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Arriving in Laguardia at nightfall
in chilly January there were tantalising glimpses of
small crooked streets and fiesta lights through the
main gates. Set up on a hill just outside the walls
was our hotel, Castillo El Collado (the castle on the
hill). King of the castle is Javier Ancillona who realised
a lifelong dream when he opened the ten-room hotel two
years ago. Javier has kept the castle feel with exposed
stone walls in the rooms as well as stained glass effect
lighting and ironwork. La Rioja is renowned for the
quality of its food and the hotel has an excellent restaurant
serving up delicious local specialities like baby lamb
or pastel de puerros con gambas (leek and shrimp terrine).
Laguardia itself is a neat little pueblo set on a hill.
Quite naturally the town has a fairly fancy wine shop
with a good selection of the area’s products plus
lots of winelover’s paraphernalia. It also has
an extremely good restaurant, Posada Mayor de Migueloa,
which is a beautifully preserved old house and bodega
with high ceilings and dark wood. We ate a delicious
morcilla de la región which came with the blood
sausage minced and laced with vegetables and something
picante. Also good were the creamy pimientos rellenos
de bacalao, chuletillas de cordero which were small,
succulent and soft and a carefully cooked magret de
pato.
Ask for the wine list and it arrives as a thick, well-thumbed
book. We drank an excellent reserva from the Muga vineyards.
The
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