Miguel Torres Winery

One day after returning back from the States Jeff and I went to a local winery.  Not only do they have a large vineyard here in Spain, they also have vineyards in Chile and California. The winery is located in Vilafranca del Penedes and was about a 1 hour ride by train.  Of course we did run into a complication as the train station it was to depart from was under construction, so we had to hop on to the Metro and take it 8 more stops to get us to the train that was to take us to Vilafranca del Penedes. 

Here is Jeff on our train ride.

After our 2 hour journey from our house we arrived at the Miguel Torres Winery.

This is a sculpture in front of the winery.

This is the Torres family home.

The vineyard is very large, 4,000 hecks or 100,000 acres. 

 

 

This is a sculpture in front of the building that stores their "Reserve" wine.  It is a

 

This is a small portion of the processing area.

Here is Jeff on the trolley that takes visitors through the winery.  Like his new glasses?  He HAD TO have them.

 

This is the "Reserve" barrels.

 This is the quality assurance area that measures a bunch of stuff prior to processing the grapes.

 The bottling area.

 More storage, this is just the regular stuff.

 This is the tasting area.

This is us on our way back...it was really hot that day so we are a bit sweaty.

 This is the train...

Our Apartment Community

Our apartment community has many amenities.  We have 2 tennis courts, 1 adult pool, 1 kiddie pool, playground, activity room for the kids, gym and a large deck. Our apartment community also consists of 2 large residential tours and 3 smaller building that are about 4 floor each.  I will be giving a little tour of our amentities.

This is our view of the community area from our bedroom, spare bedroom and balcony in the back.

Here you can see one of the towers in our community.

I am not sure what I would call this, it is right off the tennis courts.  There are a bunch of benches for watching the tennish players.

This is the pool and sun deck.  This picture was taken last November so there aren't any chairs out, but there are now. It is pretty deep, probably 4 feet at the most shallow and 10 feet at the deepest part.

This is the kiddie pool right next to the adult pool. 

Another view of the adult pool.  You can see there is a little playground for the kids also in our community area.

For some reason the steps to the pool are locked in this glass cage thing...it is never open. It can be opened with our master key. 

This is the gym, it is nice to have as gyms aren't super common here.  One issue with the gym, it is located in the basement within the parking garage so there isn't much ventalation and gets HOT in there.  Jeff comes back from the gym looking like he took a shower.

I am so proud...

While we were back in Wisconsin during our visit we met my brother, Jason, at a local bar.  Jason frequents this place and had previously posted on facebook his defeat against this bars "Big A$$ Pretzel". Of course Jeff decided that he HAD to go to this bar when we were home so he could out eat my brother.  Jason's friend, Joe, also sweetened the deal by offering to buy our drinks the rest of the night if Jeff could eat the whole thing. 

He didn't even use the cheese, granted it is fake, but oh so good.

This is a good picture of the size of this thing.

Washing it down with beer.

 

Of course, Jeff, my extremely motivated husband, did finish the whole thing.  I forgot to take a picture of it though.

Bad news...

the pictures of the other apartments we saw when apartment hunting are gone.  I had uploaded them to Jeff's U.S. work computer and he didn't save them or load them on to his new (Spanish) computer.  Bummer! 

Would you want to smoke after seeing this?

This is a cigarette package here in Spain and to me is a bit disturbing.  This is just one of many pictures on cigarette packs; I don’t know how anyone smokes after seeing this.

Midwest tour

Jeff and I were in the States for 2 weeks in August to visit family and friends.  We spent our time between Milwuakee, Madison and Chicago and drove 1200 miles.

Picture in the air on our way to the States.

Wisconsin capital building.

At "The Great Dane" in Madison.

Jeff's sister Jessica playing with Bear.

Jeff, his mom Joan and sister Jessica.

Jeff's Grandparents.

Downtown Chicago.

Marilyn Monroe statue in downtown Chicago.

Dinner with my co-workers at Carnivale.

Dinner with my sister and brother.

Decisions, decisions

Here in Spain and most of Europe stores only have sales in July and January.  This August I took advantage and purchased window panels, decorative pillows, water glasses, table lamp and olive oil/balsamic vinegar dispenser.  Here Jeff is holding my "maybe" purchases.

I ended up only purchasing 2 at this store and 4 more at another ;-)