"when we were in spain..."
How tired are you of hearing El Lopo staff and regulars say that?
Well, if you come with us this year, you can be the new smuggest person in the room every time food or wine or travel comes up.
With a few very ambitious and fast-paced trips behind us, our visits from here on out will each be focusing on a specific region, with a general theme as well.
The spring 2025 plan is essentially a road trip through Andalucia, and happens to take place during the region's festival season.
where we're headed
granada
by some accounts the birthplace of tapas, and one of the few places left in spain where tapas are non-negotiable. you ask for a drink, you get a drink and a snack. salt cod salad with oranges and olives, skewered smoked sardines, or a tortilla of pork offal and fava beans might show up with your glass of aromatic wine. also there's apparently a famous building there, and we might have lunch in it. just an hour outside is the town of jaen, where we'll stop to visit one of el lopo's favorite olive oil producers.
córdoba & montilla-moriles
right around a thousand years ago, córdoba was the largest city in western europe, and the seat of the umayyad dynasty's rule over most of iberia. today there are still clear moorish influences on the local cuisine - fried eggplants with honey, kabobs (albeit pork) with cumin and coriander, and garlicky salmorejo. we're there just in time for the city's annual feria, andalucia's second-largest festival and one known for being particularly accessible to outsiders. we'll also take a side trip to the nearby montilla-moriles region, which has a firm tradition of oxidative winemaking second only to sherry.
sanlúcar de barrameda
we're hopping from feria to feria and wine town to wine town, but we'll have made it from the desert to the sea. every building in this sunny, sleepy beach town is either a seafood restaurant or a bodega producing boldly briny manzanilla sherry to wash down your blue-tailed prawns. this will be our first time returning to a place we've previously featured on an el lopo trip, and we take no shame in that because it's just our jam. and we've never gotten to visit during their feria, which is specifically focused on our favorite beverage category.
cádiz
an ancient port city (by some measures the oldest in europe) with a boisterous nightlife scene nestled among roman and phoenician ruins. in the middle of this densely packed peninsula is a huge open-air market where most of the atlantic's bluefin tuna gets butchered and auctioned before it's exported. the best parts are saved for locals though.
this trip is best for travelers who...
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that sound like you? here's how to join:
just give us some money to hold your spot, and get yourself to the relevant starting point and home from the end point. book yourself places to stay too, unless you want us to handle that.
what's included in the price:
a lot of food. a couple of splurgy options will cost extra, and if you insist on pretending breakfast is a real thing you’ll be on your own in that endeavor. but if you hang with us every day after 2pm and are content with (shockingly good) casual dining, you’ll never be hungry and you’ll never go out of pocket.
all the wine, sherry, vermouth, cider, and beer your little liver desires (although we reserve the right to tell you how much that is if you don’t know).
insider access to wineries, bodegas, distilleries, ranches, and canneries that make the things we sell at el lopo.
all ground transportation while you’re with us. this may include trains, rental cars, buses, taxis, and subways.
more advice, information, cultural and historical context, and well-informed opinions than you could ever ask for.
excellent company. we’re capping the group at 8 travelers, and if someone who sucks wants to come we will tell them it's full.
(if you opt to pay for lodging) a private room in a stylish and centrally-located small hotel.
questions?
check out our FAQ page, or drop us a line and we'll follow up within a day.
wanna buy some time to think it over? a $250 deposit will guarantee you one of the eight spots on the trip, and is fully refundable for a three-day period.