Burgos \ April 18 & 19

Sorry about the gap in the entries. Have jumped by almost two weeks but it was a crazy couple weeks and didn't have as much time as I had hoped to blog. I will do my very best to get those missing cities (including the entirety of the Algraves, Cascais, and Porto in Portugal as well as Vigo, our trip back to Madrid and Figueres in Spain).

BURGOS
We are finally in Burgos which is where we start our walk across Northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago. It was quite an interesting day attempting to get here. Arranged for a wake up call and a 6am taxi from our hotel in Figueres. It was to be an easy day…a two hour train back to Barcelona then a 40 minute wait to jump on our six hour train to Burgos.

That, my friends, was not to be. The taxi was a no show and as it was a quite Saturday morning the guy at reception was unable to reach anyone to pick us up. The reception guy told us that it was a quick 10 minute walk to the train station. I am sure that someone familiar with all the twisting roads and alleyways would agree with him. We, on the other hand, got terrible lost, watching the minutes tick by on my cheap Hello Kitty watch (which at the time of posting this has died a sad Hello Kitty death). We asked anyone who was up at that hour but as it turns out we were on some crazy highway when our first train left without us. Remember the only way to make our long train was to be on the 6:40 train to Barcelona.

Finally got to the train station, grabbed a coffee and jumped on the 7:20am train that got us to Barcelona 10 minutes after our train had left for Burgos. Thankfully the lines were chill at the train station. Hit up customer service to give us a stamp then over to the medium distance counters to get a new ticket. Only had to pay the reservation fee again (10 Euro) and wait several hours and take a slow train (9 hours vs. 6 on the high speed train). I actually think it all work out quite well. These things are what make travel interesting and fun.

Cortney and I decided in the last hour of the train trip to hit up the café car for for a glass of wine. Not sure how it happened by the language thing led to Cort and I kickin’ back two bottles of wine….in a very lady like way I must add. A few minute till our station the lights went off throughout the train and we were in pitch black tunnel after tunnel. Super fun making our way back to our car to get our packs.

After finally arriving in Burgos we started walking t0 our hotel. Figured we are going to walk 400-500km from here anyway...why not start now. From the train station, that is the main train station, it takes about five minutes to walk to our centrally located hotel. It would appear that there are two train stations in town, our arrival station being quite far from town. It was getting late but we kept trying to find the hotel. Everyone we asked said it was very far but the map said something different. Finally called for a taxi and within another 30 minutes we were chillin' in our very nice hotel.

Burgos is a beautiful city, cut in half by a river. The center everything we wanted to see was a short walk from our hotel. Sent three boxes of our stuff to Santiago de Compestela (0ur final destination on the walk). Crossing our fingers that our much needed gear arrives at the post office on the other side. If not I guess we are traveling light and catching some funky bugs along the way.

As we spent the better part of a day sipping coffee and wandering around historic Burgos we saw quite a few Pilgrims of the Camino de Santiago. Some of these folks have been walking for two weeks already. Bet it was a shocker to walk into a big town like Burgos (population around 160,000). Most of our soon to be fellow pilgrims had seashells on their packs, a symbol of St. James. On our wandering around town we also began to run across the markers you follow along the Camino which include the seashell markers and yellow painted arrows.

Well, tomorrow we will put one foot in front of the other and see what happens. Wish us luck!