Toro Toro Toro!

Dear People Walking the Camino Right Now:

If I already told you to stop in here on your way past, please don´t let my manic postings scare you away. We still like pilgrims just fine. We just really really needed a break.

And we took a nice one, a day trip to the big Vendimia Fiesta in Toro, near Zamora. Toro is one of my favorite places in Spain. They not only have the very best red wine there, they also have the very best Gothic church "portico de majestad" I ever saw. It was enclosed soon after it was finished, so it is still almost intact, with all its brilliant colors and wonderful characters gloriously alive. Just seeing it can make me smile for DAYS. (this image is lifted from a guidebook. Like most architectural photos, it is an insult to the original. Still..)

Another big treat we found is the Romanesque porch out front is covered in scaffolding. The rows and rows of little sculpted musicians and kings and prophets out there are getting a scrubbing and preservative treatment, after lo these nine centuries. And there was a guide there to take us up onto the construction site so we could see the sculptures RIGHT UP CLOSE! I love this stuff! (And it was free, too.)

The wine was not free, but we tasted a good bit of that and bought several cases of delicious un-oaked and 4-months-oaked Vino de Toro for the bodega. 

The chimney project is coming along, slowly but surely.
So if you are out there walking, come on by. I promise not to bite you. 

We will keep Patrick on a short lead.