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| Poblet |
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| Poblet |
Today, the three API groups attending different universities met at 9 a.m. at the I point in Plaça Catalunya for our Calçotada day trip. We went to a little town called Poblet, south of Catalonia, in the city of Tarragona. There we had a guided tour of the Poblet Monastery.
We visited the cloister, the old kitchen, the old barbershop, the library, the chapter house, the church, the royal mausoleums, the dormitories and the old cellar. I never been inside a monastery but I found it to be very peaceful and quiet, also, very beautiful. The Reial Monestir de Santa Maria de Poblet is a Cistercian monastery, founded in 1151 by the monks from France. It is located in Conca de Barberà, a comarca in the province of Tarragona. The monastery was one of the first of three sister monasteries, known as the Cistercian triangle. After our tour, we learned how to cook calçotadas.
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| Calçotadas |
A calçot is a type of scallion or green onion known as blanca gran tardana in the Catalan language from Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. These onions are barbecued and then pulled out of it's leaf to be eaten with a type of sauce. I personally didn't like it, but most of the others students did. In addition to the calçotadas, we also ate steak, sausage and black sausage (morcilla), which is made out of blood. I must say though, the meat was better than the onions. Once we ate lunch, we had another guided tour through a wine factory/shop. There we learned how different types of wine were made and saw underground tunnels, where bottles of wine were stored in.
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| Stored wine |
Despite the 1 & 1/2 hour ride there and back, I really enjoyed the trip, it was very informative. I also bought my mom and her boyfriend a wine bottle to take back as a souvenir, I hope they like it.
