Today was a Happy Place day for me - since Irv wasn’t up to much walking I set off on my own with my camera and tried to capture as much of this lovely city as I could. Logroño is an important stop along the Camino de Santiago, and there is evidence of this throughout. Of course, you see peregrinos (pilgrims) everywhere with their stuffed backpacks either striding purposely or wandering confusedly. There are also plenty of the shell symbols which direct the travellers on the route, as well as signs for the many albergues which provide shelter for those on the Camino.
I decided to retrace the route we took on our orientation tour the evening previous because there were many things I wanted to capture with my camera. I managed to visit the four main churches and was able to get inside all but one, because it was mid day mass. I visited the cocathedral of Santa Maria de la Redonda (a cocathedral because it is shared with another town not far from Logroño), Iglesia de San Bartolomé, which dates back to the 12the century, Santa Maria de Palacio, and finally the Iglesias de Santiago, the church where pilgrims traditionally stop to pray for a “buen camino”.
I also hiked over the two bridges that cross the river Ebro: the Iron Bridge and the Stone Bridge, so named for the material used in their construction, Halfway across the Iron Bridge I had to stop and spend time watching the family of storks who had built their nest high up in a structure that the city provides, to deter the birds from making their nests on the top of chimneys. Along the river between the two bridges is an interactive play park which provides a number of interesting activities that even the grown-ups in our group had fun trying out!
After a break to meet up with Irv for lunch, I headed back out to do some more exploring. I was tickled to find an area behind the church of San Bartolomé, where there was a whole bunch of street art, which I love! Had fun going down the streets and alleys to look for it. As Iwas going down one street, I discovered a place called Espacio Lagare, also called El Camino de Vino. It looked interesting but wasn’t open again till two, soI headed down to the park area that goes under the Iron Bridge and walked down there for a ways before heading back to El Camino de Vino.
It is a two-part display on two sides of the street. One is more focussed on the Camino, showing a map broken down into the various stages and some info on the camino, but it was all in Spanish so I didn’t get much out of it. But underneath that display is a wine cave that has a whole bunch of winemaking implements from days gone by. On the other side of the street the display continues but focuses more on the wine presses, from the ancient ones which were essentially a hole in the ground where the grapes were unloaded to the more traditional round wooden ones. It was quite interesting and there was an animated video to go along.
By that time I had walked around for about five and a half hours, so time to head back to the hotel and get ready for our pintxos crawl. Pintxos are like tapas except they have a toothpick in them. Luis took us to five different bars to sample a variety of pintxos, some of which I really liked, others, not so much! Add a glass of wine at each one and we were feeling quite fine by the end of the rather late evening. But not so fine when we thought about having to get up to get picked up by 8 the next morning!