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Published: October 22nd 2015
26 September 2015, Saturday
It is wonderful to sleep in and we do so! We had arrived to find our bags that had been stored for the week by housekeeping had been placed in our room. Our room overlooks a park and it is startling to see how the leaves have turned and started to fall in our week's absence!
After a leisurely breakfast in the hotel we start out. We are also carrying the boots that Harlan bought in Bilbao, when it did not appear his bag with boots was going to reappear. We are going to find a new home for them. We meet a young pilgrim from Portland, Oregon waiting for a street light. She says she is having a wonderful trip. We see her again a short time later and she has decided not to stay at the big municipal albergue (dormitory like lodging for pilgrims) but is going to look around. There is already quite a que to get a bed for the night and it is not even noon yet. We decide we don't want to donate a great pair of boots to them and we check Brierley's book. The word Capuchin catches
Market Day, Leon
Spain treated us to the 'best-ever' tomatoes!our eye. Our son, James, has a friend from high school days who is a Capuchin and we rather like the idea of leaving a wonderful pair of boots at an establishment with which we have a tenuous connection! Through many years our son and his friend have kept in touch; their religious beliefs do not agree, nor do they agree on other topics but they like to 'disagree' and like to hear what the other is thinking. Too bad we can't have more dialogues like that.
The Plaza Mayor, that is supposed to have a big Saturday market, is hopping, but not with produce. They are preparing for some event. The market has been scrunched into the area of the nearby cathedral. It is a wonderful market and the locals are out with their wheeled carts to do their weekly shopping. Some produce we are not familiar with and others we hardly recognize. For instance, there are these very large, beautiful onions. I have just read a tale about a young woman who was called upon to serve a meal to a large group of religious people and there was little food on hand as it was a
very hard time. She took large onions and stuffed them with sautéed tuna and all thought it was a delicious dish. The onions I was viewing would have been perfect for stuffing. Huge red peppers stacked, braids of garlic, olives and nuts and more nuts, a foodie's paradise. Some of the heads of lettuce are over 2 feet in diameter. We sit and have coffee and a superb cinnamon roll that also resembles somewhat a fruitcake because of its nuts and dried fruit in addition to the regular ingredients for the cinnamon roll.
We decide to return in the afternoon to tour the cathedral. We set out to see San Marcos but get lost. We instead enjoy a medieval festival and try to figure out where we might be. A luxury car rolls by with a bride, on the way to the cathedral-she smiles at Harlan. It is a perfect fall day and all are out to enjoy it.
We return to the cathedral only to find it will open later---yes, we see the above mentioned bride and her new husband emerge shortly amid confetti and loud cheers.
Leon has a cathedral, surpassed only by Chartes Cathedral
Fresh produce from Bierzo
This region is the last of the provinces in Castile y Leon and we will be there in a week in France, in the number of stained glass windows it contains. The cathedral was started in 1253 and built in only fifty years. This accomplishment by a town of 5,000 is amazing. The buttresses do not abut the structure but supports it from a short distance away, allowing the light to flow through the stained class windows, including four rose windows. It is a pure medieval Gothic structure that has not been altered to any great extent over the hundreds of years it has stood. The quintessential Gothic cathedrals in Spain are in Leon, Burgos and Toledo. We have now seen them all and they are all awe inspiring. However, sometimes it is a little thing that you remember. In Toledo, behind the choir, way up high was an opening in the ceiling with a cherub descending through the opening. I could not get that one little cherub out of my mind and finally convinced James to go back and take a picture for me. Thank you, again, James.
We leave the cathedral, visit the cloister and decide we can not do the museum justice. Instead we endeavor to find route of the Camino on our way out of
town so we will not waste time tomorrow. It is only 13.5 miles tomorrow but we will be getting our camino legs in gear again!
We have dinner in El Corte Ingles department store across the street from our hotel. One of our best meals on the trip. This department store chain is found throughout Spain and has been exported to other countries. It is the country's one stop shopping experience and the country's answer to Macy's or Selfridges. This one has six floors and has a large footprint. The flagship store in Barcelona has a car park, foreign exchange counter, passport photograph machine, a supermarket, gourmet delicatessen area, a pharmacy, a tobacconist, optical shop and shoe repair. There are separate hairdressers for men and women, travel agency, haberdashery and on the ninth floor is La Rotonda, the store's restaurant and cafe.
We then walk across the street to our very pleasant room with a large, large tub that I love and start to get ready for the walk of tomorrow.
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