On to the Cava

Valencia, Spain to Vilafrana de Penedes, Spain

March 4, 2015

8 open spaces to the right in Parking Lot at Paz y Glorieta

We had another great breakfast at the Adhoc Monumental and then packed our luggage up and brought it to the parking lot where our rental car rested for 4 days at $109.50 Euros.  Parking in Spain is not cheap, and if you can find it, take it.  The cool thing about the city parking that I found really helpful is that the parking lots are all connected and they let you know how many openings that they have as you drive around the city.  So when you park, there is a motion detector that sees if your car is parked in a space, and then it lights a light above your car and turns it red meaning occupied.  The number updates on the parking lot, and around the city as other parking spaces are filled or emptied. What is really great is that as you're parking, you can see a green light above any open spaces.  So it is really easy to spot an open space and there are dynamic signs that will point you to open spaces.

Before leaving our WIFI behind, we used Waze to calculate our route and it downloaded the maps to our Apple iPhone.  We didn't get a voice plan here - just using WIFI as needed to make calls and upload and download data.  You can't get updates on the road without a data plan, but you at least can get to where you're going.  The GPS works fine, even for walking around the city.  

Jose Manuel will help you with your wine selection.

We rented via Air BNB a great farm house renovated room that is on a vineyard.  Ferran and his son Ferran met us at the driveway in front of the converted farm room.  It was cold, but they had a fire going for us and showed us the place.  We went into town and at Aldi we got those things we needed for dinner and then made a great pasta feast with chicken and broccoli and a huge fresh salad with items from the Valencian Marketplace before we left.  We also went back to our vendor Jose Manuel in the Mercado Central who gave us spot on wine selections for our tastes.  He said when we get to this region - stick to Cava.  It is just like champagne, but that it is great for digesting food and that it should be drunk while having meals - not just before or after, but during.   His stand in the corner of Mercado Central is called "Valencia Mon Amour" and it is at the center right in the back.  We collected 3 more bottles for the research.  We had a very smooth Red Crianza with our Pasta dinner.  It was a Don Jacobo from Rioja that was exceptionally smooth and improved as stayed open.  It was a Crianza from 2008 and was only 8 Euros.  We also bought two others on his recommendation, Baldios Crianza from Ribera del Duero and then a 2009 Bobal Clasico from Vina La Picareza.  The Bobal Clasico is something unique and he thought that it would go well with what we were looking to discover.  It is 100% Bobal - a really temperamental grape that is then crushed in Cement tanks and then stored for 10 months in American Oak.  

Three wines to taste...

Our Air BnB with Ferran on the farm

So with a couple of bottles on standby, we were able to get dinner prepared and only made it half way through the Don Jacobo.  It was very smooth and it definately helped ease us into a long cool night in the barn loft apartment.  The wonderful wood burner went all night long...