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CATALANYA
DAY ONE
The Tour meets in Barcelona, the vibrant and exceedingly dynamic capital of Catalonia.
Hugging the Mediterranean, Barcelona is perhaps Spain’s most cosmopolitan city, revivified originally by its economic prominence in the 19thC and in a second wave, by the massive makeover since the Olympics of 1992. It is now considered the chic city for its avant-garde artists, art, architecture, and innovative chefs.
We urge guests to arrive several days before the tour to absorb at your own pace and according to your interests the many wonderful offerings in this pedestrian-friendly city:
its remarkable architecture from Gaudí to Santiago Calatrava and Mies van der Rohe;
the splendid food markets of Santa Caterina (signalling the gentrification of La Ribera) and the famous la Boqueria off La Rambla;
its magical parks , Diagonal Mar, Gaudí’s Parc Guell, and the promenades along the beach at la Barceloneta;
its museums from Picasso to MACBA;
its ecelectic and thrilling dining scene from Catlan cooking traditions to the nueva cocina espańola.
Art of Living will assist with hotel recommendations and reservations. We also arrange expert guides for shopping, walking, sightseeing and up to date dining notes.
Your hotel tonight, ‘ABaC’, is an exquisite new boutique hotel of only 15 rooms built within a zen-like garden. After Welcome drinks here you will enjoy a special tasting menu designed for us by Xavier Pellicer, who this year (2008) won his second Michelin star after the relocation to this refined restaurant away from the city centre.
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BASQUE COUNTRY
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Day Two
This monring is a short flight to Bilbao.
One of the bastions of Basque nationalism, fierce pride, and strong sense of unique identity, Bilbao, in microcosm, sheds light on Spain’s regional capacity to both reinvent itself and remain true to a quintessential spirit and rich traditions.
Arrive in time for a latish lunch at the Guggenheim Museum Restaurant where protégé of the acclaimed Michelin ranked chef, Martín Berasategui, Josean Martínez Alija presides over an imaginative and seasonal menu gastronomique.
After lunch check into your designer chic hotel the Gran Hotel Domine where some of the rooms and terraces have great views of the incomparable iconic Museum.
This afternoon enjoy an optional walking tour of the old town before a casual roving txikiteo dinner- a typical Bilbao tradition of “bar hopping’ with glass of wine in hand, sampling exceptionally delicious pinxtos.
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Day Three
This morning after breakfast visit Frank Gehry’s famed titanium spectacle, affectionately known as ‘el goog’ that evokes the site’s original use for shipbuilding.
Later, drive east along the coast to Getaria, a tiny medieval fishing harbour that was the birthplace of Magellan’s navigator and also fashion designer, Cristobal Balenciaga. Enjoy the day’s catch for lunch at one of the renowned local restaurants with an exceptionally extensive and historic wine list.
Also visit a bodega in the heart of the country’s smallest D.O. wine region: Txakoli de Getaria, a tart white wine made from Hondarrabi Zuri and Hondarrabi Beltza.
This afternoon, check into your exceptional boutique hotel that feels like an extremely well appointed home away from home with only 8 rooms. Inspired by the people who own Villa Soro in San Sebastian, this property combines rural charm with urban sophistication in gorgeous rooms, with a peaceful ambience and dreamy swimming pool.
This evening join local friends around the old town of San Sebastian exploring atmospheric pintxo bars as enticing as Aloña-Berri, Cuchara de san Telmo, la Cepa, Bar Ganbara.
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Day Four
This morning enjoy the hotel or explore San Sebastián (aka Donostia) at your leisure. This pedestrian friendly town was formerly the elegant and fashionable watering hole for Royalty and is still so beguiling for its La Concha beach, one of the world’s great city beaches that is totally integrated into the lifeblood of the city, its chic boulevards with Belle Époque mansions, cafes and boutiques, its mazelike Parte Veja (Old Town) with thick-walled buildings pressing up against stoic Romanesque churches and small bars and pintxos everywhere.
The highlight today is lunch at Mugaritz where astoundingly a team of more than 50 people under the inspiration of Andoni Luis Aduriz take care of 40 diners in this surprisingly simple rural space surrounded by a superb vegetable garden. Prior to lunch you will meet the marvelous Chef Andoni and have a tour of the demonstration gardens of exotic herbs and vegetables.
Return to Hotel Iturregi for some relaxation time before tonight venturing back into San Seb for a meal within one of the famed Sociedad Gastronómica clubs, an institution unique to the Basque country, and particularly to San Sebastián. In existence for the last century or so, they are a place where men--until very recently, they were exclusively the domain of men--go to gather to cook, eat, drink and discuss cooking, eating, drinking...oh, and occasionally politics.
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La RIOJA + NAVARRA
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Day Five
This morning visit the Museo Chillida Leku an open air park that celebrates the sculptural and artistic work of Basque Sculptor Eduardo Chillida renowned for his open space monuments like Lugar de Encuentros.
Today’s highlight is lunch at Arzak ranked 3 stars by Michelin and 8th by San Pellegrino’s Wolrd’s 50 Best. This 110-year-old roadside tavern is nicely poised between an older, French-inspired style of innovation, and the new wave of ground-breaking Spanish cooking, as exemplified by Ferran Adrià and his disciples. Juan Mari Arzak’s quest to reinvent Basque cuisine, was inspired after attending a short course with French chef Paul Bocuse in 1976, and led him on a boundary-busting journey of discovery involving new techniques and unusual ingredients. Together with his talented daughter Elena, they have created an enriched, reinvigorated Basque cuisine that retains a sense of tradition and place.
After lunch take the picturesque drive south to reach our superbly charming relais et châteaux accommodation, El Peregrino, an intimate, elegant, luxurious boutique property. Located at any important way station of the Camino at Puente la Reina, the very crossroads where the principal pilgrim roads coming from Europe meet, there are a number of local monument of interest.
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Day Six
This morning you have the option for light trekking with a guide through the Camino with a picnic lunch.
This afternoon under Nina’s passionate and expert culinary guidance and her head Chef who speaks impeccable English, guests will enjoy a cooking class demonstrating a range of typical Basque dishes.
This segues into a delightful dinner.
This is an ideal opportunity for informed and lively discussions around tradition versus modernity, the role of technology and the fascination with molecular cuisine and how it is evolving and influencing chefs around the globe.
Overnight El Peregrino
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Day Seven
La Rioja is the cradle of the Castilian language and the character of these lands has been moulded by the vineyards and the pilgrims' road, the Camino to Santiago de Compostela, by smooth landscapes, fertile valleys, dramatic piedmont escarpments, medieval towns and strategic crossroads.
The wines are amongst the finest in Spain and utterly delectable and fascinating as within the region you can experience uniquely traditional wine styles from firms such as Muga, Marqués de Murrieta and Marqués de Riscal that belong to the Rioja aristocracy as well as New Wave wines whose reputable producers include the Mendoza family, Roda, and Ysios.
Today visit the incomparable Dinastia Vivanco Museum of the Culture of Wine that covers every aspect of wine culture from the vineyard, to the winery, wine accoutrements, archaeology and art. Enjoy a contemporary regional lunch with spectacular vineyard vistas. After lunch visit Ysios, one of the astounding New Wave vineyards, designed by Valencia-born Santiago Calatrava in the foothills of the Sierra de Cantabria and named after the Egyptian goddess of magic.
This evening back at El Peregrino, enjoy an instructional tasting supper of some of Spain’s quintessential products: jamon, manchego, olive oil
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Day Eight
This morning travel to the small town of Haro on the south bank of the Ebro River in Rioja Alta where many of the bodegas are centred. Visit Bodegas R. López de Heredia built in 1877, today in its fourth generation of family ownership and where little has changed yet modernity has been startlingly added to tradition.Of all the architectural additions from various times during the 20thC none is more surprising than Baghdad-born architect Zaha Hadid's – a tasting shop pavilion of gold-tinted steel that she describes as "a distorted memory shape resembling a decanter”.
Later visit one of the most significant innovators, new-wave Rioja Bodegas Roda founded 1987 by a Catalán couple Mario Rottlant and Carmen Daurella, whose objective was to create superb, unique high expression, fruit-driven red wines of maximum freshness in a modern style reflective of the region and the constituent varietals.
Lunch is at the exciting Gehry-designed Marques de Riscal complex where famed Michelin awarded Hotel Echaurren chef, Francis Paniego presides over a menu that ranges from exquisite traditional croquetas to nouvelle dishes of great delicacy.
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Day Nine
Today’s lunch is at Restaurant Tubal in the Navarran village of Taffala where an exemplary reputation has been carved by it elegant owner Axen whose son Nicolás Jiménez has worked in restaurants such as Zuberoa, (under Chef Martín Berasategui) and Arzak yet continues the family tradition. We love it for Axen’s infectious generosity and hospitality and that it preserves luscious traditional dishes based on an abundance of local seasonal ingredients, as well as taking up new techniques to create an avant-garde cuisine of great integrity.
Later take the scenic drive of 2 hours to Bilbao airport for the short flight to Mallorca. On reaching, you will be transferred to the delightful village of Fornalutx possibly the prettiest mountain village on the island, where your charming accommodation awaits.
(It is also possible to end your Tour today and arrange to leave from Bilbao if time does not permit the charming extension to Mallorca).
Dinner this evening is in one of the village’s typical local traditional restaurants.
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Balearic Islands: MALLORCA
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Days Ten to Thirteen
Your four days on the island celebrates the intrinsic beauty and beguiling diversity of Mallorca by staying in the Serra de Tramunta mountain range with its spectacularly rugged coastline, terraced olive and citrus groves, pine forests and stone villages. Along this northwest coast are the rearing peaks of the rugged mountains that harbour beautiful cove beaches, a pair of intriguing monasteries at Valldemossa and Lluc, and a string of delightful old towns - Deià, Sóller and Pollença - as well as the picturesque villages of Biniaraix and Fornalutx. This variety, physical beauty and seductive climate, has drawn tourists to visit and well-heeled expatriates to settle here since the nineteenth century, including artists and writers.
Accommodation in Fornalutx, reputedly the island’s most picturesque and charming village, is in boutique hotels established in antique buildings of immense charm with terraces and swimming pool.
Days in Mallorca will include the following:
A walking tour of the capital Palma, a surprisingly stylish city of broad plazas, charming cobbled streets and medieval buildings, with a sweeping harbour filled with swank yachts and glamorous cruise ships, a lively food market, an impressive Gothic cathedral presiding over the city walls, the Arab baths the only evidence still of Muslim domination, the Miró Foundation, the artist’s former studio now housing over 100 of his works, and lovely cafes and restaurants;
A full day sailing the spectacular rugged western coastline with its soaring peaks, and turquoise coves, stopping for lunch on the beach to feast on the day’s catch;
A day to explore the well preserved hilltop villages such as Valldemossa, Deià, with its international colony of artists and the grave of Robert Graves , the village's most famous resident and pretty seaside villages like Port de Sóller with its sweeping cove and quizzical little tram along the foreshore.
During the course of the days we have chosen delightful restaurants for your delectation and the experience of Mallorquian cooking at its best.
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Day Thirteen
The Tour ends today after a leisurely breakfast.
Palma is an international airport with connections to innumerable European hubs and is an hour’s distance from the hotel.
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© This Tour remains the Copyright of marieke’s Art of Living and we reserve the right to amend the itinerary at any time in the best interest of our clients
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Tour Leader
Marieke Brugman’s Academic (Fine Arts) beginnings segued into the culinary world where she is a highly regarded chef, educator, consultant, public speaker and occasional writer. She has been both a pioneer in Food/Wine Tourism and an ambassador for creating a distinctive Australian identity in the evolution of our gastronomic culture.
Marieke co-established and operated Howqua Dale Gourmet Retreat - an exceptional hospitality destination experience in north-east Vitoria, and over 30 years, cemented its outstanding reputation for superb cuisine and innovative cooking schools.
In 1990, Marieke co-founded and conducted an international niche-market Travel Company so that her passion for human experiences and cultural connections could open doors to world class journeys, enabling guests to see the world differently, and always in superior comfort and with great culinary inquisitiveness.
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Tour Assistant
Baxter is Marieke’s Assistant. Originally from Adelaide, she has spent the last decade as an inveterate traveller sailing ships, flying planes, cycling mountains, and trekking the globe, along the way accumulating fluency in German, Italian and Spanish and a good smattering of French. A naturally gifted linguist, Baxter is currently attempting Hindi.
Her culinary skills were honed on board luxury yachts that plied the Med and the Caribbean. When not traveling she teaches yoga and has a special affection for India and Spain. She lived intermittently on the island of Mallorca over a decade and fondly considers it her second home.
Baxter has assisted Marieke’s cooking classes and culinary programs in Rajasthan, South India and Normandy
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To Request a Brochure and Booking Form for this Tour Go To>
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