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  • Day 26

    A day in Burgos

    September 17, 2018 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    We did hit the town yesterday afternoon when Amr came back from the laundromat bearing a bag of lovely clean clothes. This is such a beautiful city! Squares, trees, narrow streets interspersed with narrow car streets, a rapidly flowing little river and the most magnificent cathedral I have ever seen. It is a little strange to be mixing with normal people, not just walking peregrinos! So yesterday afternoon we just walked around, found familiar places, had a glass of wine and some tapas in a square near our hotel of 5 years ago. The Plaza Mayor, which is surrounded with lovely buildings and is a truly beautiful plaza sadly is being repaved and there are work barricades and barriers everywhere...so it is not seen to its best advantage at the moment! We ended up eating at a place we saw that had tempting food on its list, and had a fairly early night...

    Totally refreshed with a night’s sleep, and we have had a good day. Set off after breakfast to visit the Monasterio de las Huelas, not seen last visit and sounds like a jewel. It was about a 20 minute walk through quite salubrious tree-lined streets only to find it was closed Mondays...a disappointment, but we could see a little through the fence but not the good part inside...so a pleasant walk back along the river and we went to the Castillo, also not seen before. This is high above the city, even looking down on the cathedral, with a panoramic view. A hot walk up many steps, but very interesting. It is really just the ruins of the castle originally built in the XII century, and gone through many phases since. The last was used by Napoleon’s troops, and the French blew up one side before they were sent back in the Spanish war of independence....this war against the French frequently comes up in museums, paintings etc.

    On our return down the hill we had a little refreshment in a cafe along the beautiful tree-lined promenade along the river. This is such a lovely area, and we are going to return there with kindles soon. After our sugar levels restored, we finally indulged in a visit to the cathedral. Such a wondrous building...different chapels added over the centuries and everywhere so exquisitely carved and decorated...you automatically get an audio guide- so much to take in....and impossible to capture in photos. It is at the bottom of the hill, and there are different levels...I took an exterior photo of an magnificent door, and found inside there was an intricate staircase leading up to it in one of the chapels (it is kept closed now) as the level of the floor was metres lower after several stages of re-building.

    So now some downtime. I can almost understand the Spanish need for a siesta, if they live in this climate...the mornings are cool and refreshing, almost too cold, then it gradually heats up with an extremely bright sunlight until in the afternoon it is uncomfortably hot and bright, then at sunset it slowly cools off and becomes cold again over night. I know that sounds normal, but each phase seems very extreme here. Last night our room was still quite hot and we went to sleep with only a sheet half on, but during the night we needed to pull up the duna...we have since discovered that the air conditioning only works when the window is closed, and we had it wide open to let in the lovely cool air!!

    The wifi is again weak, will send this off and then try photos as usual. Cathy suggests lower resolution, but they are just taken on my phone and should not be too difficult normally...and I don’t know how to change it!
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