Tuesday, 10 October 2017
Burgos stay put
00 km today - 264 km on Camino Frances - 970 km from Le Puy - 520 to Santiago
I wake quite early, do some of my outstanding blogs and go for breakfast about 09h. I’ve sorted what I will send on to Santiago to lighten the load, in addition to my tent. At the principal Correos (Post Office) for Burgos I land a teller who speaks English. I suspect my pronunciation of “no hablo Espanol” (I do not speak Spanish, literally I have no Spanish) is a bit of a giveaway. We do the business and my pack will be lighter by just over 1 kg.
Then across the road to the Museum of human evolution. Entrance is € 6, and with a pilgrims passport € 4. So I am ready. The receptionist says I am free! Seeing my confusion she asks ‘Are you retired. If so ...”. There are four floors. The bottom floor focuses on the diggings near Atapeurca, a village some 20 km to the north east of Burgos. The displays are well laid out and with some thoughtfulness we are taken back several million years graphically and then brought to the present showing how the land forms and what was under them more especially were formed. In short, several of the oldest Eurasian human fossils have been found at that site. The next floor has, for me, fascinating displays about the various hominid (human related) species: the displays cut to the chase with life sized models of each. I learn that a common feature of most is social cohesion, communal care of the sick and elderly and funeral customs. The top two floors had stuff about Darwin and other more general material.
I had back to the hotel for a siesta. After which I wander up a major boulevard to the north east about 2 km, then down about 1 km south west towards the Rio Arlazon and then west back towards the hotel. My route is a bit like a wedge from a wheel of cheese. And my two fold purpose is to look for bananas and mandarin for my pack tomorrow and to observe the tenement housing and other buildings on my route. I succeed in the first but only once, and as I pick up my selection of two mandarin the shopkeeper talks to me very loudly: as I don’t know what practice I have run foul of, I replace the fruit and walk out with a cheery wave of the hand. My hotel is at the eastern edge of the old town and my route encompasses buildings that look to be from the last 40 years. Nothing spectacular except for the great sense of spaciousness: wide radiating boulevards with double carriageways in each direction separated by wide grassed areas and with generous connecting streets.
For dinner I decide to look for Menu del dia place closer to the hotel: and I find it. It is dark and just after 19h and I am the only patron but the only person grunts and waves down to a connected sandwich bar (with an entrance to another street. The young woman pleasantly points me back to the restaurant: this is some internal issue I cant resolve so leave. And a few moments later find a hoke in the wall offering Doner Kebab, just as I would find in Courtenay Place and for a lesser price.
Within the hour I am soaking in the bath at the hotel, dreaming of a hot tub I know of at 15 Aotea Drive.
And so to bed.
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