A rainy Catholic weekend...

Trip 2 - Leon, Burgos, and various small towns with castles and cathedrals.

Thursday, September 16 - we left early morning by bus and headed to the province of Castille y Leon - north and west of Madrid.

On our way we stopped at this fantastic castle:
It looks like castles out of fairytales! However, this type of castle is very much designed for armies and fighting. It had narrow halls and small doors, so that large numbers of soldiers couldn't pass through at the same time, it had a dry moat surrounding it with the pillar that supported the drawbridge anciently still standing, and it had walls and towers with holes built just for shooting arrows. Very defense-oriented- and incredibly cool!


After stopping at said castle, we continued to Leon. Leon is a lovely city full of cute houses and quaint streets, and a cathedral that was AMAZING. This cathedral contains over 1800 square meters of stained glass - the most stained glass in any cathedral in Spain.






While touring the cathedral, it started raining. It didn't want to STOP raining, so we headed out into the rain to another church/museum our tour guide wanted to show us. I was foolish enough to have left my umbrella in the bus, and I got soaked. It was only about 45, 50 degrees Farenheit, and sadly I remember very little of whatever church/museum we went to after the cathedral, because I was so cold... it was awful. By the time we finished there, the rain had slowed, but we were now faced with trying to find something to eat at about 7pm. Just so you all know, basically that's impossible. Lunch ends around 5, and dinner doesn't start until about 8, and basically all the restaurants close. We finally found a supermarket and bought bread and lunchmeat and went back to our hotel and had a lovely picnic in one of our rooms. And I got dried off :)

That evening we went to a concert in the cathedral at Leon. It was SUPPOSED to be an organ concert, we thought, but it turned out to be Baroque style orchestra music, by Mozart and such. It was very excellent music - I went right to sleep, which means they did a very good job... I'm not much of a classical music person... but it was amazing being in such an amazing building for a concert!

Friday, September 17 - we went to Burgos, stopping a couple times on the way to see more churches. (By this point, we'd seen probably 4 churches, all very similar...) Once in Burgos, we ate lunch at an overpriced cafe, had a dance party in my bedroom at the hotel, watched a Spanish drumline march down the street below our hotel balcony/window, ventured into the freezing wind to do some shopping, took pictures with a statue of El Mio Cid (a legendary figure in an "epic poem" from Spain - one of the most important literary works in Spanish history. He lived in Burgos, supposedly), then enjoyed churros y chocolate in the cafe across the street from the hotel.

The little balcony off our hotel room

Awesome Spanish drumline!

Statue of El Mio Cid

At this point, most of the group went back, but Kenneth and Melanie and I wandered the streets of Burgos, and this is what we found:

Excellent trees to climb! Super fun.

We also found this awesome performance of people dancing around with fire, scattering flaming coals and dancing over them, which ended in a large bonfire in the middle, I have no idea what it was all about but it was super cool! I tried uploading a video, but it wouldn't work... sorry...

Saturday, September 18 - we first toured Burgos officially with our tour guide, entering the cathedral and passing through the Plaza Mayor - where the fire dance had been the night before. Then we jumped on the bus and went to the Cartuja de Miraflores - which is a monastery where the monks are only allowed to talk for one hour on Sundays, after dinner. It was basically just another church, but they showed us these Catholic rosaries that are made of beads made from compressed rose petals. There are 3000 rose petals in all. All of the girls bought one. I don't even know any Catholics! It was, however, very cool.

Outside the cathedral at Burgos

Altar showing the "tree of Jesse" - Christ's family tree - in the Cathedral at Burgos

We then proceeded to visit various medieval-ish villages, in which were MORE churches. By the last one we were so tired of churches that we opted to hike to this statue on the hill overlooking the town instead. It's a statue of the Virgin Mary. The view was absolutely beautiful! It was my favorite part of the whole weekend.

Covarrubias - one of the towns we went to.

Looking over the town of Silos from the hillside where the statue was.

Me and the virgin looking over the town.