The morning of our day off started off with us going to the Cathedral de Santa Maria de Burgos. The second largest Cathedral in Spain. It was pretty darned big.
I heard some singing, so I went in and they were having a service. So, we went in. There were only about 10 of us taking part in the service, and equally the same amount of priests performing the service. One guy was doing all the singing. Which I wasn’t quite used to. Usually, at least in the Episcopal services, the Father performing the service was the one doing all the singing. It became apparent, that the Father doing the service was NOT blessed with a singing voice. He only did one or two prayers, then handed it back off to the Singer.
After the service, I went to find some candles to light for the various people in my life that could use a little prayer. However, instead of lighting a candle, you just slip your coin in the money slot and the candle lights itself in the form of a fake votive. To me, it’s not quite the same. It’s a little impersonal. I popped a coin in the slot and eight votives lit. I didn’t know quite how to handle that, so I pointed at the votive and said, “this one is for so-and-so” said my prayer for them and moved onto the next. Like I said. Not the same. I like taking a candle, and going thru the ritual of lighting the candle and saying the prayer at the same time. I focus on the candle, nurturing the flame, caring for it, like I do the person I’m praying for. A coin in a slot like a vending machine isn’t the same.
After the service, we found the ticket booth to go into the rest of the Cathedral. We get a discount because of our Pilgrim Passports, which we had stamped. The very disappointing thing was, while they do have a guide that is in the form of an app that you download from a QR code, there was no other language except Spanish available. It’s an app, it should be easy to have 20 different languages on that app.
We wandered around looking at things we had no clue as to what they were. We saw some amazing paintings, one by Leonardo. We saw some amazing woodwork and marble carving. Only one thing was clear. The chest of El CID. It was very clearly marked, and it was wooden. Not elaborate marble like all the rest. According to Google, there was a significant document (wedding contract) found in the chest that is “unmediated connection” to El CID.
While wandering around in the Cathedral, guess who we run into? Catie! She was running thru the Cathedral before she hopped onto her train back to Barcelona. It was great to be able to say goodbye.
I elected to stay home and not go to dinner with my brothers. We had eaten at a vegetarian restaurant for lunch were we were greeted with smiles and happy to see you and yes, we get a lot of peregrinos who are wanting vegetables to eat. It was great. But, it was a lot of food and I was still full.
We left the next morning at 8am. No reason to leave earlier. Sunday morning and nothing would be open for breakfast yet. We started our walk thru the not very well marked streets. All of the other towns we had been thru were very well marked with camino arrows, or shells, or signs. Burgos was a constant game of Where’s Waldo looking for some sign.
We found a place open for breakfast and wandered in greeted by “Buenas Dias!” and a smile. See? It’s not so difficult, right?
We headed out for our long trek to Hornillos. We’ve been following a website called Gronze, which has all sorts of info in it. One of which is what to expect in each leg of the trip. Right now, we were entering the beginning of the Plateau. And according to Gronze, “Today we find few shady places, and in summer, the incandescent ball of fire from the sky falls mercilessly on the pilgrims. On the other hand, the cold in winter is tremendous.” Sounds lovely. In reality, it wasn’t that bad. Just back to the monotony of endless plains of mown fields. Thank goodness I have my Air Pods that let me lose myself in an audiobook during the boring parts of the walk.
A little beyond half way, we were greeted by this very nice nun (?) who was manning a little church. She invited us in to give us a stamp in our passport and blessed us. Honestly, I only got about 1/3 of what she was saying. But, I knew she was giving us a blessing and saying how wonderful it was we were doing this as a family. She had me write my prayers down in a journal and then she gave me a little Virgin Mary to take with me. I made a donation to the church and we went on our way.
We arrived in Hornillos. Our bags are not here. A quick email and we found them down the road at a different albergue. My fault, as I didn’t change the address with the correos when we did some shuffling around of accommodations. We were warned by our nice host, that the lady at the albergue where are bags had been dropped was known to have a nasty temperament. With trepidation, we went to retrieve our luggage.
There were two women who greeted us. The younger one was very nice, and seemed to be disappointed that we weren’t staying there. I apologized and tried to explain what happened in broken Spanish, and the younger women told me not to worry about it. The older lady, however, told me I needed to be less careless. We skeddatled and made our way back to our albergue.
I’m having a curious thing happen when I’m wearing my backpack. I’m getting horrible heartburn. It starts about 3 hours into it and lasts for several hours after I take my pack off. The belt sits just above my belly button, because that seems to be the best place for my hip belt to sit on my iliac crest. So, it’s almost like it’s not allowing my food to digest. Or, maybe I’m becoming lactose intolerant with all the coffee with milk we are drinking. Or both. In any case, tomorrow, I’m not going to have coffee with milk, and a light breakfast, and see if that makes a difference.
Tonight, we get paella for dinner made by the brother of our albergue hostess. We are looking forward to that.
27 Sep 2020 ~ 31,887 steps ~ 13.4 miles ~ 55º F ☀️
