The pack up, pack out, metro ride to the rental car pick up near Barcelona Sants train station was pretty uneventful. Armed with our GPS and the map from the helpful rental car agent, Mike confidently got behind the wheel of the trusty Peugeot (standard transmission) to navigate our exit from Barcelona. Before we knew it, we the city streets gave way to an industrial district, then suburban areas with shopping centers, then agricultural areas with olive trees and artichoke farms and lastly the ancient walled villages, grapevines and Monsant mountains of the wine country.
We visited, fell in love with really, this area for 4 days on our last trip to Barcelona. Stunning and magical are words that I would use to describe the disparate dotted villages that make up this region. This trip, we wanted to get a more in depth education about the area, its history and the wine. We are not much for "pre-packaged" tours in our travels. We are more plucky and unscripted about how we visit an area. In this case though, due to the known language barrier and reserved embrace of the fledgling wine tourism industry by these small, family-owned, centuries old winemakers we opted for a local guide found at VisitPriorat.com as part of our experience.
Our guide, Rachel corresponded back and forth with Mike for several weeks prior to our trip to put together a personalized itinerary to the Priorat and Montsant wine appellations. Our visit had a mixture of time on our own as well as a pair up with another couple from California who also contacted Rachel as a guide.
Our travel/arrival day was on our own but Rachel had arranged lunch for us at Restaurant La Cooperativa and a guided tour at Ferrer-Bobet both in the Village of Porrera. Those visits and our additional days in Priorat deserve their own posts, coming up next... Here is a sneak peak at the beauty of Porrera.
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