More on Burgos

Hello, everyone.

I have dug around in our receipts and maps and other copies of this-n-that and discovered the name of that lovely little apartment-hotel we stayed in: Maria Salome Aparthotel. They gave us a discount because of being pilgrims--the discounted rate was 55 euro a night. If you are there and want to find them, look on San Lorenzo street, the sign for the hotel tells you which bar to ask in. (A surprising number of these small lodging places are run by bar owners' families.) They are included on the list of hotels on the city map from the tourist information office.

The route of the Camino Frances--the route we were following--is also marked on the map with yellow dashes. We still got turned around while leaving the city.

As you can see, the cathedral of Burgos is still a working church.

 The cathedral is both an art museum and a working church. The art is wonderful. The tomb of el Cid and is wife is also there. The remains were moved years after their deaths when a later king wanted to honor him.

The tomb of el Cid, who was from Burgos.

We went to Sunday Mass at the church of San Lesmes Abbad (St. Lesmes the Abbot) and saw a unique retablo. It was elaborately carved, like almost all of them, and it had polychrome statues of saints, like almost all of them, but it wasn't gold-leafed. It was carved from dark wood--either ebony or walnut--and left in its native color. It is, of course, quite tall and the parts out of normal reach are dusty. It made me think of Jean, the lady in the Altar Society who gets up on the thirty foot tall ladder to dust high-up things. I think Jean would have only been able to reach about half of this with that ladder, though. I suspect that once a year they bring in scaffolding to clean it.

The retablo of San Lesmes Abbad.

I hope these little bits about Burgos will inspire you, if you are in that area, to spend a day or three exploring the city. We enjoyed it a lot. We especially loved the yogurt shop that we found just inside the gate to the old city...sorry, no picture and we don't know any more than that about the address...but the yogurt was wonderful, both the frozen and the jars of fresh yogurt we bought to eat before leaving on Monday morning.