Aranda de Duero

Okay, so two weekends ago, I went to Aranda de Duero with a few teachers from my school. Here is my blog on that. :) Enjoy

Friday, March 21st

This was like Cod mashed potatoes, tomato, and an olive.
It was okay, but not my favorite.

After school on the 21st, Esther, Javi (teachers from my school), and I left for Aranda. We took a detour to Javi's dad's house because his dad and his dad's girlfriend drove us to Aranda de Duero. Duero is one of the main rivers in Spain and Aranda lies on it, hence the name. The trip took about two hours and once we got there we pretty much dropped off our stuff at Esther's house and went out to eat tapas. We kind of went on the perfect weekend because they were having a tapas tour so a lot of the restaurants and bars in town had a deal on tapas and a drink. We went to four different places on Friday night and tried four different tapas. I have included pictures and what they are.

Lechazo (lamb) burrito. So good!
I don't think I've ever had lamb, but I decided I liked it.
I ate it a lot in this weekend. It is very typical in this area of Spain.

Lechazo stuffed eggplant. Yum. Probably my favorite of the weekend.

Don't really remember. It was a fusion of some sort. There was
ramen in the bowl and couscous in the burrito thing.
And I don't like seafood (see the octopus thing..bleh).
It was okay despite the octopus thing though.

After the tapas tour, we went back to Esther's house and went to sleep. We did take pictures of the whole gang, but none of those pictures are on my camera so I will get them up as soon as I have them. :)

Saturday, March 22nd

The main square of Peñaranda

On Saturday, Esther and I got up and met Javi and his parents for breakfast. Esther's mom works in a bakery, so we of course had to go there for breakfast and it was delicious. I had freshly squeezed orange juice (haven't had that since Peru..yum) and a pastry that is common in Aranda called, Pastel Aranda (literally Aranda pastry.ha). It was so good and if you ever find yourself in Aranda de Duero, you can go and enjoy a pastry at Gregorio Tudanca, too. After breakfast, Esther, Javi, and I went to a nearby town called Peñaranda de Duero. There is apparently an old-fashioned operating pharmacy there, but unfortunately it is closed on Saturdays so we couldn't go to it. However, we did walk around the little town and we went to a castle that was on the hill looking over the town.

On top of the hill, Peñaranda below

Castle of Peñaranda--a gothic style castle
that dates back to the 10th century

After hanging out in Peñaranda for a little bit, we drove back to Aranda de Duero and went on a tour to some bodegas (wine cellars). There is a system of wine cellars underneath the town that were built in between the 12th and 17th century, so we went into a few of them and it was cool to see. I think it's awesome that there is like a labyrinth under the town.

After seeing the wine cellars, we went to Esther's house for a delicious lunch that her parents prepared. We had lechazo, morcilla (blood sausage), chorizo, delicious bread, mushrooms, and more Aranda pastries. It was SO good!

Morcilla

Lamb and pastry :)

After lunch, we went back to Peñaranda to check out the palace that was there (we couldn't go in the morning because it was closed). The Palacio de los Condes de Miranda is a renaissance palace from the 16th century and it was built for a count. The coolest part of the palace was the ceilings. They were all wooden and some of them had no nails or anything used. Don't ask me how they did that..it had to do with the wood expanding, but they were so awesome. Unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures of the really cool ones, but it's all good. It was still cool to see them.

Wooden ceilings

Patio of the palace

Palace, main square, and castle on the hill

After visiting the palace, we made our way back to Aranda to go to a balonmano game (handball). Handball is pretty popular in the area and Aranda's team is supposedly pretty good. I've never seen a handball game and really didn't even know how it was played, but it was awesome! It's like a cross between water polo, basketball, and soccer. It's so intense. Also, it was so great just being in that atmosphere. Fans screaming and chanting and yelling at the refs. I spent so much time in the gym growing up so it was so great to be there again. Aranda's team is in the yellow and orange. It was a good game, but unfortunately they lost 27-28. :(

After the game what better to do than to get more tapas. Ha. So, we went out and I tried four more tapas. :)

More lamb..yum.

Red tuna, delicious. This was probably my second favorite tapa.

What I would call mushroom soup
(I accidentally forgot to take a picture before eating)

Seafood sandwiches and some kind of stuff
that also tasted like mushroom soup

Once we got home, it was pretty late, but I left time to skype my boyfriend and his family because they were all together celebrating birthdays, so it was nice to see them and after I got done skyping them, I headed to bed. And that was the end of day two in Aranda.

Sunday, March 23rd

La Laguna Negra

On our last day in Aranda, we actually drove to the province of Soria (a province right next to the province of Burgos, where Aranda is located). We drove there to go hiking at Parque Natural de la Laguna Negra y los Circos Glaciares de Urbión and guess what?! It was snowing! A lot! There was so much snow! It was awesome to be somewhere with real snow, but I'm not gonna lie, I was also happy to get back down the mountain and be somewhere with no snow. Ha. I got the best of both worlds.

La Laguna Negra..we could have hiked to the top, but....

...this happened. This was where our hike ended.

After hiking, we drove back down the mountain to a non-snowy, sunny little town. We walked around and ate lunch. Then, we climbed back in the car and stopped two more places on our way back to Aranda de Duero. We stopped at El Parque Nacional del Cañón del Rio Lobo and another town called Burgo de Osma.

We have better group pictures, but they aren't on my camera.
But here is the group with our lunch (tortilla de patata)

Cañón del Río Lobo

The wall and cathedral of Burgo de Osma

The perfect example of how towns
used old city walls to build other buildings

And that is the end of my weekend. It was awesome and I loved every second of it. The food was delicious and the company was awesome. It was nice meeting Esther's family, boyfriend, and friends and I am so grateful for everything they did for me and gave me while I was visiting! Also, shout out to Javi's parents for driving us there and back! :) Once I was back in Madrid, I pretty much crashed and I was thankful to still have one day to relax. :) I felt guilty that Javi and Esther had to work the next day..whoops. Oh well, I hope you enjoyed this post and sorry for all the pictures. Ha. Keep checking back as I have two more weekends to catch up on. :)