Burgos & Bilbao in the Rain I

Today, dear readers, we have returned from yet another expedition into the field.  October 12th is Spain's National Day, so there was no school.  Neither was there school yesterday, the "bridge day" between the weekend and the holiday.  Faced with a four-day weekend, we decided to go exploring.  But where?  Extremadura?  Galicia?  Barcelona?  We ended up with plans to go Burgos, a medieval city about 2.5 hours north of Madrid, and then Bilbao, the largest city of the Basque country, about 2 hours further on.  Objectives: 1) See the cathedral in Burgos and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao; 2) Eat well;  3) Have fun.

We found ourselves thwarted on Saturday morning when we left by both the rental car agency and the weather.  During our almost 2 months in Madrid, it hasn't rained hardly at all.  In fact, we didn't see a cloud in the sky during our first four weeks here.  Then, on Saturday morning, we started to get all the rain that we didn't get in September.   Sometimes it poured.  Sometimes it drizzled.  It rarely stopped.  Undaunted, we went to get our rental car, only to be faced by a 1.5 hour wait in line while a highly inefficient group of rental car employees doled out cheap compacts to aggravated tourists.  The inefficiency was only slightly abated with the appearance of an additional bleary-eyed employee, reeking of alcohol.  

Then we were off!  And then we weren't.  The A-1 was a parking lot.  Confused?  No, the A-1 is not a steak sauce, but a highway extending northward and southward from Madrid.  Between our trip to Andalusia and this one, we have travelled its full length, north to south, making us authorities on road conditions and rest stops.  There was construction, you see, and between that and the rain the traffic was not moving.  We finally ditched the A-1 and made our way up some parallel country roads.  The detour saved the day, since it meant moving at more than 3km/hr, and it also took us through a series of charming villages, including Nayares de Ayuso, Nayares de Enmedio, and Nayares de las Cuevas.  Yes, that's right. All three villages have pretty much the same name, and the central one is called "Middle Nayares," or more literally, "The Nayares in the Middle."  I wonder if they have a complex there, like middle children often do?  We couldn't find out, because their restaurant was fully booked.  So, off to Moradillo de Roa, next town in line (not a "Nayares" as you can see), where we found a spectacular place for lunch.  More about that in my soon-to-come food-and-restaurant page.  

Burgos around 6pm, after taking 5 hours for what should have been a 2.5 hour trip (not counting the lunch stop).  The cathedral was closed.  The churches were closed.  The stores were closed.  It was raining.  We walked around anyway.  Cold.  Wet.   Luckily, the pastry shop near the hotel was NOT closed, and we indulged.  We deserved it.  In bed by 9pm.  

Having blown Saturday, we stuck around to see the cathedral and have lunch in Burgos, rather than move on to Bilbao right away, and we were glad we did.  The cathedral is gorgeous.  I'd very much wanted to see it, having seen the cathedral in Leon some years ago.  The two are something of a pair, since they're older than that cathedral in cities farther south (Toledo, Seville, Granada, etc) and are more purely French gothic in style.  Zoë and I were both surprised to find that the cathedral had been through a lot of changes between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, changes that had transformed the medieval cathedral into an early modern one.  Still, the place was astounding.  

After the cathedral, we stumbled across a group of people who did traditional Castilian dances and games.  The rain had let up, so we hung out and watched as they danced jotas, accompanied by simple instruments that one could assemble from one's kitchen.  At one point, they interrupted the dancing and singing to play games with everyone.  Zoë and the Kid tried their hand(s) at cat's cradle with one of the performers.  I'll post a clip of the dancing to Facebook, because uploading video to Blogspot takes forever.

By the time we finished, everything was starting to close (it was Sunday after all), so we had lunch (excellent) and headed for Bilbao, full of trepidation for what the A-1 would hold.  After two hours or so of clear sailing, we were in our hotel, in the Basque country.  More to follow in the next post.  In the meantime, take a look at our pictures on Facebook.