Time Machine to the 16th Century
109.45 miles hiked, 5 Cultural Events Attended
When planning this vacation, we wanted to try having a car instead of the inn-to-inn walks we normally do. So far, so good, but today we realized we messed up a little. We spent a lot of time in the car yesterday, and today will have to drive three hours from Tudela to Burgos, and there’s more driving in the following days. If I wanted to spend time in a car being bored out of my gord on an interstate, I could have done that in the US, where we specialize in that supreme boredom. Also, we had only one night in Tudela and one night in Burgos, which means we won’t be able to get to know those cities as we would like. I’m glad for those folks who like to travel that way, but it’s not the way for us. We are still in Spain and having a blast so it’s not like we are suffering. It’s just a lesson learned.
Since I didn’t want to spend three straight hours in the car, I looked for hikes we could do but also weren’t going to kill us as we had to be in Burgos at 5:00 PM for a tour. Given our outstanding luck with guides this trip, with Mercé in Cadequés and Alberto in the mountains, we were excited to learn about Burgos. Half way to Burgos is the capital of La Rioja, Logroño, and I found a walk that would take us through the parks and bridges across the Río Ebro that sounded perfect. Pam was doubly enthusiastic because it was flat as a crepe.
As we were getting close to the start of the walk, I saw Logroño had the awesome Spanish city parking. While you might think it weird to get excited about city parking solutions, you’ve never been to Spain. On one of our visits, we drove to the Galician coastal city of Vigo. On the main road next to the waterfront we saw a parking sign, so pulled in. The parking was under the road. Even better there was a light above each parking space, red for occupied, green for open. Getting out of the car, there was nice classical music playing throughout the garage. It felt so civilized compared to the normal stress of trying to find a parking space. Minus the lights and classical music, Logroño was the same. Since we were in the business district, on a Monday morning, it was weird that the parking lot seemed empty. We weren’t complaining.
One of the multitude of routes of the Camino de Santiago goes through Logroño, so as soon as people saw us with our backpacks, they thought we were lost pilgrims and tried to point the way back to the route. That’s something so sweet and kind of the Spanish people that they care so much about getting lost pilgrims back on the right path. They seemed surprised when I explained we were just in Logroño to walk the parks and see the bridges, but always pointed the way.
In 2019, Pam and I did the Camino Primitivo and for the last week met up with family for the last part. Any Camino is a trip we recommend for everyone. The Spaniards take their Camino responsibilities very seriously and we still talk about how many times we had people running out of bars or work to make sure we were on the right path if we were a little lost. Those are some of my most favorite memories of Spain. That’s also the trip where I started writing every night about our days. Back then it was just for family and a few friends over email. The problem was the mails would get forwarded and people would ask for earlier entries so in addition to all the writing, I was having to manage an ever-growing email list. This Substack makes it a lot easier.
On our Logroño walk, it's just us and all the retired people out enjoying the day. As we cross the second bridge of the walk, we saw Iglesia de Santiago de Real not too far off a park trail. Though a committed atheist, I can’t resist a Spanish church, so Pam and I go visit it. As we get closer, there’s a lot of noise and we pop out into a market day, or so we thought. There are vendors selling everything from cheeses, to jewelry, to temporary tattoos. Even weirder, lots of people are dressed up in outfits from the 16th century. There’s something big going on, but after asking a few folks, by shear dumb luck, we came during the festival of San Bernabé (Saint Barnabas)! That also explains why the parking lot was so empty as it’s a holiday.
In the 16th century, wars were as common as the sunrise. In May and June 1521, Logroño was under siege by the French king Francis I with the help of the king of Navarre. The people resisted and the siege was lifted on June 11th, which coincides with San Bernabé’s day. Looking for any excuse to party, the celebration has turned into a week-long party.
Pam and I poked around a bit but with our backpacks and obvious “not being locals” look, we decided to mosey back to the path and keep walking.
About five minutes down the road, we realized we had a problem. That problem is in the following photo.
OK, stop for a minute. What do you think that grill smells like? It’s covered in pork, beef, more pork, and more beef. The second grill has potatoes, and the third is paella. In my soul, San Bernabé was speaking to me, and he said, EAT MEAT! We turned our butts around and had to have some. We talk to the waiter and ask which is the best meat for sale and he said hands down it’s the beef ribs, but a particular sausage is right up there. What you can’t see in the picture is they also offered fried baby squid and calamari, as well as salads, but who cares about salad when you have MEAT! Pam’s a baby squid freak and I’m all about MEAT! so we add beef ribs and the lighter sausage to the order. He also tells us about the potatoes in the second grill above, so we add those, too. To top it off, we add a sangria to the mix.
My dear readers, we made a mistake. Without asking, we thought these were going to be tapas portions, but the waiter tricked us into racciones portions.
Tapas are the tiny plate you think of when you think of Spain. The racciones are the full meal. Yeah, we ordered four full meals for two people! I’m sure the waiters had a running bet on who could get the biggest order and we surely won that one for our waiter. We were scared at the amount of food but went for it. The highly recommended ribs were nothing compared to a good NC rib so that was a disappointment. The sausage was great, the potatoes divine, but the fried baby squid was the best I have ever had. So how did we do?
We ate the hell out of everything. I asked the waiter why he gave us racciones instead of tapas and he said, you’re American. We did America proud today. For our cholesterol and weight, I’m not so sure. We just shifted our eating around, so lunch was the big meal instead of dinner.
We waddled back on the hike because after all that gorging one must move. After visiting the park, we thought we should go back to the car through the city to get the feel of Logroño.
We eventually got the main part of the celebration. As we were looking around, something interesting happened.
This is a celebration for Pam and I eating all that food. We got a key to the city and an official proclamation from the mayor that we are gluttons. All the citizens cheered. Oh, sorry, that was my MEAT fever dream. Part of the celebration is when the citizens of the siege found traitors and killed them. This is the procession of soldiers leading the traitors to the main square for execution. (I don’t make the rules, just report them.)
The surprise of San Bernabé’s celebration such a treat. We got to see and be part of what makes Spain so fascinating to me. Little did we know that Burgos was going to be equally “fascinating.”
Our hotel in Burgos was in the old part of town. Following Apple Maps, it tries to take us down a road that’s blocked. Google Maps wants us to go down the wrong way down a one-way street. This whole time I’m driving down roads no bigger in width than our car lost our of our mind. Pam’s reading over the instructions and says Waze is the app that Pura Aventura recommends, so I use a ton of data plan to download it. Waze takes us down a different route but next to a closed (as in forever) restaurant, it says we have arrived. In all these single car width roads I finally find the single spot in the entire old city where I can pull over without blocking traffic Pam hops out to see if she can find the hotel and she’s gone for a very long time so I’m worried. She finally comes back and says the hotel is at the end of the street two blocks from where I’m sitting. I realized later that our GPS devices don’t work very well when the GPS signal is bouncing off all these stone walls. It took us 30+ minutes in the city center to get to the hotel. Do note that the “fascinating” part hasn’t stared.
The hotel says they have underground parking. That’s a huge relief as street parking is nonexistent. I pull into the garage as Pam runs in to get the parking spot number. Fascinating is about to start.
There are 15 car parking spaces on the floor we need to park. No big deal you say, but the entire parking garage is maybe 1.5 times the perimeter than our house. The hotel is such an optimist thinking they can park 15 (we counted!) cars on the first floor of your house. We get assigned a spot that’s angled next to another car and has two poles I have to avoid hitting.
It takes Pam guiding and me driving over 20 minutes to get into the spot. Shockingly, we never hit anything in this trying time. Once we get into the spot , we realize we are parking in the car next to us so they can never leave without crashing into our rental. Pam goes back up to the reception desk and discusses the situation. We get a better spot, and it only takes seven minutes to get into it. In the meantime, I watched a Spanish guy in a $175,000 Porsche whip into one of those tight spots like it was nothing.
We had planned to be in the hotel at 4:00 PM and it’s now 5:15 PM because of the finding and parking issues. In one of the many trips to the reception, Pam ran into our wonderful guide, Rosalind who could see Pam was flustered and said not to worry and we needed to recover so would be back at 5:45 PM. We appreciated it so much. Once we got everything to our room, I looked at Pam and said I am never traveling like this again and she agreed. If you go to Burgos, which we would highly recommend, never ever drive in the old part of town.
After many, many, many deep cleansing breaths we meet up with Rosalind and she’s so sweet and a great guide that we can’t recommend enough. We start with the Burgos Cathedral. During the Spanish Civil War, Burgos was captured by the fascist Franco forces at once so never was destroyed like so many other cathedrals in Spain. There’s a reason it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Rosalind concentrated on showing us who paid for the church to be built, which is an intriguing way to explain how this huge cathedral came to be. I absolutely loved it! If you are planning a trip to Burgos, let me know and I’ll share Rosalind’s contact information. While you would think, if you read the bible, that religious figures were to serve the people, nope, these priests, cannons, constables, cardinals, and bishops were all about getting stupidly, insanely, rich and glorified themselves over everything. At first, I hadn’t connected all this together, but the way Rosalind told the story makes you think. None of my pictures do justice to the space, so look online and you’ll find plenty.
I do have to show one horrible photo that none of you will understand, except for Greta, one of my amazing Spanish professors at UNCA. After his mortal remains had been moved 14 times because of the wars between the muslims and christians in the 10th century, this is the final resting place in Burgos Cathedral of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid, Campeador. I know Greta has seen it, but I was I was so absolutely thrilled to see his grave after her wonderful classes on Spanish history.
On Rosalind’s great tour, she asks a lot of questions to gauge your knowledge of the catholic church, the history of Spain, and related subjects. I kept answering the questions and after 15 minutes she asked how I know so much about Spain. When you just finished a degree in Spanish, it was unfair to Rosalind. She thought it was hilarious. We absolutely loved her tour and can’t recommend her enough. (Also, thanks to Michelle, Jerimais, Juan, Elena, and Idoia for all the Spanish knowledge to answer those questions!)
As we had eaten half the animals in Spain for lunch, we truly only wanted tapas for dinner. But there was something in particular I had to have, morchilla de Burgos. (If you have a sensitive stomach, stop reading now and don’t look at the picture.) A specialty of this area is this sausage made with onion, rice, salt, pepper, pig lard, paprika, and pigs blood. It is so, so good.
I appreciate you all for reading!
No so sure about all the meat....LOL
What a beautiful church! The driving on narrow streets and parking worse than San Diego would keep me from driving! Love everything except all the meat-this is not a vegetarian trip!!