Then, just before Thanksgiving, I made a little wager with my workout buddy.  One that I’ll probably lose because, just like before, I was a little too ambitious when I made it. 

The deal is, I’m not allowed to shave my face until I gain 10 pounds, beginning with the weight I was at when the bet started.  If I shave before I hit that mark, I owe my buddy $50.  It’s been nearly four weeks and I’m pretty sick of this beard.  It’s more physically irritating than I’d expected, and it cramps the style with the ladies.  I prefer my good old five-day shadow. (It’s a little longer than a 5 o’clock shadow, and it’s sort of my “look.”) Added to that, I’m having more trouble gaining weight than I’d expected. 

I thought that, because I was just getting over being sick, I’d be able to pack on the first few pounds easily.  That hasn’t been the case.  My body still won’t let me gain fat.  It’ll let me gain muscle, but that process is incredibly slow.  While the amount I’m able to lift at the gym has been steadily increasing, my body weight has only gone up a couple of pounds. I may have to accept two things: defeat on the bet, and the reality that meeting my goals will take a lot more time and effort. 

I’ll give the beard another week or so before I make my final decision on whether to keep it.  But as for the present moment, I’m going to eat a sandwich.