Burgos and León

Just got back from a crazy fun trip! On Monday morning, our first stop was a castle in a place called Peñaranda de Duero.

BAM! This is the castle.

Me in front of the castle

Pañadara de Duero. Is this not the coolest view ever?

This is what I had in mind when I pictured Europe.  Cities like this really do still exist everywhere, and it's really, fantastically awesome.

 Yes. Yes I did climb up the side. And yes. Yes I was terrified.  Good guess.  It took me forever to get back down because I was afraid I was going to die.

Chantelle looking all pensive.

I have so many pictures of narrow, old streets in the cities we visited.  It's kind of ridiculous how gorgeous everything is.

The view of Santodomingo de Silos from the cemetery

 After climbing the castle, we took the bus to another such city called Santodomingo de Silos, where we went to midday prayer and got to hear the monks there sing in the traditional Gregorian fashion. It was quite the experience, and the city was gorgeous. Up the hill, there's a little cemetery with a statue of Mary, and from there, you have a great view of the city.

The statue of Mary in the cemetery

Lest you think that's ALL we did on Monday, we also got to go on a little nature walk through a beautiful gorge called Desfiladero de la Muela, which I unfortunately did not get any really great pictures of.  Rest assured that it was great.

We got to see on more city on our little adventure there called Covarrubias, which was really pretty also, but which I also didn't get any really great pictures of.

Thankfully done for the day, we arrived at a small but elegant hotel in Burgos, which was where we were spending the night and touring the next day.

As much of the cathedral in Burgos that I could fit into the picture.

Tuesday morning, we did a wonderful tour of a beautiful cathedral in Burgos, and it was ENORMOUS. Seriously, the most enormous cathedral I've seen.  There were 19 capillas (chapels) around the edges, each kind of dedicated to whatever particular family funded it.  It's more of a tourist attraction than a church (there's even a gift shop), but they do still do mass there.  In fact, there was a service going on while we were touring (the chapel that they actually use is separated by glass doors).  It was extremely extravagant. Very pretty.  Not much more about it to say than that.  Also, apparently, there's a pilgrimage that Catholics from all over take, and it passes through this city. I guess it ends at a cathedral further west, and its path is marked with gold seashells in the street.  So if you see one, you know what it means.  We saw a bunch in both Burgos and León, and I'm told there's one in Alcalá as well.

We did a little tour of the city, bought lunch at a bakery, and made our way back to the buses.  We stopped at another little city on the way to León and visited the church there. Then, we made it to our hotel in León, which was, unfortunately, significantly less, shall we say, "elegant" than the one in Burgos.  But así fue.  Once we were all settled in, we saw a basilica (which, I learned, is different from a cathedral in that it doesn't have a bishop) and the outside of the Catedral de Santa María de León.  Unfortunately, we couldn't find a place to get tapas as we'd planned (I might wait for Daddy to come over and come with me to go to a tapas bar), but we found a little Turkish place, of all things.  That was delicious.  Ice cream and much rain later, we made it back to the hotel.

Wednesday morning, we went back into the city center in León and got to see the inside of the cathedral.  Holy amazing! Apparently, percentage-wise, there's only one other cathedral in the world (and it's in France, exactly where you'd think it would be) that has more stained glass.  It was beautiful.  They kept the lights low so that you could see the stained glass, and they were playing some very Catholic Gregorian monk stuff in the background.  If I hadn't gone in with a religion, I would have come out Catholic.  It was that beautiful.  You all need to go there someday.  All of you.  

There's an art museum attached to the cathedral, and that was very cool too.  There were some really cool, really old pieces. I learned two things about myself there: first, that I take longer than most people in museums (except modern art, which I don't get).  This is just a fact.  This is why people hate coming with me to museums. Second, I'd rather spend thirty minutes looking at three paintings than thirty minutes looking at 75 paintings.  I get to see less, but I get to appreciate them more, so I don't just forget them.

Exhausted yet? Then, we got to go to the museum attached to the basilica that we had seen the day before.  Lunch was at a rest stop (and it was delicious, regardless.  Ham and cheese in Spain is soooo much better), and then we stopped at another castle on our way back to Alcalá.  Courtney and I got lost on the bus home, but we made it eventually!

My plans to go to Barcelona this weekend fell through, so Courtney, Haley, and I got to go into Spain to see the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, which is a modern art museum.  Picasso's Guernica is housed here, and seeing that, as well as a bunch of his sketches preparing for Guernica, was really cool.  There was also a section on the propaganda used during the Spanish Civil War, which I also enjoyed.  There was so much that didn't really make any sense though!  There was one exhibit that was supposed to mean something, I'm sure, but it was three fluorescent lightbulbs (the long rods that you put in the ceiling) lit up on the wall.  It was all over my head. I left so confused.  This is why I'm not studying art.  I just don't get it.  But it was still cool! And figuring out how to use the train into Madrid was super helpful.  This time we made it home on the bus without incident!


Also, we got to go to our new ward here in Alcalá on Sunday, which was great! Dottie and I got to Sunday School a little bit early (well, early enough for the teacher to ask our names), and, unfortunately, I have a name that is really easy for Spaniards to both remember and pronounce. (They have a really hard time with names like Haley and Courtney!)  So, in front of the entire Sunday School class, he made me say the prayer! I think it was the shortest prayer of my life, but it was "correct", in the sense that I had actually prayed in Spanish before and knew which tenses to use when.  We have a lot of really attractive men in our ward here... we're just not allowed to date them.  I really liked our ward! I'm excited to go back on Sunday.  I won't go on about how the Church is just as true here as it is in Utah, because that's dumb.


I'm not sure what I'll do this weekend alone in Alcalá, but whatever it is, it's going to be relaxing.  I feel like we move a thousand miles an hour here!  So much fun to have in such a small amount of time.  It's like a vacation that I'm going to need a vacation from.