Let’s bang out a few days -
Again, sorry for the delay, I had to be in the US for a medical emergency, and then I had to be in Montevideo for a birthday. I’ve currently sitting in EZE waiting on a Qatar flight to GRU that I was not supposed to be on, but that’s another trip report.
I left off with a rainy day in Segovia and a promise of a soccer match the following day. I’ll come out and say it, I don’t care for soccer (football, futebol etc…) but a lot of people do and one of those people, my wife actually quite enjoys it and used to play it. A few weeks prior to our trip I asked my mother if she would be interested in seeing Real Madrid play, she had questions, “What is Real Madrid?” and “What are they playing?” After my explanation, she knew it would be something nice to do for my wife. I found a way to book tickets and we were all set. We were to see Real Madrid playing in something called the UEFA something or other against Legia Warsawa, which I gathered were from Poland. We arrived at Esatdio Bernbeau and after walking entirely around the stadium we found our gate. It began to get interesting right around now.
In Australia I had printed out our tickets and put them in my bag, I wanted to test the printer so I printed just one ticket first and then I printed all of the others. In total I had five pieces of paper, each with a ticket. Trouble is, I only bought four tickets. I grabbed all the tickets out of my bag and held onto them and looked them over and realized I had a duplicate ticket, which wasn’t a big deal so I put that in my pocket and gave out the others to my parents and my wife. I guess I didn’t read the tickets properly and my father ended up with the ticket I had used to get into the stadium. My mother, wife and myself were all standing there with streams of people running passed us while my father looks very confused. A security guard walks over to us and tells us that we need to move. The following is that conversation:
Me: “My father can’t get in”
Officer: “you’ll meet him inside”
M: “He can’t get in”
O: “You’ll meet him inside”
M: “I have his ticket”
O: “you’ll meet him inside”
M: “But I have his ticket”
O: “You’ll meet him inside, move now or be arrested”
I then lost it and started screaming, but this was in my broken Spanish and she did not understand English, my point wasn’t getting across. We went back and fourth for a few minutes before she threatened me again. My wife, who is a lot calmer in these situations, stepped in and explained again what I had been trying to explain, and then magically every one understood each other.
After that ordeal, it was time to I guess watch a soccer match. Here’s a picture of the stadium:
The Legia fans were put up in a tiny corner of the stadium and roped off like some hooligans, they also had a net in front of them, I assume to stop them from hurling things onto the uh…pitch? It’s a pitch right?
You can look up the score if you want, but Real Madrid beat Legia fairly easily, the Brazilian on Real Madrid (Marcelo scored a goal), there was a PK in the first 5 minutes, over all 6 goals were scored. I’m pretty sure I reached peak soccer there and it I assume can only go down hill from there.
Exhausted, we went home and packed, tomorrow we’d head up to San Sebastian, and a region known for handing me out traffic fines like candy.
We needed to get onto the road early, which meant getting up even earlier to go get the rental car from Sixt by Atocha. My mother does not do “early” on vacations, so I knew we were in for a long day. I also knew that I was going to break up that LONG day with a stop in Rioja, because well, after 3 hours in a car someone was going to need a drink. That drink was scheduled to be had at Bodegas Lopez De Heredia.
A LONG drive later, we had arrived at the Bodega, the cost of the tour was astronomical in price, but we ended up with a bottle of wine for each person at the end, but still, an option would be nice. The tour was nice, it happened to be right around harvest so we got to see that side. We entered the massive wine cellar but we weren’t supposed to take pictures.
But I did:
Oops.
We booked ourselves into an AirBnB inside of San Sebastian itself, I’ll spare you the gory details or trying to find the place that had the key, that’s a trip report in itself. The apartment however was gorgeous. We quickly settled in to unwind we had dinner reservations at Mugaritz for 9pm. Around 7:30 I told everyone to start getting ready and I checked my email for the address and how long it would take. Oh, oh expletive, our reservation is for 8pm and not 9pm. So how would a Michelin starred restaurant handle such a gaff, well honorably in fact. I called and explained we would be late which turned out not to be a problem. I left out the part where I freaked out for a solid 20 minutes while telling everyone to hurry up and get ready, but whatever, we’ll gloss over that.
The drive out to Mugaritz was stunning; once we arrived at the restaurant I was taken back but how beautiful the building was. We were escorted to our table by one of the hosts/waiters, he asked where we were from and I said Sao Paulo and New York and he happened to speak Portuguese, which was welcome as we needed some practice (and still do). I have the menu around my apartment and if anyone wants a breakdown of the dinner plate by plate, I’ll be happy to share it with you. For how I’ll post pictures, and you can use your best judgment to figure out what it was. Fun fact, the wine from Tavel made me cry, if anyone would like to provide a bottle or 10 for me, I would appreciate it.
A bit of a background on the wine, I was talking with the sommelier and told him that we just traveled from Australia where we had some amazing natural and organic wines. His eyes lit up with excitement and he told me that he had a bottle not on the menu that I needed to try and it was the Rose from Tavel. The meal was overall stellar; we were brought into the kitchen and met Chef Andoni and one of his sous chefs where we were presented with a course of chicken skin to try. It was amazing to see a kitchen in action like that, every movement choreographed; it was like nothing I’ve ever seen.
We finished up and drove back to the apartment. Tomorrow I had planned on touring San Sebastian and then dinner at Arzak. However plans changed quickly and we wound up exploring France. I promise I’ll get to the next part soon.