A lovely Sunday in Burgos!

 

Hola!

We were up this morning around 6:30 am and ready to go out and look for breakfast about 8.  It turns out that in looking for laundry places near to us last night, the first one I found was 1.4 km away.  However, the second place I found was actually 450 m from our hotel – almost right around the corner!  I mean, seriously, how could we NOT do laundry at a place that close?!  But not quite yet…   When we walked out on the street, it was totally deserted!  Nothing open and no people or traffic even!  

Do you like my hairnet and charming helmet?

Not scaffolding!

One of the first sites discovered

How they measure the different layers

Definitely a big operation!

It's like tinker toys!

Discovered today that our hotel has a real cloister!

It's beautiful!

Very pollarded trees getting ready to bloom

Lovely Plaza Mayor

We each had a Cesar salad

R's penne

Finally!  I got a pizza!

Truly, Spain is not an early-morning kind of country.  There were a couple of bars that looked like they may have had coffee and pastry for breakfast, but nothing that really spoke to us.  So, after finding the laundry (which runs from 8 am – 10 pm every day!) and checking out that it looked nice and clean and that it would meet all our needs, we headed across the river and back towards the place we had had wine (R) and chocolate (me) yesterday afternoon.  I think the name is Viva Pepa!  The good news is:  It was open! Yeah!  We found a table inside (as it was somewhere around 35 degrees F I certainly didn’t want to sit outside!) and Robert ordered our breakfast for us. Hmmmm… not quite what we expected, but it was fine.  We had wanted croissants with jam, and I also wanted a small roll and jamon sandwich.  Instead, we had croissants toasted on both sides (which I didn’t even know was possible!) and two sandwiches with two slices of ham and one slice of cheese in the middle, and toasted.  Ha!

At any rate, everything was excellent.  Tomorrow we’re just going to have to be a bit more precise.  We also had wonderful glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice, and I got my hot chocolate that I ate with a spoon … YUM!  So much for the first meal of the day!  (Note:  We decided that, as breakfast isn’t included with our NH hotel stays and it seemed it was getting gradually more and more expensive, we would do better on our own! In today’s case, we paid 16 €as opposed to the 34 €the hotel would have charged.  As Robert says, we can’t really eat that much food to make it worthwhile!)  

From there, we went back across the river to the hotel to wait a bit before we headed to the Museum for our tour to Atapuerca.  Arrived at the Museum about 10 after 10 for the 10:30 tour. When we got the tickets yesterday, we asked about the tour and were told that while the tour was in Spanish, all the guides spoke some English, and it shouldn’t be a problem for us.  Well…that wasn’t exactly the case, as our guide, Pedro, didn’t seem to be able to manage any description whatsoever in English for us and one other guest.  Talk about being totally at sea.

The big bus that brought us to the site was great, and after everyone filed off it, we were given hair nets (?) and hard hats!  It was quite amusing to see everybody struggling with hair nets.  Not quite sure what the purpose was, but eventually everyone was properly helmeted.  Then the tour.  

First of all, this site is truly well financed.  We have been to many archaeological sites in Turkey, Greece and Crete, and most of them are rudimentarily covered, if covered at all.  Atapuerca, however, is a construction project in and of itself!  We visited probably six or seven actual sites.  Several were covered but open to the weather, but several others were down behind locked doors.  And, it brought out again what Robert has always said – the sites are really secondary to the artifacts and information uncovered – which are in the museums well displayed!  We did see the grids of the sites where some of the most important finds were discovered – but again, the finds themselves we saw yesterday.  We were very disappointed that we couldn’t understand a thing that was being said, but very interested in seeing the sites themselves. Robert thinks that multi-language audio guides would be a much better option for a site that attracts world-wide attention.

From the dig itself, we were then taken to CAREX, their recreated area “theme park” and “evolution center” where the kids really seemed to have a great time.  Not too much for grownups, though.  There were some wonderful exhibits about flint napping as well as fire and habitat building, but we have spent so much time in Turkey that that, at least, was very well known to us.  Finally back to the Museum in Burgos about 3 pm.  A long day out in the countryside and fresh air, and enjoyable nonetheless.

We are now back at the hotel so that I can start the blog, and we can both hopefully take naps.  I really hate to say it, as the food we have enjoyed over these past weeks has been wonderful, and the wine has been fabulous, but we are both looking for – let us say – a little more variety?! Robert suggested a pizza the other day, so hopefully tonight we will be able to find one!  (Last year when we were in Italy, the same thing happened – we found great Indian food one night, and such good Japanese food that we went two nights to the same place!  Here, however, not a sign of Indian, and R is rather dubious of the Japanese.  We’ll see what we come up with!

Lots of love and more later!

m

xxx

Oh!  I forgot!  Laundry! Our plan now is to be at the laundry tomorrow morning when they open at 8 am.  Then, we will get everything washed and clean and back to the hotel in time to repack and checkout and head to Salamanca.  From there, we should (knock wood!) be good until the time we get home! 

m

xxx

Just back from dinner, and we found a pizza place!  We initially went looking for pizza about 5 pm, as Tripadvisor had indicated that a few places were open.  Why we ever believed Tripadvisor, I’ll never know.  Hopefully we have learned our lesson.  At any rate, at 5 pm all the lunch places were closing, and others, who would open for dinner, of course wouldn’t be ready until 7 pm.  So, we went back to the hotel for a rest. Robert found a place fairly close (11 minutes walking) called Bella Napoli, and called them up to ascertain that they would indeed be open tonight, and they said they would be!  Got there a few minutes after 7, and of course, everything is closed down and dark. GRRRRR!  However, there was a bench in front, and we sat down to contemplate what to do now – and a family, Father, Mom and three little boys, came and opened the door! (The littlest boy was such a cutie!) Yeah!!  We each ordered a Cesar salad to start, which proved to be excellent. First creamy salad dressing I’ve had in almost a month, and it was great.  Then, Robert ordered penne with bolognaise sauce, which was wonderful, and I got my wood-fired pizza!  Tomato sauce, cheese and jamon York– which turned out to be ham cut into cubes.  It was wafer thin and absolutely delicious!  I think there were all of five or six tables inside (more outside) but they were filling up, and also doing a very brisk business in delivery pizzas and food.  Not sure where the boys disappeared to, but I have a feeling that Grandma and Grandpa are somewhere close by.  Very, very good choice!  Now settling in and getting ready to watch Germany vs. Holland in European Cup qualifying!

Lots of love,

m

xxx