Penedes and Olot

The Volcano Olot
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I stayed in Barcelona this past weekend. There were two trips planned with my program so I stayed busy. On saturday, we took a 45 minute bus ride to the town of Penedes, which is 45 minutes outside of Barcelona. We went to a cava vineyard named Cordineu. They are famous all over Europe and they pride themselves on making excelent cava, which is like champagne but cannot be called that because it isn´t made in France. We took an underground train tour through the cava cellars. I learned all about the process of aging the cava and then I was able to try some after the tour and it was delicious. After that, we traveled to a wine vineyard in Villa Franca. We walked through the fields of vines and learned about the manual system of picking grapes and a new system that uses vibrations to shake the grapes off the vine. The new system is much more efficient and produces a better quality of wine. I learned how wine is made and aged. The difference between red wine and white wine is that the grapes are peeled when creating white wine. The peels are left on the grapes during the fermentation process of red wine to give it a rich red color. I was actually able to understand the tour very well even though it was in Spanish. Hopefully, that is a sign that I am getting better at the language! After learning about the fermentation process, we were able to try 6 different types of wine (white, red and rosado). I learned the art of wine tasting, it was very interesting. You swirl the wine in the glass and pull it to the nose before tasting.

Inside the volcano where it has been dug open to view the core
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On Sunday, we took a two hour bus ride to the Olot Volcano. We hiked through the forest and viewed some volcanoes that still have hallow bubbles in their core. The volcano was beautiful and the rock was interesting to feel. We visited the medieval town of Santa Pau and walked through the cobblestone streets. Overall, it was a 6 mile hike through the beautiful countryside of Spain!