vegan lunch | Chaos roaming the world

We had most of today to explore Bilbao. However, it was a two hour drive to our next camp ground in the Rioja valley. So we’d aim for a departure around 4pm. That’s fine, Number 3 can’t explore forever so it’s around the time we’d head to a camp ground anyway.

Nevertheless, we tried to be early. It didn’t really happen but it was made worse by the camp site. We still had to pay for the night but reception was closed and you had to press a button to talk to them and then they actually had to come over….it just took time.

But even the architecture is quite sculptural

Finally, we were in Bilbao again. We picked the same parking garage as yesterday as it was right in town. The Lonely Planet suggests an “Architecture and river views walking tour” through the newer part of Bilbao and we followed their suggestion. It started pretty much right where we’d parked. Very convenient.

We passed some of the old houses including the town hall and then went over the Puente Zubizuri. It’s a modern bridge, formed a bit like a wave. Now, on the other side of the river, it was but a brief stroll to the Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry. It’s funny how one building (okay, Flo stated that it is more a sculpture itself) can inspire so many artists to leave a sculpture or installation of their own in the vicinity. Yesterday we were lucky enough to see Fujiko Nakaya’s mist installation in action. Today we looked at all the other art around the Guggenheim, most notably Louise Bourgeois’ Maman and Jeff Koon’s Puppy.

Leaving the Guggenheim museum behind, we went through Parque de Dona Casilda de Iturrizar and past the museum of Fine Arts. It was getting towards our lunch time now but our selected restaurant opened at 1.30pm. That was still a while away so we bought some sweet treats to get through the wait.

Continuing through the Plaza de Frederico Moyua, we came to the inner city again.

we were both reminded of south east asia in this bit

We were too hungry though. Instead, we decided to split lunch into two again and have some pintxos now and then some pintxos later. Our first lunch place was Ledesma No 5. Again, no vegetarian pintxos were available but the lovely waiter only took a minute to come up with a vegetarian tapa topped with cheese that was especially prepared for me in the kitchen. 🙂

Our second lunch spot was the vegan restaurant La Camilla. Already half full, we decided to share a plate of sushi and I took an extra chickpea salad while Flo had a tempeh sandwich. Hm. We both had to wonder afterwards what it is with vegan restaurants to let us down so many times. Even vegan food in vegetarian places is usually better tasting that orthodox vegan stuff. Ah well …

It was 3 o’clock by now and we’re pretty down and tired. With the prospect of another 2 hours in the car, we left Bilbao and waved goodbye. Definitely well worth a city holiday if anyone is looking for recommendations. One more stop in a hypermarket to stock up groceries and we were on the drive to Rioja. Everyone except Flo fell asleep. Poor Flo. Always having to drive.

He managed to get us safe and sound to Haro, the capital of the Rioja region where we will stay for two nights. Tomorrow, it’s wine tasting time!

Back to where we started yesterday
but in a different direction this time
loads of sculptures along the way
But even the architecture is quite sculptural
What is sculpture, what defines space?
oh yes, and Koons …
we did not go in … no patience for it today
that guy again
this time, local artists
some has questional artistic value
nature always helps
we were both reminded of south east asia in this bit
one of the main axis of the newtown
lots of brick, or brick coloured buildings. And steel

Sleep was good – I think. Given our itinerary for today, I shall be excused if I get some of the details wrong. I had the presence of mind to make a reservation for our port wine lodge of choice last night, and the confirmation arrived this morning: 4:15 pm at Graham’s Lodge, English guided tour and tasting. We will get to that …

We got off for a really late start – first some catching up on the blog. Then, we had to wait 20 minutes for the bus (going every 15 minute …). At least it was really quick getting into town. Our starting point was right behind the train station. We figured we could use this to explore further out and up, away from the river, compared to our downward stroll of yesterday.

But first, pastries! We passed a set of the cutest shops, one with great mini versions of some of our favourite pastries. Nina went with mini-pastel de nata and mini-éclair de chocolat. Oh, and given the late start we decided to go straight from here to lunch! The stroll was once again pretty captivating – coming from the Sé (cathedral) down through the narrow winding lanes of Ribeira. There is a lot of construction, mostly renovations, going on all around. But decay is still a dominate feature of this part of town. Empty, half torn down houses and dwellings that evoke Cuba and other former colonial subjects. Ten or twenty years ago, this kind of neighbourhood would probably have been considered a slum. The pressure of money is palpable, but so is the spirit of an active neighbourhood resisting. For now it seems that a balance is struck, resisting total Disney- and gentrification.

Which leads nicely into our lunch spot: A super hip vegan buffet restaurant where the plate & drink combo costs roughly as much as the weekly rent of one of the places two streets over. Sue us, it was still pretty good and super kid friendly to boot. We appreciate a good vegetarian / vegan meal. If there was something to nag on then it would be the slightly too preachy vibe that too often comes with vegan food (the word cleansing was mentioned in the menu).

After lunch, we headed for a triple combo of hipster-geek-history charm. Ticket number 2 on the Lonely Planet for Porto is this neo-gothic bookshop in a very hip part of town. Ever since its rise to next level fame by inspiring J. K. Rowling with its eye-catching twisting staircase and taking some inspiration for the Harry Potter books while working as an English teacher between ‘91 and ’93. Nowadays, it is mostly a tourist attraction, although the 5€ entrance fee are still a valid voucher for any purchase from the solid inventory. We almost did not go due to the line, but once again were singled out with a triple insurance of “baby first” and strict instructions to skip the line. We even met our power-bank helpers from the campground and were able to pass that secret handshake on to them (i.e. use baby to skip line).

Finding a coffee and pastry stop before the tour proved to be a bit more of an obstacle, afterwards. We did however find a hipster enough place to finally get me that haircut that was overdue since probably a month before we left. It was the real deal, complete with other twisted-mustachioed patrons and two guys collapsing in to clean up after walking the whole camino. We also, kind of last minute, find a place where Nina could replenish on much needed sugar and black tea.

It almost got stressful then when we took the bus to get over to the port lodge, with the bus sitting in traffic for a long time. We started early enough though, and made it with 3 minutes to spare. In that excitement, picking the selection for the tasting was done pretty much shooting from the hip. Since I already tried my way all the way up to 30 year old tawny from Graham’s, I felt a change of pace was in order and went with the super premium vintage collection – and Nina with the considerably cheaper premium vintage collection. 60 € for six “shots” – this better be good.

Graham’s was recommended by the Lonely Planet and we noticed why. The whole Lodge was done up recently and just had the perfect feel to it. It was interesting and somewhat strange in a nice kind of way. It looked almost staged, but this was the place where Graham’s branded port is stored to age. 7 million litres of it, actually. I could touch a 100 year old barrel with 30 year old port in it. We were led through the vault, with the oldest bottle in there being from 1864! The guide was great as well. Our worries for going with the brand we knew best were quickly forgotten – and it turned out that most port brands are owned by the same family anyway.

We even managed to not get shamed into feeling too impostery by the well-dressed American tourists occasionally sneering at our hobo-with-baby look. Well, my bills are as green as yours, it turned out and we left half of them behind in the tasting room for the plebs. See, the choice of tasting menu decides the venue. We bought ourselves into the vintage room, sporting as the website says a “feel of a fine private club”. Not even Number 3 had the potential to bring that down all the way. I don’t care – we had an absolute blast, with a detailed introduction of each of or tastings. With the rest of our group sitting with us, we had almost all the offerings on the table. Ultimately, we were really happy with our selection. We would never have bought a bottle of one of these, but being able to sample them was great. The vintage ports are much more like rubys in their character. They are not aged in oak barrels like tawnys and thus retain a lot of their freshness. Yet one could clearly make out the effect of aging in the bottle between the lot we had (I had vintages from 1983, 2000 and 2016, Nina had an LBV, crusted and a vintage 2005). Maybe someday we will go for the ultimate decadence of vintage tawnys (single year oak barrel aged).

We had to buy at least one bottle then – given the extra 10% discount we got from our Porto card to boot. I went with a straight table wine from one of the owners’ vineyards while Nina struck a bargain with a 1982 vintage bottled last year. See, Graham’s is official supplier for the Queen and whenever there is a merry occasion they get a request to bottle some certain vintage. So the 1982 was bottled in 2018 in celebration of Prince Harry’s marriage. What a bloody weird thing to come from simple Portuguese grapes on bad soil.

Is anything after this really still relevant? We had a blast … (ok, one more thing – took the wrong bus and we had to walk off some of our buzz for 2 km to get back to camp).