Riding to Rioja

 Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Spain has several wine regions, and we are heading to the Rioja region (red wine region).  It is about 3 1/2 hours northeast of Madrid.  Our guides scoped out the area to find a location in the center of the path of totality and decided this area had the best chance for good viewing.

There was plenty of scenery along the way, and I was struck by the large fields of sunflowers alongside the road.  

Along the way we stopped at a cute little town for lunch...another big lunch with a sampling of wine from the region.

The astronomers kept us busy during the bus ride with "games".  Each person had to give an astrological term for the next letter of the alphabet.  i.e. A = Asteroid.  It came to me and my letter was O.  I thought my response was one of the best--"Out of this World"! (ha ha)  Jim got the next one and his was easy P=Pluto.  Then David and Lou got into a lot of technical talk:  The universe developed 13.8 billion years ago; there are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy; there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe.  Yikes....my mind hurts.   These guys are pretty amazing in their ability to rattle off data and talk about things that I find hard to comprehend.  We have a few "eclipse chasers" who have been to several eclipses, and four are going to Egypt next year when it will be one of the longest duration of totality. (the trip is already sold out).  Five are coming back to Spain to see the eclipse, as the path will cross in the lower portion of the country.  One couple from Florida has their eclipse trips planned for the next two years!  They have been to 11 eclipse trips including Egypt, Tahiti, Antarctica, Australia, Texas and Kentucky. We have about 10 "virgin" eclipsers who have not yet seen a total eclipse, so tomorrow will be a big day for all of us!

We finally arrived at our hotel for the next two days.  It is the Parador de Bernardo de Fresneda, which is actually an old monastery, built in 1928, and it is charming and beautiful!  The city is Santo Domingo de la Calzada, population about 6,000.  

Here's a view from our window to the courtyard below.

Before dinner we had a lecture from David Eicher, one of the astronomers.  He had lots of info about the eclipse and the most important advice was to just enjoy it!

We got our "official" eclipse tshirts.

And then ventured out to another big dinner that just ended at 10:55pm!  We better get some rest before tomorrow's big day!