Penefiel, Spain - May 2014

Wandering through the village of Penefiel

Penefiel has a castle that sits atop a giant hill and we decided we needed to see this.  It was the first Castle that I would ever be inside of and that was very exciting for me.  Castillo de Penefiel was built in the 15^th century and has walls that are 11 feet thick!  Penefiel is a wine producing city and the castle itself has a wine museum in it.  It is closed on Mondays so I recommend planning a trip on a Saturday.

We hoped on a bus from Valladolid around 9 am for about 4 euros.  I love how inexpensive it is to travel around here.  The bus ride was maybe a half hour and took us through some teeny tiny villages that all looked totally abandoned.  I know people live there because you do see the odd person when driving through but otherwise its just dusty dead streets and a lot of boarded up buildings. 

Once in Penefiel we were let off the bus in front of a small café/bar (surprise surprise) and so we grabbed a coffee and some tortilla.  I wish I knew the name of the place so I could recommend eating there if you ever make your way to Penefiel because it was hands down the best tortilla I have had since moving here.  It was perfect and the coffee was not bad either.  We sat at a table outside and stared up at the castle knowing we would soon be wandering around inside of it.

We decided to check out the town a little on our way to the castle.  There is not much of a town to check out though.  It is very tiny and we only saw maybe ten people all day (not including all the tourists at the castle).  The streets were just dead and all the windows to the houses are shut tight.  I do not know what people do all day but they certainly do not go outside.  We found a small river which was beautiful and of course there were some lovely churches but the best part of town was the bull ring.

Views along the river

I am fully against bull fighting, bull running, the basic torture, abuse and murder of bulls however I am interested in the bull rings.  They are culturally significant regardless of how I feel and so they fascinate me.  Now the ring here in Penefiel is different than the others I have seen.  It is more of a square shape and is not its own building.  It is like any plaza you would wander into.  There are buildings surrounding it, so as making it an enclosed space minus the entrances on either side.  The ground is all dirt and there are these polls that are up against many of the buildings, I assume to protect them from the bulls.  We learned that the buildings surrounding the ring are all privately owned apartments but there is a rule in their contracts that the owners must be willing to rent out the spaces during the fights for people to be able to watch.  It is something to see for sure (the plaza not the bull fights).

The Bull Ring

We eventually made it to the road that lead up to the castle.  There is a tourist bus that will take you up but if you know Ross and I you know we would rather do everything the hard way and walk up the hill so we could really enjoy the views and experience it our own way.  It was worth it because it felt like this journey in a movie up to this hilltop castle.  We could see all of Penefiel and way off into the distance from the top of the hill (also once actually in the castle) and it was nothing but farmers fields and grapes.

Wandering up the hill

View from the castle walls 

There was a small admission fee to get in the castle and once inside we had to be taken around by a tour group.  I didn't mind except that it was all done in Spanish so we really had no idea what everyone else was learning about this place.  It didn't matter though it was just fun being inside an actual castle.  We got to wander through most of it and at the end take ourselves through the museum.  They do wine tastings as well but we didn't want to do that (we brought our own wine for our hillside picnic anyway). 

Inside the wine museum.  The glass jars have all the scents from the ingredients of the different wines.

So once we left we wandered down the side of the hill for a while until we found a suitable place to sit and have our picnic lunch.  After lunch we decided to just hop on a bus back to Valladolid since we had already seen the whole town and there was really nothing else to do.  So I say definitely go and check out the castle and the bull ring but don’t expect to spend an entire day there.