Wine Festival

 

Day 44 - Navarrete

     We survived the night thanks to ear plugs. Breakfast was an over crowded dining room, and we waited for the lights to go on before packing.  The morning walk was cool and cloudy but no rain, thankfully.  It wasn’t long before we reached the outskirts of Logrono.  It’s interesting that graffiti looks the same in every country.  The ‘words’ are always nonsensical, so it almost seems ‘English’.

    Almost our entire morning was spent in Longrono.  We hit the city on its biggest day of the year.  It was the annual wine festival to mark the beginning of the harvest. There’s not an empty bed in the city of 200,000 so we knew that we would not spend the night. Since it was mid morning and the festival didn’t start until noon, we went to the square where they were still setting up.  There was all kinds of security fences and they were turning away any one with a backpack, but for some reason they waived us in.  What harm can a couple of pilgrims do?  There were a few groups of young people in white t-shirts clustered around.  

    As we left the square and headed through town, we encountered literally thousands of young people in white t-shirt, usually in groups.  We were not sure exactly what was going to happen.  One list of events said there was grape crushing with feet, a running with young bulls, a parade with spraying wine on everyone. We didn’t stick around to see, but by the time we reached the edge of town, we saw on tv screens that the square was filled with thousands of people, all in white t-shirts, dancing to a performance.

     We left the party town and headed to the next town where we had reservations.  This time our reservations held and we are enjoying a private room and bathroom. The place is fairly nice and clean except that they have goats in the back lawn where there are lawn chairs and the clothes line.  I had to tiptoe to the clothes line and tell the goats to leave our clothes alone.  They are cute goats, but they stink and there is a poopy mess everywhere.  It was unappetizing enough to convince us to find dinner in town. The church had an humongous golden altarpiece that extended to the ceiling, and a painting by Michelangelo. We met Duane and Carina at a tapa bar and heard a lot about Sweden.