Wine and Monks

This weekend, I went on a school-sponsored trip to wine country. Yeah, I'm not kidding.

We left early Friday morning (so early for some, in fact, that we had to leave without two of our number and they caught a bus to meet us there). We headed north into the Rioja region, which apparently is famous for its wine. It's also on the edge of Basque country. The first bodega (winery) we went to was actually designed by an architect from Indiana, of all the exciting places in the world. I think it's kind of weird looking, but you can decide for yourselves:

Anyway, we got a tour of the place and learned how wine is made and stored and all that, but it was also all in Spanish so I don't remember all the details. Then we got to try one white wine and one red. I've developed a taste for wine now, so I liked them both.

After lunch (with, big surprise, more wine) we went to the second bodega, but I have no pictures past the first one because my camera battery died. Bummer. On this tour we went out and saw the fields of grapes and got to eat some of them, and in this one they also taught us about swirling the wine and smelling it. It was also in English. I think we all liked this one better.

In order to make up for the decadence of our first day, the next day we went to two monasteries. Slight change of pace here. There was no wine, but there was a lot of interesting architecture (which my History of Art teacher gladly pointed out and quizzed us on), paintings, and even a sarcophagus or two. I didn't actually see any monks, though.

All in all, a very successful trip, and my first foray into the classy world of fine wine. To give you a taste of how much wine they store at these places, here's a picture of me in front of some barrels. Now multiply what you see by about a thousand.

Yeah, that's a lot of wine.

Next weekend: Trip to the original home of the Olympics (to make up for Chicago's epic fail)!