Burgos

We decided to be tourists today and take it easy. We slept 11 hours with no church bells ringing last night so we have booked our room again for another night. A little nippy and windy this morning so we had our fleeces on: For our desayuno we ate in a cafe out in plaza Santa Maria right near the hotel..

We walked out the medieval gate and across the bridge and down a few blocks to the correos to get our care package, and had no trouble collecting it. We walked back along part of the pilgrim route so we would see what it was like and picked up some food items for our lunch tomorrow while we walked.

We spent several hours in the cathedral as it is very beautiful and there are interesting exhibits in the cloisters. There was an acousta guide but we did not get it but wish we had. We are always looking for Moorish (Mudejar) influences and found a couple in ceilings, crosses and other decorative items.
In the cathedral we saw an alter centerpiece with St James the moor slayer. It is believed that in the battle of Clavijo in 844, in which St. James is said to have appeared in the sky on a white charger and rallied the outnumbered Christian forces to victory over their Moorish foes, resulting in the slaughter of 50,000 Moors. Hence Santiago Matamoros, or St. James the Moor Slayer, the one portrayed with a sword rather than a pilgrim's staff.

Dad would have enjoyed the reconstruction exhibit they had.

After nap time we did a short walking tour of El Cid sites around the town.

We made reservations for ourselves at the Parador in Leon for the nights of Sept 22 and 23. Tomorrow we are off to do the Meseta which some people don't do because it is not as interesting. The older Korean couple we were traveling with took a bus to Leon and then started walking again from there.

We bought a silver teaspoon here for our collection. The spoon base is a scallop shell and the top is the Burgos Christ on the cross. Thankfully the weight of it is not too much!