Day 15 A Day in Burgos : Walking in the Rain

A few steps from the cathedral I spotted this Irish Bar. We Irish like to keep our priorities close together.
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Maybe Henry Higgins was right.  Maybe the rain is Spain does fall mainly on the plain.  If so, then the wonderful old city of Burgos must lie squarely on that plain.  It rained all night, it stopped in the morning, I got on the bus to town, and the rain started up again.  A few French pilgrims got on the bus, and I felt guilty not to be walking to Burgos, huddled under my backpack with rain cover, looking, as has been pointed out by one of the "contributors" to this blog, "a pack animal."  I was only feeling guilty for the briefest second, though.  I got over it when one of the pilgrims told me they had sent their backpacks ahead to their hotel in the heart of town.  Yep, got over that guilt real fast!

First glimpse of the majestic cathedral
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Burgos is a modern city of about 200,000 people.  No doubt it has many famous native sons or daughters, but the one whose name I recognize is El Cid.  I´m sure he looked exactly like Charlton Heston in the movie.  Must have.

What a sight!

I arrived in light rain, so was able to walk for a little while to see the streets and some sights.  I realized I am walking with a limp, and that my right foot feels like a muscle is sprained.

Burgos Cathedral, close to the main tourist entrance
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But I managed to find a store selling a good moisturizer, which I sorely needed.  It´s funny how relative money is - I complained to myself about paying €30 for a taxi into Najera when I was dying on my feet from blisters, yet didn´t even flinch when I paid more than that for Clinique.  And then was happy to get the "preferred customer" discount of 10%, with a couple of free samplees thrown in.  Yep, it´s funny how that goes...

It´s hard to miss the Burgos Cathedral.  What a sight! It is the second largest cathedral in Spain, after Sevilla.  It was begun in 1221, and took a couple of hundred years to build. It is bigger than life, you cannot take it all in with one, or even ten, photos.  (And I took planty.)  It is, quite simply, huge.  Like Notre Dame in Paris -- which Best Daughter will tell you we did NOT see while we were there -- it would take a number of visits to see it all.  The photos were taken in low light since they didn´t allow a flash, but you can get an idea.

Delicate high star window above El Cid´s tomb
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There´s an organ from the 13th or 14th centuries, with horizonal trumpets.  There are gilded altars, paintings by famous painters, great high domes with intricate workings, and windows.  Oh, and El Cid´s tomb, under one of the most majestic windows.

Coming out, in the continuing rain, I saw some pilgrims, walking with their ponchos over their backpacks, and maybe I did feel a little guilty for my Peregrina Discount at the cathedral (€1 instead of €4, with a Pilgrim Passport.)  But it passed later as I sat in the driving rain waiting for the bus.  Driving cold rain. Driving cold piercing rain.  I was cold but dry under my GoreTex jacket, but my pants were soaked, and I had on my Crocs flipflops to let my feet "breathe."  Breathe? What was I thinking?

Burgos Cathedral courtyard view through cathedral window
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After the Cathedral visit, I went to the tourism office and asked about places for tapas and for lunch. A helpful attendant recommended two streets - calle Sombrereria for tapas, and calle San Lorenzo for lunch.  I followed up on both suggestions and spent the next several hours tucked inside out of the weather.  The "starter" portion of paella mixta at the restaurant was huge, and for desert I had something called "ovejero" described as "cuajuada de oveja." I understood that it had something to do with sheep milk, and that the restaurant manager thought it very "tipico" of the area.

Another courtyard view...
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I waited at the bus stop in the rain.  Did I mention it was a driving rain?  Heading back to my warm hotel room, I was SO glad not to be walking across some mountain somewhere, though all too soon that will indeed be happening. My descanso (break) will come to an end.

Read more on Burgos and El Cid here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgos

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cid