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Logrono is the capital of La Rioja, Spain's most celebrated wine region, and the city makes no effort to hide its priorities. The old town's narrow Calle del Laurel, known locally as the Calle del Laurel or 'El Laurel,' is a street of pintxo bars so dense and so good that it has become a pilgrimage destination in its own right. On any evening from seven o'clock onwards, the street fills with locals working their way from bar to bar, eating a mushroom pintxo here, a skewer of peppers there, washing everything down with a glass of young Rioja wine poured from earthenware jugs. The ritual is called the txikiteo and it is one of the great pleasures of northern Spain.

The city itself is handsome and understated, with a well-preserved old quarter around the Plaza del Mercado and the 11th-century Cathedral of Santa Maria de la Redonda, whose twin baroque towers are the city's most recognisable silhouette.

Logrono sits on the Camino Frances, the main pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, and pilgrims have been crossing the stone Puente de Piedra over the Ebro River here since the Middle Ages. The surrounding Rioja Alta and Rioja Alavesa wine country, with its photogenic bodegas set against the ochre ridgeline of the Sierra de Cantabria, is within easy reach for wine touring.