Day 15 - Burgos - Day of Rest and Recovery

"City of Burgos Province of Burgos, Comunida of Castilla y Leon 08 04 17 09:22

Today is my rest day in Burgos. I arrived yesterday but I could not check in because the hotel I am staying at did not have internal internet and I could not find the internet cafe that they referred me to. However this morning I went to the Oficina del Turismo and they showed me the location of one just around the corner.

According to my Guidebook, I have walked 260 km from Roncesvalles to Burgos. There are 180 km to Leon and 491 left to Santiago. So I am resting and retooling for the run (metaphorically speaking, there will be no actual running involved) to Leon. 180 km in 11 days, so should be quite doable, but if I fall behind there are usually buses available.

I am sure my stamina is increasing day by day. However each day is hard work, both mentally and physically. I am using English, French and Spanish all the time. Sometimes all three in the same conversation, so I am certainly glad that I spent all of that time learning Spanish. I can communicate quite well actually; not like a native of course but quite well. And I can read almost everything. I contrast this with our trip to Japan where I could read almost nothing. So I did not have any of the visual cues we all use continuously. Here I can read pretty much everything and so I have all of the visual cues, street signs , advertising etc.

El Cid
Burgos is the birthplace of El Cid Campeador (born 1099), one of the great warrior figures in Spanish history. He actually lived most of his life in the south. He was falsely accused of treason by the king of the day (Alfonso something or other) and exiled from Castilla. He was kind of a mercenary warrior, and an actual historical person, although his exploits have been mythologized in a great Canto of which I have read only a few parts. In those days things were not as black and white as they were later during the Reconquista, and sometimes there were alliances of Christian and Moorish armies fighting other alliances of Christian and Moorish armies. Anyway Burgos claims El mio Cid as its own and has a huge statue of him in El Plaza (see photo above)

I am about to enter the meseta, the plain of Spain on which the rain does not mainly fall. That may have been a good elocution lesson for Eliza Doolittle but it is not factually true, although this year there seems to be lots of rain all over Spain.

Len"